™License Plate Camera Maker Flock Is Shrinking Its Staff Amid a Privacy Backlash
About 270 employees, roughly 18% of staff, are leaving through a voluntary buyout at month's end; Flock says it isn't a layoff.
Flock, the company behind the license plate cameras the LAPD switched off this summer, is losing about 270 employees to a buyout, Reuters reported.
That's roughly 18% of Flock's workforce, drawn from across the whole company, and the people taking the deal are scheduled to leave at the end of October, TechCrunch reported, citing Reuters. As the company shrinks, it's facing a growing backlash from communities and lawmakers over how its cameras track people.
Flock describes it differently. "This was a voluntary program, not a layoff," spokesperson Paris Lewbel told TechCrunch on Friday. Lewbel said the buyout was meant to set the company up for its "next phase of growth."
Wired reported last month that Flock had been asking some employees to go and had told them it needed a smaller staff to head off mandatory layoffs. TechCrunch asked whether chief executive Garrett Langley or anyone else in the C-suite took less pay under the buyout, and the spokesperson wouldn't say more.
Flock is still very big. According to TechCrunch, it has installed more than 100,000 license plate-reading cameras around the U.S., and police and federal agents use them to follow where passing cars go.
That reach is what the fight is about. TechCrunch reported that dozens of officers have lost their jobs, been pushed out or been arrested after using Flock's system to track and stalk people without a warrant or their consent.
Security experts have also questioned the system's accuracy, TechCrunch reported. Misread plates have led to improper police stops and arrests; one of the people caught up was a journalist at the wheel of an authorized review car.
The fight has also played out on the street. Some cities moved to take the cameras down after public outcry, and Flock quickly put new ones up, TechCrunch reported. Some people then started destroying them.
Other departments simply stopped paying. By mid-August, the LAPD's 138 Flock cameras were turned off while the city rewrote the contract. TechCrunch now lists the Los Angeles Police Department among several law enforcement agencies that let their Flock contracts run out over privacy and civil liberties concerns.
Source: TechCrunch, retrieved October 9, 2026.
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