Henrico County is ending its contract with Flock Safety, making it the largest Flock camera user in Virginia to cancel the automated license plate reader system.
The county’s 122-camera network is being dismantled amid residents’ rising concerns over privacy and the use and potential misuse of the collected data.
The county announced Tuesday it will terminate its agreement with Flock Safety within the next week. Flock, a private company, has the largest nationwide network of ALPR cameras.
Henrico County Board of Supervisors Chair Roscoe Cooper said residents raised “legitimate concerns” about Flock’s network.
“While we are confident that Henrico Police has used ALPR data appropriately for legitimate law-enforcement purposes only, we cannot ignore the potential for misuse of system data by others,” Cooper said in a statement. “Ending this contract is the right thing to do for our residents and community.”
Henrico becomes the latest Virginia municipality to cancel its contract with Flock. The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO previously reported how local advocates have organized campaigns and testified at public hearings to voice concerns about the surveillance network.
On Sept. 15, Arlington County voted to discontinue its use of Flock. The county board ordered the removal of 41 cameras from public property within 14 days, citing recent resident pushback and the need to maintain public trust.
Fairfax County supervisors also voted to pause new Flock installations pending an Oct. 20 privacy and data security review. The county’s school board took pre-emptive action, even though Fairfax Public Schools do not use the cameras. On Sept. 24, the board unanimously voted to prohibit the installation of ALPR systems on school property. Board member Kyle McDaniel called it a proactive step, saying schools are educational institutions, not law enforcement agencies.
Fairfax Republicans criticized the county pause as more symbolic than substantive, arguing that existing Flock and cruiser-mounted plate readers remain active and that the debate should focus on warrants, audit transparency and access.
Henrico’s Flock network is the sixth largest in Virginia. While Emporia has the most cameras (444) for any single municipality, the most prolific installations of the surveillance cameras in the state are found in Hampton Roads. Suffolk has 267 cameras, followed by Portsmouth (255), Norfolk (175), and Newport News (153), according to the transparency portals set up by Flock Safety for each of its clients. The powerful, AI-assisted network captures detailed images of vehicles and coordinates of where they are spotted, as well as other physical details like license plates, vehicle colors, roof racks and stickers. The system shares these details with other local, state and even federal law enforcement agencies. Nationwide sharing is prohibited by Virginia ALPR law.
Henrico officials had publicly defended the use of Flock. On its ALPR information page, the county says its 122 cameras cover only about 1.73 miles or 0.05% of Henrico roadways. It touted the system helped solve crimes, including the capture of a homicide suspect from Richmond in April just eight hours after the police were alerted to his location.
But citizen concerns over data privacy and the stunning amount of information gathered and shared by the 24/7 surveillance network have shifted the public debate. County officials will review other options for maintaining public safety operations, Henrico’s announcement said.
Virginia lawmakers this year added new privacy protections to the state’s APLR law. The law, enacted in 2025, limits ALPR use to criminal investigations, missing or endangered person investigations and certain alerts. Willful misuse is a Class 1 misdemeanor, and improperly obtained evidence is inadmissible for the Commonwealth, according to Virginia Code § 2.2-5517.
Across the Commonwealth, the question is shifting from whether Flock can help police solve cases to whether any local policy can adequately control a privately operated surveillance network that tracks vehicles at scale.
Last month, the U.S. Senate kicked off a bipartisan probe into Flock Safety’s data collection, retention, and sharing from its more than 120,000 cameras across the nation.
Reach Kunle Falayi at kunle.falayi@vcij.org
