Knock LA

The Los Angeles Police Department is again under pressure from community organizations for its partnerships and information-sharing practices with Flock Safety. Flock Safety, a hardware company that makes Automatic License Plate Reader cameras (ALPRs), has experienced public scrutiny since late 2025 due to its lack of security around data protection and the potential for license plate data to fall into the hands of ICE and Border Patrol. 

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s agitation against police surveillance is part of a broader strategy by the organization to not only sever ties between Flock and LAPD but to also change the public’s attitude around data sharing and policing in general. 

“The goal is to bring folks into this movement and have a paradigm shift around how we understand surveillance,” said Ally*, an organizer with Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, in an interview with Knock LA. “Surveillance is the tip of the policing knife. ALPRs and Flock are used to facilitate mass deportations. They are used to criminalize sex workers and expand the presumption of guilt.”

LAPD’s first recorded use of ALPRs occurred in 2004. The devices were tested in the San Fernando Valley to allegedly identify car thieves and stolen vehicles. In 2010, LAPD began working with Palantir, a software company that, according to their website, builds “digital infrastructure for data-driven operations and decision-making.” LAPD officers used the company’s ALPRWeb and ALPRWeb 2.1 functions to search vehicle color, body type, plates, and locations. 

Flock was first mentioned in emails sent by LAPD in 2019. Early that year, Flock approached LAPD and the two entities signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) which initiated the sharing of license plate data between Flock and the department. 

A year later, in 2020, the California State Auditor reviewed the use of ALPRs by state police agencies and found that LAPD was operating ALPRs without an explicit policy regarding their usage and the data collected. At the time, 320 million images existed in LAPD’s ALPR system and all 13,000 employees had access to the data. In response to the audit, LAPD created its first ALPR usage and data protection policy in December 2020, 16 years after the first use of the technology. 

On July 23, 2023, LAPD and Flock signed an MOU which, according to the department, is “to provide ALPR data to the Department for lawful and legitimate investigations, and the data is available at no cost to the department.” The following year, LAPD released information in response to a Public Records Act request from Stop LAPD Spying Coalition which revealed that it shares ALPR data with five other police departments in the state of California.

As LAPD has increased its surveillance of marginalized communities, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has been watching them. The organization coined the phrase “the architecture of surveillance” to refer to the various elements of human and electronic-based systems, technologies, programs, and spatial practices that LAPD and policing partnerships around the world use to surveil individuals and communities. During a press conference on March 3, 2026, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition presented a diagram of what they call “the stalker state,” which included a Venn diagram of the ways public, private, and government sectors share data for the sake of local and national security. 

In 2013, Palantir was used to connect LAPD datasets with the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), a fusion center located in Norwalk, CA. A fusion center is, according to the JRIC website, “a singular, regional location where … information received from local police, fire departments, public health agencies, the public/private sector, and members of the public is analyzed, evaluated, and fused with the goal of producing operational intelligence to aid in the detection, deterrence, and disruption of terrorist attacks.” In essence, JRIC serves as a space where data is combined to form profiles on individuals. There are six total fusion centers in California, three in Northern California and three in Southern California. The JRIC, which covers Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino County, exchanges and shares information with the rest of California’s centers and as well others across the country. 

Ally told Knock LA that fusion centers are an opportunity for LAPD officers and federal agents to be side by side, working together. 

“[The JRIC] is run by state agencies but also DHS and federal agencies and is funded in part by DHS,” they said. “LAPD gives a huge amount of money to JRIC because they are spending LAPD overtime there and they have LAPD staffers there. We do know that Flock ALPR data goes to fusion centers. So no matter how many guardrails Flock puts up, we understand that this information sharing will always be baked in because Flock data will always be shared between LAPD and DHS through fusion centers.”

At this current moment, LAPD denies that they own any Flock cameras. However, the department may have found a loophole through its relationship with a sympathetic ally. On October 7, 2024, the Cheviot Hills Neighborhood Association released a statement announcing that the residents had raised $200,000 to purchase Flock Safety cameras, which they would donate to LAPD for five years of usage within their community. Cindy Kane, secretary for the affluent neighborhood in LA’s Council District 5, said that Flock cameras were not found to be infringing on individuals’ privacy and thus were determined to not be an issue. 

“It is important to note that the ALPRs will only collect and record information that is exposed to public view, where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy,” Kane wrote in an email to LAist. “Thus, we do not believe ALPRs unreasonably interfere with the privacy rights of drivers in Cheviot Hills.”

According to Zhang, another organizer with Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, the desire for Cheviot Hills residents to procure Flock Safety cameras did not materialize out of nowhere. Instead, it was stoked and cultivated by LAPD through presentations to the Neighborhood Association that warned of “South American theft rings” in the area. LAPD spent years propagandizing Cheviot Hill residents with these meetings. The agreement between the Neighborhood Association and LAPD is that after five years, the department will be allowed to own the cameras, assume their operating costs, and take control of their data. The specifics of this transition remain unclear. 

The decision to increase surveillance through ALPRs in wealthy LA neighborhoods paints a grim picture of what the city has to look forward to. As Los Angeles prepares to host international sporting events like the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition warns that the city is rolling out surveillance infrastructure on unprecedented levels. 

“The World Cup, the Olympics, and these mega events are the justification for [LAPD] adding more funding into increasing their security measures,” Zhang said. “Karen Bass requested the National Special Security Event status four years in advance for the Olympics. The normal timeframe is six months before an event. That designation specifically allowed DHS to set up their own office in Los Angeles for the Olympics.”

Zhang and Ally went on to detail how the Olympics in particular are a vessel for Los Angeles to portray an image of a pristine, issue-free city — an image that does not match up with reality. They also swiftly debunked the claim by city officials that the games would be a “no-build” Olympics. 

“It’s a lie,” Ally said. “What they will be building is more security checkpoints and more infrastructure to put up ALPRs on lightpoles. They will be building 21 real-time crime centers in the 21 divisions of LAPD.” 

Real-time crime centers first appeared in New York City in 2005. Current iterations of the centers pull information from CCTV, ALPRs, geolocation data, shot detection and alarm systems, among other sources. According to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, adding AI-assisted Flock Safety cameras into the mix will allow for presumptions of guilt to be reached faster and on a broader scale. 

Analyzing and interpreting the surveillance state can undoubtedly spark feelings of fear and uneasiness in those who are learning about it. However, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is intentional about using knowledge as a tool to organize rather than paralyze. 

“We don’t outline all the intensity of this to freak people out,” Ally said. “We do it so that we know our enemy. We are here to build power and not paranoia.”

In order to get involved in Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s work against the “stalker state,” interested community members can attend their general meetings on Tuesday nights at 6:00 PM at LA Community Action Network (LA CAN) or show up with the coalition to the Board of Police Commissioners weekly meetings at LA City Hall on Tuesdays at 9:30 AM. 

*Name has been changed to protect the individual’s identity

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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.