Most Flock customer agencies publish a transparency portal: a page the agency controls, listing its camera count, retention period, and usage. Portals are half of how this site verifies records, and this page shows you how to read yours.
Finding your agency’s portal
Portals live at transparency.flocksafety.com under the agency’s name. 950 agencies publish one at last count. If yours exists, it states the number of cameras, the data retention period, and often search totals and the list of agencies with network access.
What the numbers mean, with real examples
The camera count is the agency’s own current figure, and it can differ from what documents show was purchased. Gastonia, NC documents 9 purchased cameras while its portal reports 617, a gap that usually means the portal counts network reach rather than owned devices. Retention is the days images survive before deletion: 30 is the vendor default, every Virginia portal the tracker cites reads 21 under state practice, and San Francisco reads 365. When you see a big number, ask which policy set it.
What a portal proves, and what it cannot
A portal proves deployment: the agency runs cameras. It cannot prove approval: who signed the contract, for how much, on what vote. That second half lives in council journals, minutes, and news coverage, which is why this site’s 2-halves rule requires both before a record publishes. Shelby County, TN shows what a portal-plus-coverage record looks like while its approval paper stays an open question on the record.
Use it, then send it
If your agency’s portal exists and the tracker lacks your city, send the portal link: it becomes the deployment half of a new record, and we hunt the approval half.
What a portal shows
A portal is the agency’s own page, which makes it useful and limited at the same time. Most list a camera count, a retention period, the stated purpose, and sometimes a search count. Retention is the figure worth reading closely: 30 days is the common default, while every tracked Virginia record with portal data reports 21 days because state law caps it, and Suffolk and Chesapeake both sit in that group.
What a portal leaves out
Almost everything about money and authority. Portals do not publish the contract, the amount, the term, the exit terms, or the vote that authorized any of it. Chesapeake publishes a 64-camera count on its own page while no approval record for the contract is public at all. A portal also cannot tell you who else searched the data, which is what audit logs cover and what a records request has to pull.
Reading a portal against the records
Counts conflict more often than you would expect, usually because portals include cameras shared from neighboring agencies. The tracker resolves that by taking a documented purchase over a portal aggregate unless the portal figure is newer and the gap is modest, and the record states which figure it uses: Norfolk carries 172 from its deployment while the portal lists 175. When a portal number and a contract number disagree by a wide margin, that gap is itself worth asking about at a council meeting.
When there is no portal
Some agencies never published one, and some took theirs down after a program ended. Absence proves nothing on its own. Start with the tracker to see whether a record exists, then go to the clerk for the authorizing item. If you find a portal for a city the tracker does not hold, send it through the submit page.