Contract cost

Neenah’s Common Council unanimously voted to end the city’s contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate reading cameras. The cameras were already deactivated, and the city will bag them and request removal within 30 days. Police Chief Aaron Olson requested the termination, citing privacy and Fourth Amendment concerns and a lack of trust in Flock’s transparency. The contract allows stopping payments before the fiscal year ends December 31, so taxpayers will cover the remaining $8,500 of the $30,000 annual agreement. The city will wait for state lawmakers to consider Assembly Bill 576 before pursuing replacement technology.

On August 28, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott’s office confirmed that state agencies would pause state funding for Flock license plate reader cameras after two officer criminal cases. A former Katy police officer was indicted in Fort Bend County on stalkng and misuse-of-official-information charges; internal affairs records obtained by KHOU reportedly showed 2,386 searches of his ex-wife’s plate over 11 months. He was fired and has pleaded not guilty. A Lufkin officer was arrested by Texas Rangers on Aug. 20 and indicted on 100 felony counts of misuse of official information; Lufkin suspended its Flock use. The Texas Tribune reported a state agency has devoted at least $30 million in grants to local police for Flock cameras. Abbott’s spokesman said city funding mostly comes from the federal government, and state funds cannot be used for the cameras.

In August 2026, Business Insider reported that Flock Safety cameras generated 1,427 alerts to the Roseville, California, police department in 2023 and 2024 for vehicles flagged as stolen or tied to felonies, and that a department analysis found 71% of those alerts came from the software misreading the plate. Records showed a 9 read as an 8, and the department reported bad reads to the company dozens of times over four years. Flock said its cameras read more than 96% of characters correctly in optimal conditions and blamed Roseville’s older hardware, higher camera mounting and rear-only capture. No alert led to a stop or arrest because officers must verify plates before acting. The city has spent roughly $450,000 on Flock products since 2020 and continues the contract.

On July 6 the Windsor Town Council voted 5-4 to keep the town’s 16 Flock Safety license plate reader cameras off and to end its contract. The council had voted 8-1 in February to pause the cameras while it tried to renegotiate contract language on resident data ahead of a May renewal. A resident’s public records request showed Windsor data was searched 590,000 times over nine weeks. If the contract is terminated early, the town will pay around $8,000. The cameras are to be taken down by the fall.

In July, Killingworth became the second Connecticut town to end its Flock Safety contract. The town, which has no police department and relies on a resident state trooper, installed four cameras along Route 81 the previous year. The first selectman told CT Insider the cameras had not added any value to local policing. Officials said the town was negotiating the end of the contract for financial reasons while also taking resident privacy concerns into account. The town had budgeted $14,600 for licensing the four cameras in the current fiscal year. Officials said the town will have to pay a fee to exit the contract but did not yet know the amount. The cameras were expected to be removed the same month.

On March 31, 2026 the Denver City Council voted 7-6 to approve a one-year, $150,000 contract with Axon for 50 fixed license plate reader cameras, hours after Flock Safety finished removing its more than 100 cameras from city streets. The council president broke a 6-6 tie. Denver had ended its Flock contract after public backlash over privacy and revelations that the company could share data with federal immigration authorities. Opponents on the council argued the vote came before the city’s surveillance task force had written guardrails. Axon had severed its API integration with Flock on July 24, 2025. In July 2026 Douglas County approved a nearly $22.8 million Axon package replacing its 50 Flock cameras with 100 Axon Outpost cameras plus drones.

On the evening of December 5, 2025, the Eugene Police Department ended its contract with Flock Safety effective immediately, citing vulnerabilities and limitations affecting operational needs, data security requirements and community expectations. Springfield police announced about an hour later that their cameras would be covered pending removal; Springfield had said in September it would not turn on its 25 cameras, budgeted at $77,000 per year and funded by a $93,000 Oregon Criminal Justice Commission grant, until a community discussion took place. Eugene’s chief later confirmed a Flock camera had been turned on after the city ordered the cameras shut down in October. Eugene’s $342,000 two-year contract was funded by a state grant. City staff removed 55 of Eugene’s 57 cameras by December 19.

Brooklyn Park City Council voted 5-0 to add $4.6 million to its Axon contract for a Drone as First Responder program. The 10-year contract total is now $12.4 million. The program includes 10 Skydio drones housed in five docking stations that self-dispatch to reported crimes. Footage will be deleted after three days, and a transparency portal will show deployments. Costs are covered until 2028.

On September 9, 2025 the Sedona City Council voted unanimously to cancel its contract for automated license-plate readers and remove them. South Tucson voted on February 17, 2026 to end its agreement. Staunton, Virginia announced it would cancel its Flock contract. KOMO reported that Mountlake Terrace, Washington ended a $54,000 agreement but remained responsible for the first year’s payment of $27,000 and was negotiating the balance, that Lynnwood terminated a $171,000 contract, and that cities ending grant-funded agreements early could be required to return funds to the grantor. NPR reported that privacy concerns and federal immigration access to local data were driving the cancellations.

San Mateo County’s Project Sherlock, a $12 million AI policing system developed by C3 AI, has largely failed to deliver promised investigative benefits after three years. A timeline projected 14 agencies to be fully live by January 2025, but seven agencies—Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Menlo Park, San Bruno, and South San Francisco—report lacking a fully functional product. A senior Sheriff’s Office analyst said: ‘My no BS assessment is that we’ve been working with them for two years and they have a barely functional product.’ The system has faced delays, login bugs, and data integration issues.

On August 26, 2025, Evanston ordered Flock Safety to deactivate its 19 license plate reader cameras and issued a 30-day termination notice, effective September 26, after an Illinois Secretary of State audit found Flock had let U.S. Customs and Border Protection access Illinois camera data in violation of state law. Flock challenged the termination. In September the company reinstalled stationary cameras without city authorization, and the city covered the cameras pending removal. The five-year contract, approved January 8, 2024, at $48,500 per year, runs to January 29, 2029; the city paid the first two years and would owe $145,500 for the remaining three if the contract is upheld. As of March 2026 no lawsuit had been filed, the city had not paid its 2026 fee, and the final two cameras were removed after a RoundTable inquiry.

On April 8, 2025, the Scarsdale Village Board approved a $2.1 million contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate readers, live-view surveillance cameras and drone-as-first-responder technology, without public notice. Communications obtained by Drop Site News showed village contact with Flock dating to January 15, 2025. Residents began appearing at the April 22 board meeting, and a petition signed by 449 residents urged the board to pause the project and hold public forums. The village was notified in early July that its grant application for the project had been denied. On August 4 the police chief submitted a memo recommending against proceeding given the lack of federal funding, and the village cancelled the contract on August 6.

On May 5, 2025, the Denver City Council voted down a two-year, $666,000 contract extension with Flock Safety. All council members present voted no, citing concern the cameras could be used for federal immigration enforcement. Mayor Mike Johnston’s office had asked the council to reject the proposal. The city said it would keep the camera system operating while it created a task force. The system photographed about 2 million license plates per month.

Chicago’s contract with SoundThinking for the ShotSpotter gunshot-detection network ended September 22, 2024, followed by a two-month transition period. The city entered a $33 million, three-year contract in 2018; WTTW reported the city paid more than $53 million since 2018. In February 2024 Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a nine-month extension reported by the Sun-Times at $8.6 million, more than the previous year’s cost. A 2021 Office of Inspector General review of 50,176 alerts from January 2020 to May 2021 found 9.1 percent produced evidence of a gun-related crime. The City Council voted 34-14 in May to require a council vote before removal from any ward, and later voted 33-14 to rebuke Johnson’s decision; the mayor vowed a veto.

Motherboard obtained procurement records showing the U.S. Secret Service paid about $400,000 each year from 2020 to 2022 for access to LexisNexis’ Virtual Crime Center, a system that links public records with agency data. The article also notes purchases by the State Department, FDA, and other agencies. LexisNexis sells the product under the Accurint brand for law enforcement and government.

The Lens investigation found that the New Orleans Real Time Crime Center cost at least $10.4 million since 2017, based on confirmed purchase orders and payroll records. The figure includes $6.1 million in spending on equipment and services from Cox and vendors Active Solutions, Motorola Solutions, and LaTech, plus $4.3 million in payroll for 26 employees from 2017 through July 2021. The Lens reported that the true total is likely higher because the city provided incomplete and inaccurate records, and the city said it could not isolate RTCC expenditures from other Homeland Security spending.

Voice of San Diego obtained San Diego Police Department data covering 584 ShotSpotter activations from late 2016 through February 2020. SDPD classified 72 activations, 12.3 percent, as unfounded. ShotSpotter’s senior vice president of marketing Sam Klepper said the company had a 0.5 percent false-positive rate. Police made two arrests while responding to activations; nearly 60 percent of dispatches produced no report. SDPD Lt. Jeffrey Peterson wrote in December 2019, ‘I don’t support keeping it based on the cost.’ The city’s $1 million four-year contract was set to expire Nov. 21.

The ACLU released documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates under a $6.1 million contract with Vigilant Solutions for access to a vast automated license plate reader database. Over 9,000 ICE officers have access to more than 5 billion license plate data points collected by private businesses and additional records from law enforcement. More than 80 local agencies in over a dozen states agreed to share license plate location information with ICE, including agencies in Union City, California, a sanctuary city. The contract runs through September 2020.

In February 2018, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department purchased seven annual Dataminr licenses at a cost of almost $48,000, using State Homeland Security Grant program funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Six licenses went to the D.C. fusion center, and MPD had access to unlimited licenses for the first year, provided to the department’s Command Information Center.

On June 29, 2016, a Newark police detective emailed MVC’s chair to say the city was suspending its contract with MVC because the firm’s ‘obligations to the Newark Police Division have not been met.’ Newark had paid MVC $25,000 before the contract was severed. Newark police said the city is partnering with Panasonic for a pilot body camera program. The suspension followed failures by MVC to host training sessions and provide working cameras.