Cities Drop Flock, Expand Surveillance With Axon
Cities across the United States are backing away from Flock Safety after months of controversy over its vast license plate surveillance network.
But many are not abandoning the surveillance itself.
Instead, local governments are replacing Flock cameras with systems from Axon, a dominant police technology supplier known for Tasers, body cameras, and digital-evidence software. The shift is turning a revolt against one surveillance company into a major business opportunity for another, while leaving the underlying privacy and civil liberties concerns unresolved.
Flock Backlash Creates an Opening
404 Media documented the pattern in August:
A handful of cities across the U.S. have ditched Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and immediately replaced them with equivalent systems from law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to local media reports and government documents from around the country.
The switch is “not yet widespread[,] but appears to be increasing as people oppose Flock,” added the report.
For example, Syracuse approved an Axon license plate reader contract in February after using Flock cameras since 2024. Denver followed in March. Its City Council narrowly approved a one-year, $150,000 deal for 50 Axon cameras after its Flock contract expired.
Grand Chute, Wisconsin, voted in June to move from Flock to Axon. Longmont, Colorado, approved Axon after letting its Flock agreement lapse. Knoxville, Tennessee, added replacement readers through a broader $9.4 million Axon contract.
Douglas County, Colorado, made a much larger move in July. The sheriff’s office dropped Flock for a nearly $22.8-million Axon package that included 100 plate readers and first responder drones. The county had operated 50 Flock cameras.
Newsweek reported Tuesday that the trend is continuing. Durango, Colorado, announced September 1 that it would move its ALPR program from Flock to Axon. Antioch, California, has approved 55 fixed Axon locations, plus mobile and vehicle mounted systems. Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has also added Axon cameras while reducing its use of Flock.
What Axon Offers
The company already sits deep inside American law enforcement. Departments use its Tasers, body cameras, in-car video systems, Evidence.com software, and Fusus real-time operations platform. Its license-plate readers can plug directly into that ecosystem.
Fleet 3 turns patrol vehicles into mobile ALPR platforms. Its exterior system includes a 4K license plate camera capable of covering three traffic lanes. It also supports alerts, live maps, and livestreaming.
Axon Lightpost takes a less conspicuous approach. It mounts onto existing streetlights and combines license-plate recognition, vehicle identification, and livestreaming. Axon markets it as a way to “turn streetlights into real-time vehicle detection tools.” The company says the system is
designed to capture multiple lanes at high distances, day and night, at highway speeds.
Axon Outpost provides a more flexible fixed camera. It combines ALPR, livestreaming, and vehicle attribute recognition in what Axon calls “three layers of intelligence in one device.” The camera can operate on solar or conventional power. Much like the Lightpost, it can capture multiple lanes in challenging lighting and traffic conditions.
Its deployment options are unusually broad:
Axon Outpost can easily be deployed wherever it’s needed, including on existing poles, new poles, buildings, vehicles, trailers, or trees.
Together, the products give police overlapping forms of vehicle surveillance: moving cameras on patrol cars, discreet readers built into street infrastructure, and fixed cameras that can be placed almost anywhere.
Unresolved Issues
For cities fleeing Flock, Axon’s biggest selling point may be what it does not yet have — a Flock-style nationwide lookup network. Denver officials specifically cited that distinction when approving the switch, per 404 Media.
But Axon does permit ALPR sharing between agencies.
Fusus lets an agency give a specific partner access to its ALPR data. The originating agency must initiate the relationship, the recipient must accept it, and either side can revoke access.
That gives local governments more control than Flock’s national network. But it does not eliminate interagency sharing.
Nor does switching vendors change the basic function of ALPR surveillance. The cameras still record passing vehicles, including those driven by people suspected of no crime.
The system also extends far beyond license plates.
Axon acquired Fusus in 2024 and uses it to combine ALPR detections with body cameras, fixed surveillance cameras, sensors, officer locations, and live video. The company says Fusus integrates data from those sources into a single cloud-based platform.
Now drones are entering the same network.
The company offers “Axon Air,” which it calls “the only fully integrated Drone as First Responder (DFR) solution.” It combines autonomous Skydio aircraft with Axon Evidence and Fusus, while Dedrone technology monitors the surrounding airspace.
The drones can stream video directly into Fusus, allowing police to combine aerial surveillance with camera feeds, license-plate detections, and other real-time information.
So cities leaving Flock may gain tighter control over license-plate sharing. But they can also be moving into something much broader — an integrated police surveillance system spanning streets, patrol cars, fixed cameras, body cameras, and the sky.
Axon’s Government Footprint
Axon’s reach extends well beyond local police departments.
The company has also built a presence in Washington, D.C. Federal lobbying records show activity involving law-enforcement technology, body cameras, digital evidence, drones, homeland security, and federal appropriations. An August analysis by the Arkansas Advocate, citing OpenSecrets, put Axon’s federal lobbying expenditures since 2024 at nearly $5.3 million.
Axon also contributed $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee in January 2025. The contribution appears in the committee’s official FEC filing.
Unlike Flock, which has faced controversy over ICE obtaining license-plate information indirectly through local police, Axon also does business directly with the immigration agency.
In July, ICE awarded Axon a $13.1 million order for body-worn cameras for its Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs. It followed earlier ICE purchases of Axon products under a DHS-wide contract awarded in 2023 with a $370-million ceiling. Federal Compass reports roughly $100.8 million obligated under that vehicle to date.
That contract does not establish that ICE or other DHS agencies can access local Axon license-plate data. But it underscores how deeply Axon is already embedded across federal, state, and local law enforcement.
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