Multiple Los Angeles residents expressed concerns about the monitoring of citizens under a surveillance company called Flock Safety at a Los Angeles Police Department Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday.
The section for public comment ran long amid fueled citizen complaints about the LAPD’s use of the AI surveillance system.
The majority of citizens who appeared for public comment represented the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition, a subset of the Los Angeles Community Action Network. They came to “demand that Los Angeles cancel all partnerships with Flock Safety immediately,” according to speakers from the Coalition who made public comments.
Flock Safety is a police surveillance systems company that leads the nation in automated license plate-reading systems. They read using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The company then shares camera footage with law enforcement as evidence for crime investigations.
The system drew concerns about women’s safety and immigration enforcement due to a lack of transparency over data sharing.
The majority of citizens who appeared for public comment represented the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition, a subset of the L.A. Community Action Network.
“Women [who] are fleeing domestic violence often rely on anonymity in mobility to survive,” said a speaker with the coalition, who was identified on the Police Commission’s transcript as Litizia. “Now imagine expanding a system that tracks movement patterns across the city.”
The coalition specializes in promoting health, safety and socioeconomic justice for women living in downtown L.A., specifically in Skid Row. They voiced concerns that many vulnerable women are already at risk of being tracked with the data shared by Flock Safety.
“These tools make it easier to trace women who are trying to escape harm. They make it easier for abusers or the state to locate vulnerable women,” Litizia said.
Another speaker, identified as Novelette on the transcript, also spoke on behalf of the coalition and the female population on Skid Row, a neighborhood that contains one of the largest stable unhoused populations in the United States.
“It is a community of women surviving policy failure. Failed housing policy, failed health care system, failed economic protection,” Novelette said. “Stop experimenting on us. Stop treating poverty like a criminal condition to be monitored. We are not data points.”
Others were concerned that the data collected from Flock Safety was being used to assist federal immigration enforcement, noting Skid Row’s high Black and Latine population. One member of the coalition, identified in the transcript as Marisela, criticized Flock for working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Skid Row is home to women surviving violence and displacement,” Marisela said. “You are expanding a surveillance system that can be used to track vulnerable women in our community.”
Over two dozen other privacy and advocacy groups are calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to remove license plate readers in Southern California, according to The Associated Press.
The United States Border Patrol used nationwide license plate surveillance systems to track vehicles with unusual travel patterns, an AP investigation revealed. Border Patrol has sourced information from license plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, law enforcement and private companies.
Flock Chief Executive Garret Langley said the company had previously worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations, but has since stopped collaborating, according to The Los Angeles Times.
An audit by Ventura County found 364,000 cases of out-of-state agencies accessing Flock Safety license plate reader data without approval from February to March 2025, according to CBS News.
“You cannot say you support immigrant communities while investing in tools that help hunt them,” Marisela said.
Flock Safety announced a partnership with Amazon’s Ring in Oct. 2025 to assist crime investigation. The partnership, called the “Search Party,” would have allowed law enforcement to request Ring customer footage through Flock.
The new feature was promoted in a Super Bowl advertisement, which immediately drew public scrutiny and concerns of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accessing user data. Last month, Ring announced that the companies had jointly decided to cancel the partnership due to time and resource constraints.
According to The L.A. Times, Flock currently has contracts with 5,000 U.S. policing agencies, including the LAPD.
“That is not public safety,” Marisela said. “That is state enforcement infrastructure.”
“No to LAPD surveillance expansion. We don’t want Flock in here. So we demand that Los Angeles end its contract with Flock immediately,” said another speaker for the coalition, identified by the meeting transcript as Veronica.