In July, Park Ridge aldermen approved a yearlong contract with Flock Group, a Georgia-based company that provides license plate readers to police departments across the country. The contract, for eight cameras, is worth $24,000.
Now, weeks after the contract, one alderman — who was absent for the July vote — said he’d like to revisit the agreement.
The company — and supporters of the company — argue the cameras provide a powerful tool for law enforcement as it allows police departments to track stolen vehicles or missing or wanted persons across a city and even into other jurisdictions. The tool seems almost magic — search for a wanted license plate and find the vehicle in real time.
But over the past year, civil rights advocates have pushed back, arguing that giving a private company real-time data about the movement of every private car in these networks invites widespread abuse. Even people never accused, let alone charged with anything, have been victims of harassment as police and other agencies have misused the camera network. Plus, the company stands accused of violating Illinois state law by illegally sharing license plate data with the Border Patrol.
Consequently, popular opinion — even within local city hall chambers — is shifting. Last year, Evanston and Oak Park killed their Flock contracts while Arlington Heights this year approved a new contract but with penalties embedded in it should Flock misuse local data. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said there’s growing local pushback to Flock.
“When I talk with mayors across the country, there’s widespread concern about this,” he said.
At the Aug. 3 Park Ridge city council meeting, Alderperson John Moran made a motion for the Flock camera contract to be brought back for debate. Moran wasn’t present for the July vote, but even that vote was opposed by another alderperson, Fred Sanchez, and one member of the community spoke out publicly against the new contract.
Moran’s August motion failed 3-3, and he said afterward he has no plans to revisit the debate until the contract ends. But he did say he does expect some sharp scrutiny next year when the contract renews. He said he’s gotten e-mails and even letters from constituents who are unhappy with Flock.
Moran said, simply, times are different than they were two years ago, when the city first got involved with the company.
“I think that Flock, when it came to us a year ago now, it was at a time when the biggest concern in Park Ridge was property crime,” he said. The biggest property crime was vehicle theft.
But that wasn’t just Park Ridge. In the years following the pandemic, vehicle thefts surged nationally but have fallen in the last two years. This year, the Oak Brook-based National Insurance Crime Bureau reported that since 2024, there has been “a 23 % decrease” in car thefts, and this is “a clear signal of the end of the pandemic-fueled surge in vehicle thefts.”
Another factor the NICB pointed to is that auto manufacturers, namely Kia, updated car software that left certain models particularly vulnerable to thefts. Kia installed free auto immobilizers in 2023 after a popular social media trend highlighted gaps in Kia’s theft prevention.
But even as car thefts declined everywhere, Flock abuse reports began creeping up.
In 2025, a Texas sheriff’s officer searched the database of 83,000 cameras across the nation, including some in Illinois, to search for a woman who’d left that state to get an abortion. Abortions aren’t legal in Texas, but they are in Illinois. Also in 2025, the Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced Flock was illegally handing over Illinois data to immigration officials. Both violations happened two years after the state passed a law that prohibited unauthorized data sharing over state lines. The state issued the company a warning, and Giannoulias has since asked local authorities to double-check their agreements with Flock to make sure those agreements don’t violate state law.
Moran said that’s exactly what he did — he read the agreement. And, he said, in his opinion it comes very close to violating the law.
For example, he said there’s language in the contract that “exonerates Flock if they do anything that might be seen as outside of the contract.”
Indeed, on page 18 of a 20-page contract, Flock says they’ll hand over data to any outside authority if “legally compelled” and they’ll provide Park Ridge with a timely notice.
In addition, he said there’s a clause that promises they delete the data, but there’s another clause that says they will hand over the camera data — including deleted data — if required by a court.
“Those two statements seem to run contrary to each other. Are they deleted, or not?” he asked.
All of that is cause for concern for Moran.
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“My concern now is, what was presented to us as a wonderful new advancement in policing, the negative side of that is showing,” he said. “There’s some unintended uses and unintended consequences of signing up with Flock.”
Moran also pointed out there are at least three apps — FlockHopper, DeFlock and Flock Alert — that alert drivers to the camera locations, allowing for easy bypass.
But even without apps, local car thefts are following national trends, and they seem to be on the decline.
According to the state police uniform crime reporting data, from 2024 to 2025, motor vehicle theft fell by over 20 % in Cook County and the most populous city, Chicago, has never used Flock cameras.
There is no publicly available data yet for the period in which Evanston cancelled their Flock contract. But Biss said he’s not heard any complaints about a lack of Flock protection.
“I’ve heard only positive feedback, and I’ve heard a lot of it,” he said.
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.