Flock Contract Cancellation Woes: City Termination Requests Ignored

Recently, multiple cities have announced the cancellation of their contracts with Flock Safety, but the process has been far from smooth. According to RSS sources, some cities found the path to termination unusually difficult after making the decision—supplier response was slow or entirely absent, causing services that should have ended to continue operating.

Termination Requests Fall on Deaf Ears

The city of Plymouth, Minnesota, provides a typical example. The city council voted in September to terminate its contract with Flock, but subsequent termination requests went unanswered by the supplier. For over a month, cameras remained standing throughout the city, and the actual execution of the contract termination was put on hold. This detail reveals a broader problem: when public agencies decide to exit surveillance technology contracts, the supplier's willingness to cooperate can become an invisible obstacle.

The report notes that while the number of cities canceling contracts is increasing, just as many are discovering how difficult termination can be in some cases. This "easy to enter, hard to exit" situation is testing the enforceability of municipal procurement contracts and the supplier's commitment to contractual obligations.

The Disconnect Between Technology Deployment and Contractual Obligations

Flock Safety is known for its license plate recognition cameras, typically deployed on city roads and community entrances. The failure to promptly remove cameras after contract termination means data collection activities may still be ongoing, even though municipal authorities have expressed a clear intent to terminate. For residents concerned about privacy and surveillance scope, this delay is not just a matter of administrative efficiency but involves substantive risks in data governance.

From a contract management perspective, a supplier's failure to respond to termination requests may stem from internal process delays, legal clause disputes, or an implicit expectation of renewal. Regardless of the reason, cities clearly expect a cleaner exit mechanism.

License Plate Recognition (LPR) cameras use optical character recognition technology to automatically read vehicle license plates and upload data such as plate numbers, timestamps, and geographic locations to the supplier's cloud system. Flock Safety's business model typically includes equipment leasing and data platform subscriptions, with cities paying for both hardware deployment and software services. This means that even if municipal authorities decide to terminate the contract, as long as the equipment is not removed and the cloud account is not closed, data collection and storage may continue under the original process. LPR data constitutes information that can identify individuals' movements and is subject to privacy regulations in many states, so data deletion and equipment power-off after contract termination require clear technical execution steps, not just a notification.

Implications for Municipal Procurement

Plymouth's experience is not an isolated case. As more cities reassess surveillance technology contracts, the clarity of termination clauses and the responsiveness of suppliers will become key considerations in procurement decisions. When signing contracts, municipal authorities may need to more explicitly stipulate post-termination equipment removal deadlines, data deletion obligations, and remedies for breach. Otherwise, the gap between "voting to terminate" and "actual termination" could put both public resources and public trust under strain.

Currently, Flock has not made a public response to the requests from the specific cities mentioned. As more cities join the wave of contract cancellations, how the supplier handles the termination surge will directly affect its credibility and market prospects in the public sector.

Termination clauses in municipal procurement contracts typically specify notice periods, remedies for breach, and transition arrangements, but many technology procurement contracts are vague about operational obligations after termination, such as physical removal, data migration and deletion, and cloud account cancellation. Government procurement departments often focus on price and service scope when signing contracts, lacking binding constraints on the technical details of exit mechanisms. Additionally, suppliers may view equipment removal and data deletion as extra costs, lacking economic incentives to cooperate proactively. In practice, cities can require contracts to include explicit removal deadlines, data deletion certificates (such as deletion audit logs), and penalty clauses for non-performance, thereby transforming "voting to terminate" into an enforceable contractual right.