New York Times Flock Report Is Good News for Flock, But Overlooks Seven Major Problems (Public Report)Javascript is disabled. Enable javascript to view IPVM.<br>Contact us at info@ipvm.com for help.

New York Times Flock Report Is Good News for Flock, But Overlooks Seven Major Problems<br>IT

IPVM Team<br>•Published Aug 10, 2026 19:34 PM

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The New York Times published a major Flock Safety investigation on August 10 by Kashmir Hill and Fernando Alfonso III. It is serious journalism, arriving in a national media wave that includes far more critical coverage from a wide range of major national publications and broadcasters.

What makes the NYT piece distinctively good news for Flock is not what it says but how it frames the story: Flock is controversial, yes, but essentially inevitable. That frame is built on Flock's own scale numbers, a police union claim that goes entirely unchallenged, and courts repeatedly cited as having ruled against challengers. The piece closes with a critic's own words as a concession to Flock's permanence: "It's kind of a hydra situation. You chop down one, and 20 more take its place."

IPVM has covered Flock extensively from inside the surveillance industry. Here are seven significant things the piece missed:

Police abuse is an escalating systemic crisis that proves the thing Flock most fears, that it tracks people, yet the NYT gives it limited emphasis

Camera destruction is a coast-to-coast operational movement the NYT mentions only briefly, that is casuing significant financial pain and problems for police

Cancellations are accelerating sharply, new signings are slowing, and Flock is contesting contracts city by city at rising cost, yet the NYT presents zero cancellation data and lets an unverified police union claim stand unchallenged

A major legal and regulatory wave, including class actions, state law violations, and mounting legislative pressure, is largely absent from the piece

Increased scrutiny of installation and permitting failures is adding a new category of operational drag that Flock previously brushed aside

Flock's internal condition is severely strained, with the CEO receiving death threats and his CCO publicly implying he lied on video

The hydra framing may be right about LPR generically, but Axon is actively taking Flock's market share; the new hydra heads are not Flock

Police Abuse Proves Flock Tracks People

Police abuse of Flock is escalating into a systemic crisis, and the NYT's limited emphasis on it overlooks two things that matter most. First, the public is deeply sensitive to police misconduct, and the scale here is far beyond what the NYT conveys. The Washington Post published a 33-minute investigation just eight days before the NYT piece documenting 50+ officers charged or accused across 12+ states. Savannah PD fired six employees in a single incident over the weekend. New cases are emerging near-daily as departments examine their logs for the first time; the cases were always there, they just were not being looked for. IPVM projects documented abuse cases will easily reach the hundreds by year's end.

Second, and more damaging to Flock, each abuse case proves the thing Flock most desperately denies: that it tracks people, not just cars. Flock's own CLO slipped on video and admitted as much. Officers have used Flock to search by tattoos, clothing, and physical descriptors, not license plates. Every new abuse case is also a new demonstration of what the system actually does.

Camera Destruction Is a National Movement

The NYT mentions camera destruction only briefly, naming three cities. The reality is a sustained national movement. Cameras are being cut down, shot, paint-bombed, and thrown into canals in broad daylight, with people filming it and posting the videos publicly — and being cheered on for it. An anonymous activist known as "NoMark" claims to have destroyed 30 cameras across multiple states without being caught; a 437,000-member r/FlockSurveillance subreddit treats each new destruction video as a victory and funds legal defense for those arrested. When a West Virginia man was arrested for destroying cameras, dozens of Facebook commenters volunteered to provide him alibis. A UFC champion posted "America salutes you" to camera destroyers, reaching 1 million views. Nobody outside Flock knows the full scope — the documented cases are almost certainly an undercount — and Flock quietly began paying to replace vandalized cameras without any public announcement.

Cancellations Accelerating, City-by-City Grind

The NYT names four cities that have suspended or canceled contracts and lets a police union spokeswoman's claim, "new cities are signing contracts faster than others are canceling them," stand without challenge or verification. Cancellations have accelerated sharply through 2026, with July the highest single-month total ever recorded. Meanwhile, new signings are...