“Abuse of Power Destroys Trust”: Flock CEO Responds as Arizona Scrutiny Intensifies

“Yes, we will see more,” Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley told Jen’s Two Cents as scrutiny of the technology intensifies across Arizona.

It has been quite a week for Flock Safety in Arizona. In eight days, a sheriff moved to end his agency’s contract over Fourth Amendment concerns, one city announced it would discontinue its Flock cameras, another shut off outside data sharing, and three departments disclosed investigations involving alleged, potential or irregular use of ALPR systems.

Then Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley responded directly to me on X, and what he said gets right to the heart of the debate now unfolding across Arizona: trust.

On August 11th, I posted about the Goodyear Police Department’s announcement that an internal audit had flagged potential misuse of its Flock ALPR system by an officer.

Goodyear placed the officer on administrative leave, restricted the officer’s access to department computer systems and asked the Glendale Police Department to conduct an independent criminal investigation.

But something else in Goodyear’s announcement caught my attention. The department specifically referenced Flock’s “enhanced automated auditing capabilities,” which it said provide law enforcement agencies with greater visibility into individual user activity and make it easier to identify unusual activity or potential anomalies.

I ended my post with a prediction: “I’m guessing we’re going to see more.”

I tagged Langley. He answered:

“Yes, we will see more and I think every police technology should have the same auditing.

Abuse of power destroys trust.”

That last sentence is worth remembering: “Abuse of power destroys trust.”

And sure enough, we are seeing more.

Arizona has already seen plenty in the past eight days.

Let’s take a look.

Aug. 5: Pinal County moves to eliminate Flock contract

On August 5th, Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple said he was directing his staff to eliminate the Sheriff’s Office contract with Flock Safety.

Teeple cited growing Fourth Amendment concerns surrounding modern surveillance technology, including automated license plate readers.

Pinal County is important for a different reason. This wasn’t an officer misuse case. Teeple’s stated concern was the broader reach of modern surveillance technology and its implications for the Fourth Amendment.

Aug. 7: Chandler discontinues Flock

Two days later, Chandler announced it would discontinue its use of 40 fixed-camera automated license plate readers provided by Flock.

“For the first time in three years, our routine audit process identified an anomaly in the use of the Flock system that could not be explained through standard police action. This is exactly what our audit safeguards are designed to do, catch irregular activity so it can be reviewed and addressed. We are currently investigating to determine if the Flock system was used inappropriately, and if so, what discipline may be required.”

The city said it would not pursue renewal of its agreement with Flock “at this time.” Chandler also said its initial review found that no Chandler resident or member of the public had their privacy compromised, but the investigation into whether the system was used inappropriately remains ongoing.

That’s two Arizona jurisdictions moving away from Flock in three days. But Chandler added something new to the story: a routine audit had caught something that warranted an investigation into possible misuse.

Aug. 10: Officer allegedly uses Flock in effort to locate his wife

Apache Junction Police Chief Michael Pooley announced that a former officer allegedly used the department’s Flock system in an effort to locate his wife.

According to Pooley, the officer asked dispatchers to run his wife’s license plate on April 19, saying it was for a welfare check.

The department investigated, the officer resigned, and Pooley said he would have been fired had he remained with the department.

Aug. 10: Tempe shuts off data sharing

The same day Apache Junction’s case became public, Tempe stopped outside data sharing through its Flock ALPR system, a move the city publicly announced the following day.

Tempe said the decision came in response to community privacy concerns and recent misuse of the system by two local law enforcement agencies.

“Every month, Tempe Police audits the searches made using the Flock Safety system. To access the system’s data, officers are required to input report numbers. Each entry to the system is reviewed to confirm that all data access was strictly necessary for law enforcement. The most recent audit was conducted on Friday, Aug. 7. No misuse was found in that audit – or in any previous audits.”

Tempe says it has not found misuse within its own department.

The city also plans to seek bids for an ALPR vendor and says the future contract will include penalties for misuse of data by whichever vendor is selected.

Aug. 11: Goodyear’s audit flags an officer

Then came Goodyear.

On Aug. 11, Goodyear announced that investigators had begun an audit of Flock system activity on July 21 as part of the department’s normal Internal Affairs audit process. The next day, investigators identified activity involving an officer that raised concerns about a potential violation of department policy.

The officer was immediately placed on administrative leave and access to department computer systems was restricted. During the review, Goodyear says investigators identified information that raised the possibility of a criminal violation. The department then asked Glendale Police to conduct an independent criminal investigation.

Goodyear Police Chief Brian Issitt said the case showed the department’s auditing process working as intended:

“Our auditing process did exactly what it is intended to do. It identified activity that warranted further review, and we acted immediately.”

But significant questions remain.

Goodyear has not identified which provision of its ALPR policy investigators believe may be at issue. The department’s written policy, however, says ALPR equipment and data may be used only for “official and legitimate law enforcement business” and limits authorized employees’ access to “legitimate law enforcement purposes.”

Goodyear has not publicly identified the officer or disclosed the specific activity under investigation or what investigators found that raised the possibility of criminal conduct. The criminal investigation remains ongoing.

Aug. 12: Surprise suspends ALPR program

Late Wednesday afternoon, Surprise became the latest Arizona city to take action involving its automated license plate reader system.

The city announced it had suspended use of its ALPR cameras after a routine audit identified an anomaly in the use of the system. A Surprise police officer has been placed on administrative leave while the city investigates a potential violation of its ALPR policy.

Surprise Police Chief Evan Becher said the department took immediate action while it investigates:

“While we still need to complete an investigation into this irregularity, we are taking this incident very seriously. That is why we took immediate action to halt the program, investigate the issue and make the community aware of it.”

The city said its most recent audit identified what it described as “an incident of irregular use.” Surprise is now evaluating additional safeguards before it resumes use of its 28 ALPR cameras.

Flock’s Langley responds on auditing and trust

After Langley told me, “Yes, we will see more,” I followed up.

I wanted to know why a system capable of detecting abnormal behavior wasn’t implemented years ago.

Langley responded again:

“To be clear, the Audit log has always existed. 4 months ago we introducing a new tool that is designed to detect abnormal behavior in the audit log. We will keep building tools to help police drive trust.”

So, according to Flock’s CEO, the audit logs were already there. What’s new is a tool designed to detect abnormal behavior within those logs.

Once again, Langley brought it back to trust.

In January, I reported on a video featuring Langley responding to criticism of public safety technology. He pushed back on privacy concerns surrounding Flock and again framed the issue around trust:

Langley said:

“I don’t think there’s any privacy erosion in Flock. I think Flock puts a spotlight on trust issues.”

Now, seven months later, responding directly to my questions amid a string of controversies involving Flock in Arizona, Langley is talking about trust again:

“Abuse of power destroys trust.”

Flock has also emphasized transparency and clear information as critical to building public trust. The company says its cameras are designed to capture vehicles and license plates in public spaces, not identify people or capture faces.

While all this was going on, Arizona lawmakers were wrestling with another question: How much should the public and the media be allowed to see?

Two bills introduced during the 2026 session, SB 1111 and SB 1138, would have largely shielded ALPR data from public records requests. Neither advanced.

Apache Junction Police Chief Michael Pooley was among those who testified in support of SB 1111. During a Feb. 10 Senate hearing, Pooley, speaking as president of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, acknowledged both the value of shared technology and the potential for misuse:

“We understand the fear and the potential of misuse, which is why we do support guardrails that are coming in place.”

Pooley said police chiefs have a responsibility to show they are using the technology “legitimately” and “appropriately,” adding that more guardrails would be needed as technology evolves.

Later, Sen. Jake Hoffman offered a striker to HB 2917 aimed at government mass surveillance networks. I participated in the initial stakeholder meeting and advocated for preserving public records access.

But the debate over safeguards went beyond what the public could access. It also included what should be recorded when law enforcement accessed the systems.

SB 1111 would have required agencies to maintain query logs and conduct annual audits for unauthorized or suspicious activity. The HB 2917 striker went further, requiring access to government mass surveillance network data to be logged, including who accessed it, the plate searched, when it was accessed and why.

Those proposed safeguards never became law.

But months later, auditing is at the center of what is happening in Arizona.

Chandler says a routine audit caught an anomaly that could not be explained through standard police action. Goodyear says an audit flagged potential misuse involving an officer. And Langley told me Flock’s audit logs have always existed, while its tool designed to detect abnormal behavior within those logs is new.

And that makes a conversation from months earlier worth another look.

During a January 2026 Prescott City Council study session, representatives from Flock and the Prescott Police Department answered questions about the city’s ALPR system.

One of those conversations was about auditing.

But I wasn’t the one who remembered it.

Eric Fowler, chair of the Maricopa County Libertarian Party, did.

Fowler has spent months digging into Flock’s expansion across Arizona and working with others on the privacy and policy issues surrounding ALPRs. He also participated in stakeholder meetings this spring as lawmakers worked on the striker for HB 2917.

Fowler has been sharply critical of the technology and what he sees as its constitutional implications:

“The Audit Assistant Tool is just exposing violations of 4th Amendment liberties that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Never did the public consent to being constantly investigated via a ‘general warrant’ based system; so we can only expect more abuse scandals until the cameras are fully removed.”

Learn more about Eric Fowler and his work on Flock and ALPR policy in Arizona in this Business Reform interview: Watch the interview

In January, Flock representative Trevor Chandler told Prescott councilmembers that accountability was built into the system:

“Flock is the most transparent law enforcement safety tool in the country. There is no other tool that has a permanent audit log, that has transparency portals, that has the ability, ah, to make sure that every single click within our system is auditable.”

But an audit trail has its limits.

As I reported from a March 19 meeting in Kyle, Texas, Police Chief Jeff Barnett pointed to one of them. While discussing restrictions on ALPR searches, Barnett acknowledged that the system relies, at least in part, on the reason entered by the person conducting the search:

“We want to hope that officers are being truthful in putting in the reason.”

Watch the March 19 Kyle City Council discussion

In other words, an audit log can document the reason entered for a search. Whether that reason accurately reflects why the search was conducted may be a different question.

Flock has added other controls. During the Prescott meeting, Trevor Chandler said officers are required to select a NIBRS crime code when using the system.

Then he discussed something Flock was preparing to roll out: proactive auditing.

“We actually have proactive auditing coming out for your officers.”

Chandler explained that the system would flag unusual activity for an administrator to review, rather than requiring agencies to rely solely on periodic audits.

“These are all things we built in at the very beginning and they’re things we’re continuing to innovate on to make sure there is the highest level of accountability and transparency in your system.”

The timing is worth noting.

That conversation happened in January. It appears Flock’s Audit Assistance Program became available around April, roughly four months before my exchange with Langley.

The timeline lines up with what Chandler told Prescott councilmembers in January: proactive auditing was “coming out.”

Flock’s current materials describe its Audit Assistance Tool as technology that can “surface atypical activity early” so agencies can review it.

But the older audit logs matter, too. Langley says those have always existed. And in January, Chandler told Prescott councilmembers:

“Flock is the most transparent law enforcement safety tool in the country. There is no other tool that has a permanent audit log. That has transparency portals. That has the ability, ah, to make sure that every single click within our system is auditable.”

Seven months later, auditing is taking on new significance. And Goodyear specifically pointed to Flock’s newer automated capabilities in announcing its own investigation.

“Flock introduced enhanced automated auditing capabilities that provide law enforcement agencies with greater visibility into individual user activity and make it easier to identify unusual activity or potential anomalies. These enhanced capabilities provide an additional layer of oversight to the auditing process already established by the Goodyear Police Department.”

Goodyear Police Department | August 11, 2026

Goodyear says an auditing process was already in place. Flock’s newer technology added another layer designed to make unusual activity easier to identify.

Six jurisdictions. Eight days.

Pinal County. Chandler. Apache Junction. Tempe. Goodyear. Surprise.

Six Arizona jurisdictions taking action involving Flock or ALPR systems in eight days, for different reasons and under very different circumstances.

But there is one question running through all of them:

Who gets access to this data, what are they doing with it and who is actually checking?

Flock’s answer, at least in part, is auditing.

And the questions surrounding misuse extend well beyond Arizona. WIRED reported last week that at least four police departments previously highlighted by Flock on its YouTube channel have since faced allegations involving misuse of the company’s technology.

One of those departments is Savannah, Georgia.

On August 3rd, the Savannah Police Department announced that a proactive internal audit had identified potential misuse involving four officers and two civilian staff members. The department said the alleged conduct included non-law-enforcement searches involving personal acquaintances and family members. In another instance, an officer was accused of providing access to Savannah’s Flock system to personnel from an outside law enforcement agency.

Four days later, Savannah Police announced that all six employees had been terminated following its internal investigation.

“The Savannah Police Department has terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department’s Flock Safety License Plate Reader (LPR) system. All six cases remain under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

The details are different, but the underlying concern is familiar: people entrusted with access to a powerful law enforcement database are accused of using that access for purposes unrelated to legitimate police work.

Flock sees these cases differently. In response to WIRED, company spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the investigations are “exactly why accountability tools and internal review processes exist,” arguing that when improper use is detected, agencies can investigate, take action and hold individuals accountable.

And in Chandler, Goodyear and now Surprise, audits have surfaced activity that prompted investigations.

Goodyear Police Chief Brian Issitt framed the issue in terms that sound remarkably similar to Langley’s:

“The public trusts us with powerful law enforcement tools, and that trust requires both strong policies and meaningful oversight.”

And that brings me back to what Langley told me about the audit logs themselves: they have always existed.

And to his other response:

“Yes, we will see more.”

Maybe we will.

Recent cases show that audits can uncover activity serious enough to warrant further investigation. And Flock says the audit logs themselves have always existed.

The question now is what those years of audit logs might show if agencies take a closer look.