Flock Safety quietly hosted a private online training session that walked Bay Area officers through how to sell its license-plate readers and related surveillance tech to city councils, a move privacy advocates say looks a lot like vendor lobbying dressed up as training. The timing is sensitive: several Bay Area governments are already rethinking or scaling back their Flock contracts over worries about data being shared with outside and federal agencies.
According to reporting by The Oaklandside, the April webinar was advertised to officers as a lesson in “how to speak to city councils” and drew widespread interest from law enforcement around the region. The outlet reported that roughly 1,000 users registered, and that both Flock employees and local police were invited to a 60-minute session focused on messaging and budgeting. A Flock spokesperson told the publication the company screened RSVPs and pitched the event as community-engagement training.
What the training promised
Flock’s own event listing says the webinar covers how to “make a case for ALPR to your city council” and offers fundraising and media strategies to promote camera programs. The company describes the material as tools to help officers with community outreach and testimony, rather than direct lobbying, according to information on Flock Safety’s website.
How big this network already is
Flock has been aggressively expanding its footprint, with corporate material and recent press releases describing its system as deployed in thousands of communities across the country. A company release and related industry coverage say Flock’s network now spans more than 5,000 communities, a scale critics argue raises the stakes when a vendor is helping public officials hone their sales pitches. One such release was carried out in 2025 by GlobeNewswire.
Bay Area councils are already pushing back
On the ground, Bay Area officials and residents have already started tapping the brakes, resisting expansions and calling for audits and tighter rules. KQED reported that Berkeley this spring rejected a proposed multi-million dollar expansion after city staff flagged risks tied to data sharing and legal compliance. In Richmond, officials shut down their ALPR network last year over a “national lookup” feature that could allow outside searches, and they are now weighing whether to turn the cameras back on, according to Richmondside and recent city records.
Lobbying lines and local messengers
Civil-liberties advocates argue that training officers to deliver what look like vendor talking points to elected officials blurs the already fuzzy line between policing and procurement. Public records and lobbying registries show that Flock also relies on outside firms; directories list lobbyists linked to Politicom Law and other consultants, including a local contact identified in LobbyLinx’s profile for Flock.
Meanwhile, Richmond’s public-comment file includes warnings from privacy group Secure Justice that vendor-driven campaigns can expose cities to legal and civil-rights trouble. Those letters are included in the city’s official meeting packets. Richmond City documents show one such submission signed by Secure Justice’s executive director.
Legal risk in plain sight
California law limits how automated license plate reader data can be shared with federal and out-of-state agencies, and state officials have already gone to court over problematic data flows. KQED notes that the state attorney general has brought cases where local ALPR data ended up accessible to federal agencies, a key concern driving recent audits and reversals of surveillance contracts…