The tracker uses a small set of terms that carry exact meanings. Each entry below says what the term means here, with a link to where it works in practice.
ALPR
Automated license plate reader: a camera that photographs passing vehicles and converts the plate into searchable text. Flock Safety sells ALPRs on subscription contracts, which is what the tracker documents.
Hot list
A database of plates police want alerts on: stolen vehicles, active warrants, missing-person cases. When an ALPR reads a plate on a hot list, the system notifies the department. Hot-list hits drive most of the results agencies cite when they defend a contract.
Data retention
How long the system keeps plate reads before deletion. 30 days is the most common setting on the tracker; some agencies run shorter. Retention rules often decide votes. New Hampshire law requires plate reads to be purged within 3 minutes of capture unless an alert leads to an arrest, a citation or protective custody, or matches a missing person or wanted broadcast (RSA 261:75-b, section VIII).
Consent agenda
A meeting practice that groups routine items into 1 vote with no discussion. Some Flock contracts pass this way, which means a council approved the cameras without debating them. Records approved this way carry the consent agenda label.
Roll call
A vote recorded member by member, with each name and each yes or no on the paper. It is the only kind of vote that lets a resident see how one official voted rather than how a body voted. A record lists a roll call only when a document gives the names and the tally together, so a 6 to 1 vote reported without names stays a tally until the minutes publish. Warren, Michigan renewed 4 to 3 on July 14, 2026 with all 7 members on the record, and every name appears on the officials index. Termination votes stay out of the roll call, which lists approval votes only.
Sub-threshold purchase
A purchase small enough that local rules let staff sign without a council vote. Denver signed a $498,500 extension $1,500 under its vote threshold after its council rejected a bigger renewal. These records carry the sub-threshold label.
Co-op purchasing
Buying through a contract another government already bid out, such as Sourcewell. It satisfies bidding rules without a local competitive process, and some Flock deals arrive this way. See the co-op contract records.
Transparency portal
A public page Flock hosts for an agency showing camera counts, searches, and sharing settings. Portals prove a system runs, and the tracker uses them as camera evidence, never as the approval trail. The portal guide shows how to read one.
Audit log
The record of who searched a camera network and why. Audit logs revealed federal immigration searches in several states and out-of-state searches of local data. The records-request guide covers how to ask for them.
Network sharing
Flock lets agencies open their cameras to other departments, up to a nationwide search pool. Sharing settings decide who sees local data, and several 2026 cancellations started with sharing audits. The lawsuit tracker follows the court side.
Renewal clause
The contract term that continues service unless a body acts. Renewal day is when a community can change course, which is why the decision calendar tracks every date the records hold.
PTZ camera
A pan-tilt-zoom camera streams live video an operator can steer, which is a different device from a plate reader even when both arrive on the same contract. Savannah bought 40 license plate readers and 10 PTZ cameras in one $193,500 item. Johnson City bought 145 of each. Counting only the plate readers understates what a contract installed.
Vehicle fingerprint
The set of details a reader records beyond the plate: make, model, color, and distinguishing features such as roof racks or damage. This is what lets a search find a vehicle whose plate was never read or was misread. The Gainesville Police Department describes the feature on its own record, and it is the capability behind most searches that start from a witness description rather than a plate number: Gainesville.
Real-time crime center
A staffed room where camera feeds, alerts, and dispatch data are watched together as calls come in. Plate reader contracts increasingly fund the room and the cameras in one package. Johnson City bought readers, PTZ cameras, trailers, gunshot detection, and a real-time crime center on a single 10-year agreement, and DeKalb County routes its cameras into one. When a contract funds a center, cancelling the cameras does not close the room.
Fusion center
A regional intelligence body that pools data from many agencies, often including state and federal partners. Plate data reaches a fusion center through a sharing setting rather than a separate contract, so a city can be feeding one without a second vote. Cleveland wrote the opposite into its July 2026 extension, cutting off the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center by ordinance.
National lookup
A Flock setting that lets agencies outside a customer’s state search its plate data. It is switched on or off at the account level, which means a department can be sharing nationally without a council ever voting on it. Audit logs published in August 2025 showed Denver camera data had been searched more than 1,400 times for immigration enforcement through this feature; Denver police said they were unaware of it and turned it off in April 2025.
Sole-source contract
A purchase made without competitive bidding because the buyer states only one vendor can supply it. The reasoning has to be written down, which makes the justification itself a public document worth reading. Savannah recorded its Flock purchase as sole source with no pre-bid conference, on the stated ground that changing vendors would create compatibility problems and service interruptions. One vendor was solicited and one responded.
Reseller
A third company that holds the paper while the service comes from Flock. A contract signed with a reseller can be searched for under the wrong name in a city’s records system, which is a common reason a request comes back empty. Little Rock renewed through Insight Public Sector rather than with Flock directly, using a cooperative contract numbered 23-6692-03.
Grant-driven purchase
A contract paid mostly or entirely with money from outside the city budget, which changes who decides and when the decision returns. Texas shows the pattern most clearly through one state office, the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority: El Paso runs 150 cameras on a $702,500 grant, Prosper had 80 percent of a $205,000 purchase covered, College Station sought the grant with a 20 percent city match, and Bandera had $14,000 of a $17,000 deal covered before its council ended it. When the grant term ends, the question returns whether or not anyone asked for it.
Per-camera cost
The contract amount divided by the number of cameras, computed on every record that carries both figures. It is the only number that compares a small town to a large county fairly, and the spread is wide: Fort Worth pays about $1,910 per camera per year while El Paso pays about $4,683. The costs page recomputes the full distribution from the same rows.
Exit cost
What ending a contract actually costs, which is rarely a stated fee. None of the contracts the tracker cites names a termination penalty. Two documented costs still make leaving expensive: Fayetteville pays its full $1.6 million at signing for a 5-year term, so the money is gone before year 2, and in Rockford the police chief told the council that Flock’s cameras will not work with another vendor’s software, which turns a cancellation into a full replacement.