Flock Safety is cutting its default ALPR retention period to 7 days and rolling out Evidence Mode in the coming weeks, a change that gives customers who follow the new recommendation the feature at no cost. The company is also tightening how searches are reviewed, how sharing is controlled, and when access can be suspended.
The update is showing up now because law enforcement customers will be required to adopt Audit Assistance and case codes by the end of this year. Flock Safety said the changes are meant to strengthen privacy, accountability, security and transparency across its platform, while keeping existing customers on their current, democratically approved retention periods.
Flock Safety said more than one-third of its customers have already chosen Audit Assistance, a tool introduced 16 weeks ago that detects abnormal activity and flags it for administrator review. Under the new rules, every law enforcement customer must use it by year-end, and the company will add proactive lockout when activity meets defined criteria for abnormal behavior, automatically suspending access until an administrator checks it.
The company is also adding Offense filtering for sharing, letting a city decide which offenses another agency may use to search its cameras. That means one city can permit searches for a stolen vehicle, a missing person or a violent crime while blocking searches tied to immigration enforcement. Flock Safety has said customers own the data, decide who can access it and choose who they share it with, but it also said some of its contractual language has confused the public on that point.
Case codes were introduced as an optional requirement in July 2025 and will become mandatory for all law enforcement searches by the end of the year, though agencies may bypass them in emergencies. Every exigent search will still be flagged for administrator review. Flock Safety said it will publish an easy-to-read, plain English explanation of its contract next week, and it says more than 90% of searches without a full plate are completed within a week.
The broader arc is clear: what began 9 years ago as a 30-day default retention period is being pushed toward shorter storage, tighter review and more visible controls. Flock Safety says abuse of its technology is unacceptable, and it has moved from basic audit logs to proactive monitoring, with recent reviews tied to Audit Assistance linked to arrests of several law enforcement officers accused of misusing the system.
