Flock off, Axon on

Flock's downfall has a beneficiary, and it might not be your privacy.

As of July 21, more than 50 U.S. municipalities have canceled or rejected contracts for Flock Safety public cameras.

Cities are switching to a public safety tech company already inside these departments in smaller roles: Axon.

The trend away from this particular brand of license plate readers is part of a wave that includes 39 terminations in just the first five months of 2026 alone.

Earlier this month, the LAPD allowed its three-year contract to expire as concerns over data sharing and privacy continued to plague the department. LAPD’s chief information officer, Dean Gialamas, told the LA Times that the department would not be using Flock Safety until it gets a new contractual relationship “ironed out.”

Smaller cancellations have also stacked up: Monroe County, Indiana, voted to terminate its contract about a year early, and Pea Ridge, Arkansas, dropped its program over public pushback.

But it isn’t really a rollback. Cities are switching to a public safety tech company already inside these departments in smaller roles: Axon.

RELATED: We're winning the fight against Flock — but the surveillance isn't going away that easily

Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post/Getty Images

LAPD’s patrol cars already run Axon body cameras and tasers, with the company supplying basic automatic license plate recognition software for its in-car cameras well before Flock’s exit, though Axon’s own LAPD contract was also set to expire at the end of July.

Austin shows that this pattern predates the current wave entirely: When the city canceled Flock in 2025, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s own write-up noted Austin "still makes use of ALPRs via its contract with Axon," meaning the cancellation never touched the Axon relationship running alongside it.

Denver dropped Flock in February for a $150,000 Axon deal, going to 50 cameras instead of 110. Douglas County, Colorado, did the same last week, its sheriff flipping to a 10-year, $23 million Axon contract after defending Flock publicly not long ago.

Weekly told Axios “trust was lost” between the sheriff and Flock, citing the company’s handling of privacy and policy concerns.

Syracuse shows how messy the handoff can get. The city’s breakup with Flock took eight months and involved an Axon contract approved in February, Flock’s street access revoked in March, a deadline Flock missed, and police who kept using the old readers anyway until a reporter asked why.

The last Flock camera was confirmed gone only in mid-July, but as of July 23, Axon’s readers still hadn’t been switched on, pending a usage policy the department hadn’t yet posted.

Separate Flock cameras run by Syracuse University and Destiny USA aren’t subject to any council or voter approval at all.

Though Axon is winning the biggest departments, Motorola Solutions, Rekor, Genetec, and Verkada are all being evaluated as Flock alternatives by cities running requests for proposal, including Richmond and Saratoga, California.

On July 25, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) announced a bill cutting federal money to any city running these cameras, the third bill out of the House in recent weeks.

Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett’s H.R. 9800 is vendor-neutral: It bars any federal agency from buying, accessing, or contracting for ALPR, facial recognition, or biometric ID systems used for "persistent or mass surveillance."

Blaze News reached out to Flock Safety and Axon for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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