Flock Camera Update: Council Meetings, KORA Requests, and a Founding Meeting This Thursday
A few weeks ago I spoke at the Wichita City Council about the city's Flock ALPR program and the unresolved questions around its funding and oversight. Here's what's happened since.
My friend Echo spoke at the April 14 City Council meeting. You can find his comments here. Wichita Flock legend and candidate for Kansas House District 99 Mark Barlow will be addressing the council Tuesday, April 21. I have a possible speaker lined up for April 28, then I will return to the podium May 5. If you or anyone you know is interested in speaking, please let me know.
Sedgwick County responded to my KORA Request stating I should have a response back from them this week. The City of Wichita responded to my most recent KORA Request stating they would need until at least April 30.
Regarding the denial received by the previous requestor, the following is language directly from Flock's Master Services Agreement with the City of Dunwoody:
>4.2(g)(iii): To protect active investigations, law-enforcement operations, and sensitive data, Flock shall mask, redact, or otherwise shield sensitive fields within network audit reports, including but not limited to case numbers, investigative notes, and other sensitive metadata, to the extent reasonably necessary to respond to any public records requests and comply with Applicable Law without compromising investigative integrity.
While this language isn't explicitly included in Wichita's contract, it's my understanding that redacting, masking, or otherwise shielding sensitive fields within network audit reports is standard practice.
In addition to administrative burden, the city cited K.S.A. 45-221(a)(10)(B) and 45-221(a)(10)(D) claiming the records may be tied to an active or prospective investigation. They also cited K.S.A. 45-221(a)(55), which allows them to deny "records of a public agency that contain captured license plate data or that pertain to the location of an automated license plate recognition system." I'm no lawyer, but if Flock is already going to great lengths to redact sensitive information and allow agencies to respond to public records requests "without compromising investigative integrity," the basis for the previous denial would seem to be complete and utter bullshit. For my sake and theirs, I hope they have a better answer for me on April 30. I've already reached out to a number of KU professors and a local retired attorney on 1st/4th amendment questions. I may try to reach out to a few professors at Washburn as well.
Echo and I both met separately with Council Member Mike Hoheisel. He's a really good guy, and it's abundantly clear he truly cares about the people he represents. While he ultimately supports Flock ALPRs (citing at least two examples where they've been used to recover missing children), he agrees there needs to be more transparency — particularly surrounding the audit logs. If WPD has previously stated they don't have the resources to review the audit logs and the city is allowed to withhold these from public records requests, it makes one wonder how exactly we can have any faith at all in the transparency of the system.
In their previous denial, the city stated, "The Network Audit from Jan 1 to Jan 31 produced 442,000 entries in the Audit log for that time period alone." That's the network audit log — which is external agencies and wholly separate from the organization (or internal) audit log. The city's own transparency portal shows a mere 2,874 searches in the last 30 days. That means external agencies of the type referenced in my previous post are querying Flock at a rate approximately 154 times higher than WPD itself is using it. Or, framed differently, 99.4% of all queries against Wichita's Flock network came from outside the city.
Council Member Hoheisel wrote down these numbers and agreed this ratio is absurd — especially when I mentioned MOCIC and their culpability in allowing backdoor access to ICE. He recommended I meet with Council Member Dalton Glasscock regarding accountability and transparency. I haven't done so yet but definitely plan to do so.
To the City Manager's credit, his office did respond to my request. I was wrong on two counts:
- First, I stated the COPS TEP grant had expired. This grant has apparently been extended until March 31, 2027, and the remaining funds have been obligated to a camera project approved by Council and sent to Board of Bids on February 3, 2026
- Second, I misstated that the City had failed to act. The response made clear that WPD has been actively managing the program and that steps were taken to address the expiration of the original two-year grant coverage for the initial cameras.
In essence, WPD has "reallocated" existing software funds to cover the cost of the cameras. Council Member Hoheisel confirmed this is "standard operating procedure" for most departments and that their budgets typically aren't micromanaged at the line item level. That said, the original grant was for 50 cameras, and 31 additional cameras were approved by the Council in October 2024. According to the city's transparency portal, there are currently 191 cameras, and deflock.org shows considerably more than that when you factor in all the private cameras. My question to him and the City Manager's office was: is WPD able to simply add as many cameras as they like wherever they want so long as they can find room in their budget?
DeFlock is organizing a National Week of Action Against ALPRs. More details will be forthcoming, but you can register at NOALPRS.com to stay in the loop.
Locally, the founding meeting of the Sunflower Privacy Alliance will be this Thursday, April 23. Due to the public nature of Reddit, I ask that you PM me for further details and an RSVP link. Thanks for reading this far and for your continued support. I'll post another update this weekend following our meeting Thursday.
