Every number on this site comes from the records this page documents. The dataset covers 1,044 Flock Safety contracts across 48 states, with $165.0 million in documented public spending, and it recomputes on every save.
What a record holds
Each record is one government body’s relationship with Flock Safety. The fields: city and state name the jurisdiction; agency names the operating department; status is one of Active, Renewal upcoming, Canceled, Expired, Rejected, or Suspended; approval_method says how the deal was approved (council vote, consent agenda, sub-threshold purchase, co-op contract, grant-driven, or unknown); approving_body names who approved it; approval_date is the decision date; contract_amount_usd is the documented cost; camera_count is the documented camera figure; contract_end is the stated end date; funding_source says whose money paid; last_verified is the date we last checked the record against its sources; page_url links the record; primary_source links the first source the record cites.
The evidence standard
Every fact comes from a public record: council minutes, resolutions, procurement documents, city releases, or named local reporting. An empty field beats a wrong one, so blanks mean the documents have not stated the fact yet. Named votes appear only when a document lists the names and the tally together. Each record page lists its sources with dates. The methodology page covers the rules in full.
Downloads
Three formats, all computed live from the records: CSV export for spreadsheets, JSON export for code, and an ICS calendar feed of scheduled votes and renewal deadlines that subscribes into any calendar app. The JSON payload carries a generated timestamp and a row count. Fields match across all formats.
Scope
The tracker covers Flock Safety contracts held by cities, counties, sheriffs, and campus police departments in the United States. Agencies that run plate readers from other vendors sit outside the dataset, and records note when a city switched vendors or tested an alternative. A jurisdiction enters the tracker when a public record documents its relationship with Flock: an approval, a purchase, a live network with a transparency page, or a documented ending.
Known limits
Camera counts can differ between a purchase document and a vendor portal because portals sometimes include shared regional units; when the 2 conflict, the documented purchase wins unless the portal figure is newer and the gap is modest, and the record says which figure it uses. Contract amounts mix one-time purchases, annual subscriptions, and multi-year caps, so 2 amounts are not always comparable; the cost page explains the caveats before ranking anything. 73 percent of records have no approval date, either because no document found so far dates the approval or because the contract arrived through a purchase that needed no council vote.
What the site computes from the data
Every counting surface reads from these records live: the tracker table, the states page, the calendar, the cancellations ledger, and the officials index of named votes. Nothing is hand-tallied, so a record correction moves every page that cites it.
How to cite
For the dataset: Who Approved This, “Flock Safety Contract Tracker,” whoapprovedthis.org, accessed [date], https://whoapprovedthis.org/tracker/. For a single record: Who Approved This, “[record title],” whoapprovedthis.org, accessed [date], [record URL]. Each record page prints that line, filled in, near its sources. Every record page ends with an embed code you can paste to show that record’s live status on your own site.
Update cadence
Records update as documents publish: minutes land days or weeks after votes, so a tally can appear on a record before the names do. The updates feed and the decision calendar track what changed and what comes next. Corrections go through the corrections page and get noted on the record they touch.