NEWS ANALYSIS | SURVEILLANCE — NOVEMBER 6, 2026. Plymouth, Minnesota, voted to stop using Flock Safety’s automated license-plate cameras. Its police chief had them unplugged. Then a contractor working for Flock showed up and replaced one of the disconnected devices anyway. The company insists the replacement was not collecting data. The unanswered question is whether anyone outside Flock can establish that.
The replacement on November 4 was documented by automotive journalist Joel Feder of The Drive, who reported seeing a contractor replace a camera on Rockford Road, west of Highway 494. Asked why, the contractor described the old camera as “broken.” Plymouth Police Chief Eric Fadden said the city had not authorized or known about the work and was sending staff to investigate.
The city voted no. The equipment stayed.
On September 22, Plymouth City Council voted to terminate the Flock arrangement; Mayor Jeffry Wosje cast the sole dissenting vote. The decision followed arguments about public safety, privacy, and whether residents should trust a vendor that manages searchable vehicle observations. Local police defended useful investigative leads, including cases involving violent crime and missing people. Critics questioned data access and oversight. The city’s official meeting portal provides the route to council agendas and recordings.
Fadden told The Drive that on September 23 the department suspended all Plymouth user accounts and sent Flock notice of cancellation. The city followed up by mail and email after consulting its attorney. But it still did not receive the corporate or legal response it wanted. After waiting, Fadden ordered staff to disconnect the cameras’ power cords so they could not keep recording license plates. The Drive documented the disconnection on October 23.
Those steps were not the same as physically removing the equipment. The cameras belonged to Flock, which supplied the hardware under a subscription model, and remained installed pending removal. That gap—between a municipal cancellation, a digital account shutdown and actual decommissioning—is the fault line in this story.
November 4: a ‘broken’ camera is replaced
Feder reported a contractor on a ladder working on a disconnected Flock device. The contractor said he was hired by Flock for a replacement work order, though he did not show the document. After publication, The Drive returned to the site and observed the replacement physically connected to its solar-panel and battery system. Read Feder’s November 4 report and photographs.
Flock Safety later offered an explanation. According to its statement to The Drive, unplugging the cameras before formal contract cancellation had been processed automatically generated maintenance requests; most were then canceled, but one was missed. The company said the replacement was not collecting data and that equipment-removal orders had been expedited, with removal expected in the coming weeks.
What this establishes: a replacement device was installed and physically connected after the city had discontinued the program. What it does not establish: that the replacement captured, uploaded, retained or shared a single new license-plate record. A cable attached to a battery is evidence of a power connection, not a publicly accessible audit of the cloud service. Conversely, a vendor assertion that collection was disabled is not an independent technical verification.
This has happened in another Minnesota city
Plymouth is not an isolated complaint. In a public notice from the City of Dayton, officials said police learned of a Flock maintenance work order on September 17 and instructed the vendor on September 18 not to proceed because the local program was on hold. The city said that instruction was not followed and a camera was returned to service without authorization. Officials then found a second reinstalled camera and said both would be removed.
That Dayton statement is direct government documentation, not merely an anonymous claim about a roadside camera. CBS Minnesota independently reported the episode. The available facts do not prove that Flock deliberately overrode city policy in Plymouth or Dayton; they do demonstrate a failure to keep field maintenance activity aligned with the governments’ instructions.
The mistaken stop behind Plymouth’s loss of trust
The debate in Plymouth also has a concrete human backdrop. In June, police stopped Feder and his wife after license-plate alerts suggested the vehicle was connected to a stolen plate. CBS Minnesota reviewed body-camera footage and reported that the chief attributed the error to an incomplete plate number entered into a national law-enforcement database in another state. Flock said its alert should be only one part of an investigation, not the sole basis for a stop.
That incident does not mean every Flock alert is false, nor that Plymouth officers never benefited from the system. The department described legitimate investigative uses during September’s council debate. But it helps explain why questions about oversight were not abstract: incorrect information in a wider system had already brought four police cars to an innocent couple.
The technical questions the company has not settled publicly
Flock’s public FAQ says its cameras can take multiple photographs of a passing vehicle and that customer-configured data retention and access policies govern stored information. Its evidence policy states that customers control their data and that data should be deleted after the applicable retention period unless preserved as evidence. None of those general policies, however, is a device-specific record showing what Plymouth’s newly installed camera did after November 4.
A meaningful independent shutdown review would examine the camera’s unique device identifier, installation and maintenance logs, exact power and network status, timestamps of any plate detections or uploads, the destination tenant or account, user-access status, any exports or shared records, and a documented deletion or preservation process. It should also establish who authorized the contractor’s work order after the September vote. These are proposed verification steps, not claims that such logs have been publicly obtained.
A cancellation policy is only as strong as its off switch
The broader issue is a mismatch between democratic authority and private infrastructure. City councils can vote. Police departments can suspend software accounts. But a vendor may still own the physical cameras, manage repair tickets and coordinate removal crews. Unless a contract defines an auditable, time-bound shutdown, officials and residents may not know exactly when monitoring truly ends.
Our earlier Apep Bar investigation, Standing Up to Flock, examined the expanding municipal resistance to license-plate surveillance. This incident sharpens the issue: the public is now asking not simply whether cities may cancel, but whether cancellation can be technically enforced without relying on assurances from the vendor they are leaving.
Watch and verify
The reader-supplied short-form commentary, “Flock Plugged It Back In” (YouTube Short), summarizes the controversy. It is commentary, not independently authenticated footage of the November 4 replacement. For the reported installation, consult The Drive’s firsthand reporting and photographs; for independent reporting on the council’s decision and the earlier police stop, consult the linked CBS Minnesota reports. The September 22 meeting materials can be found through Plymouth’s council portal.
What remains unknown as of November 6: whether Plymouth’s inspection produced a device-level finding; whether the replacement ever captured or transmitted vehicle information; when every camera will be removed; and whether the parties will release a verifiable shutdown record. Flock denies that the replacement collected data. Until that assertion can be tested against records, the sharpest question is also the simplest: Who gets to say the surveillance is over?
Featured-image credit: Actual Flock Safety automatic license-plate reader photographed in Jackson County, Colorado, May 25, 2026, by Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Contextual documentary equipment photo; not the Plymouth replacement or the contractor in this story.
