A Flock Safety license plate reader, located on East Adams Street, is pictured here. Syracuse lawmakers finalized a decision to get rid of Flock Safety's license plate readers in favor of Axon Enterprise's LPRs. Credit: Patrick McCarthy | Central Current

Syracuse police officers used Flock Safety license plate readers for nearly a month after lawmakers and Mayor Sharon Owens revoked the company’s permissions to operate on city property, a city spokesperson confirmed to Central Current.

While the legislation required Flock remove its readers by May 26, the readers remain on city property. 

Police continued to use the readers until the police department unplugged the readers on June 18, said mayor’s office spokesperson Sol Muñoz.

When lawmakers revoked Flock Safety’s permissions to operate license plate readers on city property, they cited potential violations of residents’ privacy.

City officials unplugged Flock’s readers nine days after Central Current asked city, police and Flock officials whether the readers were still on and working. 

The entities did not confirm nor deny whether Flock readers in Syracuse were still active until June 18, when the Syracuse Police Department drove around the city and unplugged the readers.

Paris Lewbel, Flock Safety’s public relations manager, on Monday told Central Current that Syracuse’s Flock readers have been decommissioned and “are no longer collecting images.” Lewbel did not reply to a follow-up request asking when the cameras had been decommissioned. 

The Syracuse Common Council on March 23 voted to block Flock from the city rights-of-way. Mayor Sharon Owens on March 26 signed the ordinance, which declared the company had 60 days to remove its hardware from the city.

The legislatively imposed deadline for Flock to remove its hardware was May 26. 

City Clerk Patricia McBride notified Flock of its obligation to remove the hardware, city spokesperson Sol Muñoz wrote in response to questions from Central Current. 

City lawyers and the police department have also communicated with Flock, Muñoz wrote, and Police Chief Mark Rusin told Central Current last week that the city on April 14 again notified Flock of its obligation to remove its hardware.

On June 24, the city confirmed to Central Current that the police department had continued using the readers to collect data on city drivers until the readers were unplugged.

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“There was no expectation to stop utilizing data while Flock removed their cameras,” Muñoz wrote. “SPD continued to use data collected while they worked with Axon to install replacement equipment.”

Central Current on Monday filed a public records request for SPD’s use of its Flock cameras from October 2025 through mid-June 2026. 


While lawmakers revoked Flock’s permissions, they approved Flock’s successor, Axon Enterprise. Those readers have not yet been installed, Muñoz said.

Syracuse Police Chief Mark Rusin and other city officials have said they hoped to avoid a gap in coverage. 

When Central Current asked Muñoz whether the city continued using the Flock readers past the deadline for them to be removed to minimize a lapse in coverage, Muñoz did not directly answer the question. 

“The City has continued to operate in a manner that is consistent with our contractual rights and obligations under the executed agreement with Flock,” Muñoz wrote.

Local activists have staunchly opposed any sort of license plate reader surveillance. A coalition of activists — and even Flock itself — argued that the city’s pivot to Axon would present no material difference for residents of Syracuse, whose data will still be collected. 

Holly Beilin, who worked as a spokesperson for Flock at the time, argued that if Syracuse officials believe that license plate readers collect personal data, and that the collection of that data infringes on individuals’ privacy, Syracuse officials are not protecting that privacy by switching to Flock’s competitor.

“Then you can’t install Axon,” Beilin said. “Then you just have to not use LPRs.”

Lawmakers axed Flock in favor of Axon because the Syracuse Police Department exposed city drivers’ sensitive data to Flock’s national network, lawmakers said. 

For nearly a year, Syracuse drivers’ data was searched millions of times by law enforcement agents around the country — including thousands of “immigration-related” searches. The Syracuse Police Department had “inadvertently” agreed to make its database accessible to Flock’s entire national network of over 5,000 clients, which also resulted in Syracuse data being included in 175 “CBP-related searches” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Other cities have also revoked Flock’s permissions or terminated contracts with the company, then waited for the company to remove its hardware. In Dayton, Ohio, and Evanston, Illinois, city officials placed trash bags on the Flock readers that remained in their city property to ensure the cameras weren’t still gathering data on drivers in those cities.

In Ithaca, city officials in April voted to end the city’s Flock contract, but the readers remain in the ground, drawing the ire of local activists. Some residents took it upon themselves to place bags on the readers.

Councilor Jimmy Monto, who played a lead role in revoking Flock’s privileges, said he had not expected the company to be cooperative and remove its own hardware.

“My expectations were that Flock wouldn’t cooperate, and that we would be stuck with having to take it all down ourselves,” Monto said.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...