What is Flock: How OPD uses the system
In addition to taking photos of vehicles on public roadways, the Flock system also purges information from the Law Enforcement Automated Data Systems (LEADS) multiple times a day to create notifications if there is a warrant for a person’s arrest.
The Oxford Police Department (OPD) entered into a contract with Flock, a public safety technology company, in February 2024. Fourteen Flock license plate reader cameras have been installed in the Oxford area and are used by OPD to aid in law enforcement. All officers complete training modules before they can run searches using these cameras.
Flock’s program allows officers to search for full or partial license plate numbers, as well as the make and model of a car. OPD Lieutenant Adam Price said Flock cameras aren’t used for every investigation because officers must have a reason for searching the database, but they can be helpful, particularly for theft or hit-and-run incidents.
“It is a force multiplier,” Price said. “It helps us get things back to where they should be, solve crimes, help close cases; without them there's a lot of cases that would not have been closed.”
In one incident during fall 2023, a cyclist was injured after being struck by a car on High Street. The driver drove away from the scene, although the crash significantly damaged the vehicle. Using a Miami University camera, OPD was able to determine the make and model of the car.
Officers then used Flock to search for the car’s make and model, and found a match in Trenton. Officers went to Trenton, where the owner had taken the car apart in the garage to fix the damage.
“Without Flock, we were just looking for a white car,” Price said. “Our chances, our solvability on that, was non-existent.”
The Flock system also purges information from the Law Enforcement Automated Data Systems (LEADS) multiple times a day to create notifications if there is a warrant for a person’s arrest, so in addition to taking photos of vehicles on public roadways, the cameras also detect and notify law enforcement if a stolen vehicle has entered the city.
Although Flock is a third-party contractor, different police departments can make distinctions between what they consider to be reasonable grounds for using the database. For example, OPD does not allow officers to search their Flock cameras for immigration or reproductive health-related investigations.
The photos pulled from Flock’s cameras are the property of OPD; however, they are stored on a Flock database. The company has limited access to the images collected for maintenance purposes. After 30 days, the database automatically deletes all stored images.
Flock isn’t the only group with access to OPD’s database, though. Police departments that contract with Flock can choose to share data with other police departments across the country. This can help police locate criminals who have fled a crime scene. OPD shares data with 2,215 police departments, including neighboring areas like Hamilton, Middletown, Trenton and Cincinnati.
Flock’s system records all searches within the database and can trace them back to the user, like a digital fingerprint. This means that if an officer uses the database inappropriately, it is easy for police departments to see and investigate. Flock also keeps audit records of who views camera videos and retains those audits indefinitely. The record includes the start and end view times for the viewer and the reason for downloading the video, according to Flock’s website.
Some Oxford residents raised concerns about the widespread agency access to Oxford’s Flock camera data at the June 16 city council meeting. Oxford is only the latest in a long list of cities to see pushback from its community. At least 30 areas across the country have deactivated their Flock cameras or canceled their contracts since the beginning of 2025, according to an article from NPR.
“My concern is not with the City of Oxford Police Department, but what happens to the data if it is used by other departments, or if there is a data breach,” Heidi Schran, an Oxford resident, said during the public comment section of the June 16 meeting.
Despite these concerns, Price said Flock has been helpful in many investigations, and OPD will likely request to renew the city’s contract.
“We're solving crimes that we wouldn't be able to… I feel that there would be certain crimes going forward that we might be able to solve using it (that) would not get solved (without it),” Price said.
