EFF analysis finds schools, police using Flock Safety license-plate cameras for residency and background checks

An Electronic Frontier Foundation analysis published Tuesday says police and school police are using Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader system for routine administrative and low-level matters — including school residency checks, employment-related background queries and noise complaints — rather than only serious criminal investigations.

The findings, published May 26 by EFF researchers Dave Maass and Rindala Alajaji, are based on public-records audit logs covering millions of Flock searches. EFF said those logs show agencies sometimes ran retrospective searches across thousands of camera networks at once, extending far beyond their own jurisdictions. EFF argues the results show how warrantless searches of historical license-plate data are being used in ways that go well beyond major crimes.

The clearest example in EFF’s analysis is Buford City Schools in Georgia, a district serving about 6,000 students. According to EFF’s review of public-records Flock audit logs, school police there ran more than 375 automated license plate reader, or ALPR, searches between January 2025 and March 2026 with reasons such as “school residency verification” or “RV.”

EFF said those searches accounted for more than half of Buford’s ALPR searches during that period. In the first three months of 2026, EFF said, roughly three-quarters of the district’s searches were tied to residency verification. Some of the searches, according to EFF, ran across more than 5,800 networks nationwide.

A spokesperson for Buford City Schools told EFF, in an email shared by Appen Media, that “because Buford City Schools is a highly sought-after district, we experience ongoing challenges with residency fraud. Flock Safety is one of the tools we use to verify residency and protect the integrity of the Buford City School System for families who live within the district.”

EFF said it found other residency-related searches as well. In Ohio, it identified 35 searches by the Delhi Township Police Department tied to students in five schools during a three-month period in spring 2025. Delhi Township told EFF that “these searches were not done to verify residency upon submission, but to investigate cases where it was believed the form was filled out with false information.”

The department also told EFF that “in response to your inquiry, the department will be implementing a change to how these queries are documented in the Flock system and internally, to increase accountability and help avoid any confusion moving forward.”

EFF also highlighted searches with reason fields referencing employment or background checks. Those included six searches by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Missouri across 2,853 networks, 10 by the Little Elm Police Department in Texas across 6,306 networks, two by the Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi across more than 6,000 networks, and three by the Texas City Police Department in Texas across 728 networks.

In North Carolina, EFF said the Davidson Police Department logged a search as “Employment Background.” But Davidson’s police chief told EFF that was a “poor choice of words by our investigator” and said the department does not use ALPRs for employment background checks.

For noise complaints, EFF said it identified 26 agencies that ran ALPR searches over issues such as loud music, house parties and loud exhausts. Some of those searches covered about 6,500 networks, according to the group’s analysis of the audit logs.

Ridgeland appeared in all three categories identified by EFF: residency-related searches, employment-related searches and noise complaints. EFF said Ridgeland did not respond to its requests for comment for the report. In 2020, Ridgeland’s then-police chief defended the technology to WLBT by saying, “This is the same as if I put a police officer on the side of the road with a pen and a notepad and he writes down every license plate number that drives by.”

Flock Safety is a private, Atlanta-based company founded in 2017 that sells networked license plate readers and related public-safety software. Its cameras record a vehicle’s plate, make, model, color, distinguishing characteristics, and the date, time and location where it was seen. Flock markets the system as a crime-fighting tool, but EFF said the company’s cross-agency sharing model is central to the scope of the searches it documented: a single query can reach thousands of camera networks across jurisdictions.

There is also an active legal fight over whether such retrospective searches require a warrant. In November 2025, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California sued the San Jose Police Department, challenging warrantless retrospective ALPR searches. Their complaint said San Jose police conducted 261,711 retrospective searches between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025.