Why Does Lansing Need Flock?

LANSING, Mich. — Lansing Police operate about 20 Flock Safety cameras mounted on poles across the city. Each camera photographs every passing vehicle, reads the license plate, and uploads the plate, the time, and the location to a searchable database. On Thursday afternoon, a Lansing City Council committee will review the program in public for the first time. The posted committee materials contain no contract, no written policy, and no audit record. Whatever the department says verbally at the meeting will be the entire public file on the program's safeguards.

Thursday, April 23, 2026 · 4:00 PM
Lansing City Hall, 10th Floor Council Conference Room
124 W. Michigan Avenue
Virtual attendance: lansingmi.gov/1212/Council-Committee-Meetings
Public comment is open to any resident. Signup at the front of the room when you arrive; each speaker has up to three minutes. Public comment is taken before the Flock discussion, so you do not need to wait for item 5.C.

The committee is the Committee on City Operations, chaired by Trini Pehlivanoglu, with Clara Martinez as vice chair and Ryan Kost as member. The Flock item is on the published agenda as item 5.C: "DISCUSSION, Update from LPD on Flock Grant system and safeguards in place."

What Lansing is running

The camera count is about 20 across the city, per City Pulse reporting that cited deflock.me, a crowdsourced map of Flock camera locations. The number has never been confirmed in a publicly-posted city document.

Statewide, more than 180 Michigan law enforcement agencies, about a third of all agencies in the state, use Flock Safety, according to Govtech. Michigan's state government negotiated a master contract with Flock in June 2025 that lets any Michigan city or county buy at pre-negotiated prices without running a local bidding process. Whether Lansing bought in through this master contract or through a different procurement is not documented in any publicly-posted Lansing record. For anyone filing a records request on this, the state master contract number is MA250000000832.

The only public description of how Lansing runs Flock came from an LPD spokesperson, Gulkis, in a February 3, 2026 City Pulse piece by Leo V. Kaplan. The article does not give a first name or title. The Lansing Police Department's current Public Information Director is Jordan Gulkis; the current Chief of Police is Robert Backus, appointed by Mayor Andy Schor on July 10, 2024 after prior Chief Ellery Sosebee retired. The article quotes "Gulkis":

Access to the cameras is tightly controlled, even within Lansing's police department, and activity is audited to ensure its use aligns with departmental policy and that data is only saved longer than 30 days when it is part of a criminal investigation.

That statement has not been written into any policy document posted to the city website. Chief Backus has not spoken publicly about the program.

The Committee on City Operations routinely handles business through verbal staff briefings. The committee's own April 9, 2026 minutes, included in the Thursday packet, show claim appeals, noise permits, and traffic control orders handled the same way. That format works for one-off cases where the record is the oral presentation plus attached exhibits. A surveillance program is different. A program needs written rules: how long the data is kept, who inside the department can run searches, which outside agencies can see the data, and how every search is logged. Those rules have to be on paper. A verbal description at one meeting cannot substitute for them.

The accountability chain

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas of Surveillance dates the Lansing Police Department's Flock deployment to September 2025. The dating comes not from a Lansing city record but from a public records release by the Pittsboro Police Department in North Carolina, which disclosed a "shared devices" list naming Lansing PD as a partner. That is how Lansing residents could first learn their license plate reader data was flowing into a network shared with other police departments: through an out-of-state public records request, not through a city document.

Three things follow from a September 2025 deployment date:

• The state master contract went into effect June 3, 2025. Lansing's cameras came online after the master was available, a timing consistent with purchasing through it.
• The deployment happened during the tenure of Mayor Andy Schor and Chief Robert Backus, selected by the Mayor on July 10, 2024.
• The cameras have operated for about seven months before Thursday's committee review. Any body that was going to review the program had that window and did not.

Lansing does have a charter-authorized Board of Police Commissioners. Its current chair is DeYeya Jones (At-Large); the vice chair is Samuel Brewster (Ward 2); members are Patty Farhat, Andrea Bitely, Florensio Hernandez, Damon Milton, Randy Watkins, and Irene Iris Cotton. The board's authority is advisory, not approving. The most recent BOPC meeting minutes, from April 21, 2026, contain no Flock agenda item and no Flock discussion during Chief Backus's Administrative Report. No publicly-posted city record indicates that the Board of Police Commissioners has, at any point in 2025 or 2026, substantively reviewed the Flock deployment.

Nor has the Lansing City Council. A review of the CivicClerk portal for agenda items referencing "Flock," "automated license plate reader," "ALPR," or "license plate recognition" produced no prior committee or full-Council item before the April 23, 2026 discussion. That does not prove a vote has never happened, but it means the public record, as of today, does not locate one. The agenda phrase "Flock Grant system" suggests the 20-camera deployment was grant-funded rather than appropriated, which would explain the absence of a council vote.

The accountability chain, as it stands in the public record:

Role	Name	Record on Flock
Appointing executive	Mayor Andy Schor	No executive directive located; no public statement on record
Operational owner	Chief Robert Backus	No written policy posted; no public statement on record
Advisory oversight body	Board of Police Commissioners (Chair DeYeya Jones)	No Flock item on 4/21/26 agenda; no documented review at any point in 2025 or 2026
Legislative body with budget authority	Lansing City Council	No vote located in any publicly-posted CivicClerk record before 4/23/26
Committee handling 4/23 first review	Pehlivanoglu (Chair); Martinez (VC); Kost	Item 5.C listed as "DISCUSSION," no written materials in packet

None of these individuals or bodies has, to date, produced a public written document attesting to what Lansing's Flock program is or how it is governed.

The "Flock Grant system" named on the agenda

Flock Safety runs a grant-assistance program, in partnership with Lexipol (a law-enforcement training and policy vendor), that helps police agencies identify federal and private grants to cover Flock subscription fees. The program is not a Flock charitable gift to agencies; it is a service that helps agencies find third-party funding to pay Flock. The Flock blog describes the program as working with federal grant streams including the Justice Assistance Grant program.

The agenda's "Flock Grant system" may refer to this grant-assistance service, or it may refer to a specific federal grant. Department of Justice records show a 2023 Justice Assistance Grant, 15PBJA-23-GG-03112-JAGX, labeled "Expansion of Flock Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Safety Camera Program." The recipient of that grant has not been confirmed to be Lansing. Whichever funding vehicle the committee hears about Thursday, the agreement itself, including any conditions the grantor placed on Lansing's deployment, is a document that should accompany any briefing.

The vendor, the lobbying, and the Michigan advocacy fight

Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety, is a privately-held Atlanta company valued at about $7.5 billion after a March 2025 $275 million Series F led by Andreessen Horowitz. It employs an in-house Director of Government Affairs, Kevin Franklin Kane, who joined in May 2023. Flock reported $690,000 in 2025 federal lobbying through OpenSecrets' tracking, a figure that has grown rapidly. No federal political-action committee for Flock is registered as of April 2026.

The advocacy fight over Michigan Flock policy has two visible sides. The Michigan Sheriffs' Association lists Flock Safety in its vendor directory. Its Executive Director, Matthew Saxton, told WWMT that the Sheriffs' Association opposes the pending House Bills 5492 and 5493 as written:

We're all for regulation of it, but we don't want to regulate it so tight where it's not a good tool and where we can't provide help to that family that's missing their loved one. — Matthew Saxton, Executive Director, Michigan Sheriffs' Association

On the other side, ACLU of Michigan policy strategist Gabrielle Dresner has described Flock access as "a workaround for ICE/CBP," pointing to the growth from about sixty Michigan Flock-using agencies in 2022 to more than 180 by 2026.

The two bills are bipartisan for a reason that deserves to be said out loud. Wilson, a Ypsilanti Democrat, is driving the package on privacy and data-retention grounds. Wozniak, a Shelby Township Republican, is driving on the concentration of control over license-plate data inside a single vendor's system. On the record to WWMT:

There's one major operator in this arena, and the rules that they have is that they get to control all the information and disseminate it as they wish. We're not letting that happen. — Rep. Doug Wozniak (R-Shelby Township)

A Republican state representative and the ACLU of Michigan are making the same argument about Flock's concentration of control. That is a real agreement across party lines, not a coincidence.

What the national Flock network has been doing

The Lansing cameras feed into a nationwide Flock network. Search activity across that network has been the subject of primary-source reporting over the past twelve months:

• 404 Media reported on May 27, 2025 that audit logs showed more than 4,000 lookups by local and state police with "immigration," "ICE," or "ICE+ERO" listed in the reason field, all after the inauguration.
• 404 Media reported on August 25, 2025 that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had obtained access to more than 80,000 Flock cameras nationwide through a pilot; Loveland, Colorado Police shared directly with CBP; Flock then paused federal pilots in response.
• Flock's own company blog has since disclosed pilots with the FBI (July 2021 through July 2023), the National Park Service (September 2021 through December 2024), ATF (August 2022 through June 2025), and NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), HSI (Homeland Security Investigations), and CBP (Customs and Border Protection, January through August 2025). The company says it ended federal pilots in August 2025, introduced a customer-side setting in January 2026 that turns federal agency access on or off, and says the setting defaults to off. Whether Lansing's account is at the default, and whether any federal sharing occurred before January 2026, are questions for Thursday or a records request.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation documented in November 2025 Flock queries whose reason field named specific protests, including "no kings," "KINGS DAY PROTEST," and "ATL No Kings Protest," along with retaliatory "middle finger" lookups run by U.S. Border Patrol.

None of that reporting is specific to Lansing. Whether the Lansing cameras have been configured to share into the national network, whether Lansing queries have contained immigration or protest reasons, and whether federal agencies have queried the Lansing feed are unknown without an audit record. Those questions remain on the public record only at the Chief's general word.

Flock says it does not collaborate with ICE as a matter of company policy. 404 Media documented more than 4,000 searches of the Flock system where local officers typed "ICE" or "immigration" in the reason field. Both things can be true. The company can have a policy, and officers in cities outside Lansing can still type whatever they want into the search box when running queries against the national network, and Lansing's camera feed is part of that network unless configured otherwise. An audit log would show whether Lansing officers, or any outside agency querying Lansing's data, have done the same.

What other Michigan cities have done

Lansing is deciding whether to continue its Flock program in a context where peer cities have already reached opposite conclusions. The picture across Michigan is neither consensus rejection nor consensus expansion:

Jurisdiction	Posture	Date / scale
Ferndale PD	Terminated	2025-11-13
Bay City Commission	Rejected proposal	2025-11-18
Ann Arbor	Not using ALPR	Only large MI city without a city deployment
Detroit PD	Operating	More than 500 readers (April 2025 BOPC report)
Grand Rapids PD	Operating	30 readers (up from zero in 2023)
Waterford Township	Expanding	Drone program added Jan 2026
Lansing PD	Operating; under first public review	~20 readers; review 2026-04-23

Ferndale's termination is the most specific peer case. Chief Dennis Emmi's press release cited only "the feedback and concerns shared by the Ferndale community," but C&G News and Oakland County Times named three specific concerns. Ferndale Captain Casey O'Loughlin told C&G News that "the national lookup being turned on when it wasn't supposed to be was a concern with Flock," meaning Ferndale did not realize its cameras were feeding a national search network until the department had already invested in the program. Community comment to City Council raised federal-agency data flow tied to immigration enforcement and to interstate abortion investigations. And Ferndale Inclusion Network members argued to Oakland County Times that camera placement along 8 Mile Road directed surveillance disproportionately toward communities of color.

Beyond Michigan, at least thirty U.S. localities have canceled or deactivated Flock since early 2025, according to NPR reporting by Jude Joffe-Block. Named cancellations include Flagstaff, Santa Cruz, Cambridge, and Eugene.

In Lansing itself, the only public comment on the Flock program to date came at the April 6, 2026 Committee of the Whole meeting. The speaker was introduced by the clerk as "John W." with the audible caveat "sorry, I couldn't read the last name." The speaker self-identified on the record as "John, longtime resident, runs a nonprofit." The statement, per the meeting's auto-captioned transcript:

Data centers like this one are frequently employed to process surveillance data from companies like Flock, who the city has a contract with for around two dozen automatic license plate readers that are placed around the city. Flock is known to collaborate with ICE and it allows law enforcement the ability to track private citizens with little oversight, transparency, or discretion. I urge you all to look at these contracts. Kost, Hussain, looking at you, and I would strongly urge you to consider cancelling these contracts in the name of public privacy and public safety. — "John W.," Lansing Committee of the Whole, April 6, 2026

Council held no discussion in response at the time that statement was made, and the committee item seventeen days later on April 23 is the first on-record institutional response.

What the legislature is considering

Representatives Jimmie Wilson Jr. (D-Ypsilanti) and Doug Wozniak (R-Shelby Township) introduced HB 5492 and HB 5493 on January 29, 2026. As introduced, the bills would require a 14-day default retention period for ALPR data, with longer retention allowed only by warrant or court order, and would require mandatory quarterly public reporting of plates scanned, search reasons, and external-agency sharing. The bills remain in House Judiciary as of April 2026. If the bills pass as introduced, Lansing would have to put its Flock rules in writing and report publicly every three months.

Six questions for Thursday

1. The existence of a written Flock policy

A description given verbally by a spokesperson is not auditable, is not binding, and is not reviewable by anyone outside the department. If a written policy exists, where is it? If it does not, who decides to write one, and when? Chief Backus, as the sworn command authority, is the person whose name belongs on a written Lansing Flock policy.

2. Actual length of data storage

The City Pulse quote attributes a 30-day-unless-criminal-investigation retention rule to "Gulkis" without a title. What is the retention setting on Lansing's Flock software today, in practice, not just in verbal description? And if some records are kept longer than 30 days under the criminal-investigation exception, is that documented anywhere, by officer, by case number, or by approval?

3. Federal-agency access to Lansing Flock data

The 404 Media reporting documents federal access across the national Flock network. A Lansing-specific answer requires Lansing's audit log. Every outside-agency query in the last twelve months, scrubbed of active-investigation content, should be producible.

4. Lansing's opt-in status on Flock's national data-sharing features

Flock offers two features that share a city's camera data with other departments across the country. One is called "Insight," one is called "Vehicle Hotlist." A third, newer setting allows federal agencies in or out. Is Lansing opted into any of them? The committee should ask for a screenshot of the current settings, not a verbal description.

5. Payment, payee, and the contract

The state master contract runs through June 2030. Lansing's share of that cooperative contract, or any separate contract Lansing holds, belongs in the public record. The committee should ask for the contract by name and number.

6. What put the item on the committee agenda

The item did not appear on Council's agenda until April 21, 2026, two weeks after a resident's public comment and six days after the first reports that Ferndale had terminated. Whether the briefing was prompted by the public comment, the peer cancellation, a change in federal data requests, a contract renewal trigger, or something else is itself on the record.

What makes public comment count

Public comment at a Lansing committee meeting is broadcast on the city's video feed, entered into the official minutes, and becomes part of the permanent record. A few things that make it land:

• Ask a specific question. "Is there a written policy?" is stronger than a general statement of concern. Questions that go unanswered on the record are more useful than questions that are never asked.
• Name a specific record. "Can you post the MiDEAL contract number MA250000000832 documentation for Lansing's participation?" is a verifiable request that a committee member can commit to producing or decline on the record.
• Say what you want to happen. "I am asking the committee to request a full written policy and contract copy before any further briefing" gives the committee something concrete to act on.
• Tell a personal story. If automated tracking affects where you live, work, drive, worship, protest, or seek healthcare, say so. The record should reflect who is being watched, not just who is doing the watching.

Anyone can speak. Residents do not need to register in advance. Signup is in the room, or request the virtual comment link via the link above.

What residents can do

FOIA

The Lansing City Clerk accepts Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the Police Department. A complete FOIA would ask for:

• Contracts and amendments between Lansing and Flock Safety, including the original agreement and any changes to it
• Grant documents funding the deployment, including the full award letter and any conditions the grantor placed on Lansing
• Written policy or department order governing how Flock data is used
• Any agreement between LPD and Flock Safety Inc. beyond the contract itself
• Deployment list of every Flock camera currently active in Lansing, with location and install date
• Software configuration settings, including whether the national-lookup, data-sharing, and federal-access features are enabled, and the retention period currently set
• Query logs listing every outside-agency search run against Lansing Flock data in the past twelve months
• Federal-agency access records, including any ICE, CBP, FBI, DEA, or HSI request for Lansing data
• City Attorney or Police Commission review of the program, if either exists

A records request is the only way to turn the verbal description the department has given into a written record the public can read.

Written comment

Written comment to Council can be emailed to city.council@lansingmi.gov or phoned in at (517) 483-4177 in advance of the meeting. Written comment becomes part of the packet if submitted before the meeting; after the meeting it goes to the next packet.

Keep watching

The committee can request follow-up materials, refer the item to full Council, take no action, or send an opinion letter. Any of those outcomes triggers further public process. The agenda and any referrals are published on the CivicClerk portal.

The record is being built

The Lansing program has operated with one verbal statement from a police spokesperson as its only published safeguards documentation. Thursday is the first opportunity to replace that with a written record. Whatever happens at the meeting itself, every question asked on the record stays on the record, and every gap in the public file remains documented for the next meeting and every one after it.

Thursday, April 23, 2026 · 4:00 PM
Lansing City Hall, 10th Floor Council Conference Room
124 W. Michigan Avenue
Virtual: lansingmi.gov/1212/Council-Committee-Meetings
Signup at the front of the room when you arrive, three minutes per speaker, and public comment is taken before the Flock discussion, so you do not need to wait for item 5.C.

Also in this series

• Lansing ALPR Map. Interactive plot of 88 automatic license plate reader cameras and 104 CCTV cameras across the greater-Lansing area, filterable by operator and by Flock manufacturer. Built from OpenStreetMap; each pin links back to the underlying OSM record.
• Who Owns and Funds the Cameras Watching Lansing. The vendor behind the cameras, the private-capital backing, the state master contract Michigan agencies buy under, and what the "Flock Grant system" named on the committee agenda actually describes.
• What the Evidence and the Record Show About Flock's Cameras. The peer-reviewed research on ALPR crime reduction, the one independent accuracy test of Flock hardware, and the 2024 to 2026 record of misuse and federal-agency access in other jurisdictions.

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Sources

Lansing Committee on City Operations agenda and packet, April 23, 2026 (updated April 21, 2026), retrieved from the CivicClerk portal. Lansing Board of Police Commissioners roster and April 21, 2026 minutes, lansingmi.gov/608. Mayor Schor's appointment of Chief Backus, WILX, July 10, 2024. April 6, 2026 Committee of the Whole public comment, auto-captioned transcript. City Pulse, "Local government, advocates bracing amid national ICE surge." Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget contract list, MiDEAL contract MA250000000832. EFF Atlas of Surveillance, Lansing MI. Pittsboro (NC) Police Department Flock Safety shared-devices list, September 2025. Govtech (syndicated from The Detroit News), "Michigan Sees Boom in License Plate Reader Usage," by Max Bryan, April 9, 2026. 404 Media, "ICE Taps Into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows." 404 Media, "CBP Had Access to More Than 80,000 Flock AI Cameras Nationwide." Flock Safety, "Does Flock share data with ICE?" Flock Safety Series F announcement, March 2025. Flock Safety grant-assistance program description. Lexipol / PoliceGrantsHelp program page. BJA 2023 JAG award 15PBJA-23-GG-03112-JAGX "Expansion of Flock Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Safety Camera Program". OpenSecrets, Flock Safety federal lobbying, 2025. LegiStorm, Kevin Franklin Kane bio. Electronic Frontier Foundation, "How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists." Ferndale Police Department press release, November 13, 2025. Oakland County Times, "Ferndale Police End Use of Flock License Plate Reading Cameras," November 13, 2025. C&G News, "Ferndale police sever partnership with Flock Safety cameras." WNEM, "Commission rejects proposal to install license plate reading cameras." Michigan Daily, "Spread of Flock Safety cameras in Michigan raises concerns of increased surveillance." Bridge Michigan, "Michigan license plate cameras face backlash." Michigan Sheriffs' Association Flock vendor listing. Michigan Advance, "Unregulated license plate readers are tracking Michigan drivers. Here's what's at stake." NPR, "Some cities are ditching license plate readers over immigration surveillance concerns," by Jude Joffe-Block, February 19, 2026 (via Jefferson Public Radio). Michigan House Bills 5492 and 5493, introduced January 29, 2026. House Republicans press release on HB 5492/5493. WILX, "Michigan lawmakers propose bills to regulate license plate reader data."