Knock LA

In the latest development regarding the City of LA’s relationship with Flock Safety, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto is negotiating with the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company to secure a $1 contract. The specifics of the contract have yet to be disclosed, as discussions between LAPD, the City Attorney’s office, and Flock Safety are ongoing. 

The existence of the proposed $1 contract was first revealed by LAPD Commander Randy Goddard during an April 28 Board of Police Commissioners meeting. The discussion began after Commissioner Jeff Skobin raised questions over the department’s use of $3.4 million in funding for ALPR’s in Los Angeles.

“We are still in that research phase of what is the best ALPR vendor that really covers the city’s terms and conditions as it relates to data ownership, data sharing, data security, all of those things that we really want,” Goddard said during the April 28 meeting. 

Goddard later explained that the City Attorney’s office is currently in the process of creating a $1 contract with Flock Safety, with ongoing discussions centered on the specific terms and conditions of the agreement and how favorable they would be to LAPD.

“There will be some red-lines there that will go back and forth, but I can tell you absolutely from the department’s perspective, we will not accept that contract unless it has the language in the terms and conditions that is agreeable to the department, that is in the best interests of the department, that it is the department’s data. And that [Flock] cannot share the data, look at the data, analyze the data, do anything with the data without written permission from the department,” Goddard said in the commissioners meeting. 

Goddard mentioned that the contract would not include the procurement of Flock cameras, alluding that it would instead cover something else. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition — a community group building power towards the abolition of the police state — provided their theories to Knock LA about what the $1 contract would signify for the future of ALPR’s and future surveillance in Los Angeles. Grace Zhang, a Stop LAPD Spying Coalition organizer, said that while Goddard assured the Board of Police Commissioners that they would have the opportunity to review the contract, this move was meant to pacify the board rather than provide concrete assurance about data ownership and safety. 

“We see the commissioners as a sham oversight body in that their purpose is to protect the best interests of the [police] department, not the people, not to actually hold any type of oversight or accountability,” they told Knock LA in an interview. 

Another organizer with Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, who requested anonymity, told Knock LA there was uncertainty over whether LAPD would be the owner of any cameras once the $1 contract with Flock goes into effect. Under the current MOU between Flock Safety and LAPD – which is set to expire in July – private entities presently own all Flock cameras in LA. However, if LAPD becomes the owner, questions remain as to whether LAPD would also be the proprietor of the cameras. 

Concerns about data sharing agreements between private companies are not new for LAPD. Prior to its rebranding as Geolitica, the predictive policing software PredPol was given to LAPD free of charge. In 2020, the department stopped using the technology after a years-long relationship with PrepPol.  

“But there was a quid pro quo to that,” Hamid Khan from Stop LAPD Spying Coalition told Knock LA in reference to the free use of predictive policing algorithms. “That quid pro quo was that all the arrest data that [LAPD] would have, they would share with the company.”

Khan shared similar concerns between LAPD and Flock as a result of a formal city contract.  Such data could be used for research and development on the part of the private company to create more algorithms and more surveillance technology. As an example, Khan pointed to LAPD’s strategy around data sharing in the past with the body camera manufacturer Axon. The immense amount of footage and data captured by LAPD officers wearing the cameras did not go untouched by the manufacturer. 

“There was a report some years ago that came out that Axon was using that data to experiment to then come up with technology that could predict moves,” Khan said. “So this is just a free-for-all. And it’s all happening on public dollars, on public data.”

As far as quid pro quo’s, it is easy to extrapolate that LAPD does not need to assign a dollar amount to the contract with Flock because they would be paying with an even more valuable asset: the public’s data. Furthermore even if the City of LA is not exchanging money or hardware with Flock Safety at this point, such negotiations around an essentially free trial for ALPR’s are an act of formalization of the relationship between Flock Safety and Los Angeles governance. Such actions further reveal the true colors of the current city attorney and where her political priorities lie.

“It is very politically revealing of their intentions to expand the stalker state, to even further entrench surveillance in our everyday lives,” Grace Zhang said to Knock LA. 

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition did not mince words when it came to naming who they held responsible for the recent expansion of Flock Safety into Los Angeles.

“We hold Karen Bass responsible for this,” Hamid Khan said. “It’s not that Karen Bass is unaware of Flock.”

Khan argued that since the buck stops with the mayor and Karen Bass has the power to mandate LAPD direction and strategy, Bass’s hands are not clean when it comes to the uptick in private surveillance companies creeping into LA. In a May 8 video posted to X by journalist Jonah Valdez, Bass was asked about LAPD’s use of Flock cameras as both an investigative tool and a potential source of data for federal immigration operations. 

“I think those cameras are important,” Bass said in the video. 

Bass went on to state that sharing data between Flock and federal immigration agencies is “unacceptable.” However, when asked about reports that federal agencies can already access information through law enforcement information sharing available through fusion centers, Bass said she wasn’t aware of specifics. 

Bass and Hydee Feldstein Soto are in alignment about ALPR’s being a so-called important asset to public safety. According to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, the 2025 MOU between LAPD and Flock Safety – drafted after the wildfires to purportedly stop looting – was signed off on by Feldstein Soto. The MOU is set to expire this year in July, and the next phases of Flock’s presence in LA remain shrouded by private conversations that exclude the general public. 

As Los Angeles prepares to host the FIFA World Cup approaches and the 2028 Summer Olympics, surveillance advocates and critics alike expect the city’s use of ALPR technology to continue expanding. With uncertainty swirling around the negotiations of a murky $1 contract between Flock and the LA City Attorney, much remains to be seen around the next moves of the surveillance state. 

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” said Khan.

Rosalind Jones (she/they) is a queer, Los Angeles-based writer and community organizer. She is a contributor for the online publication Knock LA, a founding member of the social justice organization Community Solidarity Project, and authors a Substack titled ‘Another World is Inevitable’. Rosalind holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College and a certification in Creative Writing from the UCLA Extension.