Gainesville, FL Flock Contract

Who approved this?

Approved by Gainesville City Commission.

The Gainesville City Commission approved the Flock contract in 2024, which let the police department sign its own agreement with the company, according to GPD public information officer Art Forgey. Forgey said the department paid Flock $25,000 in the most recent year and runs 10 cameras; the $125,000 figure is the contract total rather than a single year. Data is kept 30 days. Detective Sgt. Nicholas Ferrara said the department can limit alerts to stolen vehicles, stolen plates, and wanted people, that each officer has a unique login, that every search is logged, and that access ends when an officer leaves. He credited the cameras with breaking an ATM burglary case that led to arrests across Alachua and Bradford counties. The crowdsourced DeFlock map counts roughly 100 Flock cameras across greater Gainesville, most of them privately owned rather than city-run, clustered near Butler Plaza and the University of Florida campus. ACLU senior policy counsel Chad Marlow argued the retention window is too long and that the company's data sharing model, rather than plate readers as such, is the problem.