Flock taught cops how to watch a protest.
A leaked training video shows the country's biggest camera-surveillance company walking police through how to track a peaceful anti-Trump protest — and a second leaked guide coaching them on how to defend the cameras in public.
We grade what the leaked materials and the search records actually show, carry Flock's public-safety defense, and mark where we stop.
What this page is about
Flock Safety runs the license-plate-camera network used by thousands of US police departments — the subject of our Flock Safety page. In September 2026, 404 Media reported on leaked Flock materials that move the story from “misused tool” to something more deliberate: a company training webinar that walked police through using FlockOS to keep watch over protests — using a “No Kings” anti-Trump demonstration as the worked example.
It doesn't stand alone. Police and Border Patrol have used Flock's plate-readers to track people at No Kings protests; the Electronic Frontier Foundation found more than fifty instances of agencies searching Flock data for protests and activist groups; and 404 Media documented thousands of database searches citing immigration enforcement, often against sanctuary laws. A separate leaked guide, titled around the idea of “owning the narrative,” coaches police on how to defend and promote Flock in public. This page grades those documents.
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Flock taught cops how to watch a protest.
A leaked training video shows the country's biggest camera-surveillance company walking police through tracking a peaceful anti-Trump protest — and a second leaked guide coaching them how to defend the cameras in public.
The webinar, the searches, and the script
A leaked Flock webinar taught police how to use its tools to monitor a protest.
FACT404 Media reported on a leaked Flock training webinar, led by Flock's director of market management, Caity Peak, that walked law enforcement through using FlockOS 'Real-Time Crime Centers' to monitor 'everything from small parades, to unexpected protests, to unprecedented disasters.' The worked example was explicit: 'Now imagine that you're an incident commander, and you're working this No Kings protest. For the sake of the call, we put this in Denver.' From there, the presenter showed watching live feeds of the crowd, monitoring surrounding traffic, and flagging particular vehicles.
It showed how to turn a plate-read into an alert — and a database query into a reason to escalate.
FACTThe training got specific about mechanics. Officers were shown how to set automated license-plate-reader alerts on distinctive vehicles — flag a car with, say, 'multicolored wheels' and get pinged the moment it passes, so police know a crowd is forming before anyone is even posted. And it showed how pulling a plate into Flock's 'Nova' search — cross-referencing jail records, warrants, and dispatch logs — can hand police a fast justification to escalate, e.g. towing a vehicle for 90 days rather than writing a citation. FlockOS bundles plate-readers, drones, gunshot detectors, and 911 data into what Flock calls a 'single pane of glass.'
Police and Border Patrol used Flock plate-readers to track people at No Kings protests.
FACTThis isn't only theoretical training. Law enforcement, including Border Patrol, used Flock's automated license-plate readers to track demonstrators at No Kings protests in 2025 — First Amendment-protected gatherings — reading the movement of vehicles in and around the events.
The EFF found more than fifty instances of agencies searching Flock data for protests and activists.
FACTThe Electronic Frontier Foundation, reviewing law-enforcement search logs, found over fifty instances of agencies querying Flock's data servers for activity tied to protests and specific activist groups — turning a network sold for finding stolen cars and missing persons toward tracking political activity.
404 Media documented thousands of Flock searches citing immigration enforcement — often against sanctuary laws.
FACTA 404 Media investigation found more than 4,000 searches of Flock's national database between June 2024 and May 2025 in which officers listed 'ICE,' 'immigration,' or similar terms as the justification — frequently in cities and states whose sanctuary laws are supposed to wall local data off from federal immigration enforcement.
A separate leaked Flock guide coaches police on how to defend and promote the cameras.
FACT404 Media also obtained a Flock guide built around 'owning the narrative' — coaching police departments on how to push back against criticism of Flock and promote the technology to the public, at the same time reporting was surfacing the ICE data-sharing and protest tracking. It's the surveillance company writing the public-relations script for the agencies that buy it.
What's proven, and Flock's side
- The documents are the story. A training webinar, search logs, and a PR guide — not anonymous claims. That's why the surveillance training and the search counts grade to FACT.
- Flock's defense, carried. Flock says its technology exists for public safety — finding stolen cars, missing people, and violent suspects — and that the police agencies who buy it, not Flock, decide how it's used. Both are true and both are stated here. The counterpoint is that a company that trains the protest use and scripts the defense isn't a neutral vendor.
- We grade the watching, not a prosecution. We do not claim anyone was jailed for protesting because of Flock. The documented harm is the surveillance itself: tracking who shows up to a lawful protest, which chills the right to be there at all.
The camera that watches the parade is watching the marchers
A license-plate network sold to catch car thieves is only a protest-tracking system if someone points it at protests — and the leak shows the company itself teaching police to do exactly that. Knowing you can be logged, plate and route, for showing up to a lawful demonstration is the kind of thing that keeps people home. That is the core Surveillance States harm: not a knock on the door, but a quiet cost to ever raising your voice.
It builds directly on our Flock Safety page — the ALPR network, the stalking abuse, the ICE data-sharing, the canceled contracts — and on Ban Flock, Buy Axon, which tracks how the same surveillance rebrands when a city drops Flock. And the “own the narrative” guide is a Who Controls What You Get to Know story: the surveillance vendor doesn't just sell the cameras, it writes the talking points that keep the public comfortable with them.
Questions worth taking seriously
Isn't Flock just a tool? Police decide how to use it.
That is Flock's defense, and it is partly true — the agencies run the searches. But the leak shows Flock didn't stay neutral: it ran a webinar teaching the protest use and wrote a guide coaching cops to defend it. A vendor that trains the controversial use and scripts the PR is doing more than handing over a tool.
Is it illegal to track protesters with plate cameras?
It is contested — plates on public roads have weak privacy protection, but tracking First Amendment-protected activity, and routing local data to ICE in sanctuary jurisdictions, raises real legal problems now being litigated. We don't call it a crime here; we grade the documented surveillance and the sanctuary-law conflicts the reporting establishes.
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