July 27, 2026
Updated August 4, 2026: Harrisonburg voted 4 to 0 on July 28 to end its contract; the section below reflects the recorded outcome.
Virginia held 9 records on the tracker on July 27, 2026: 6 active, 3 canceled, $2.3 million in documented public spending, and 428 cameras counted across the records that state a figure. The newest change: Harrisonburg voted 4 to 0 on July 28 to end its Flock contract.
The record shows how the city got there. Council members said at the July 14 meeting that they intended to end the contract, and the July 28 resolution followed through: staff terminate the agreement, the fixed cameras stop within 7 days, and no future fixed plate-reader system can run without council approval at a public meeting and funding through the annual budget. The record still lacks a contract amount, a camera count, and an approval date, which is common for contracts that arrived through procurement rather than a council vote.
The valley exits
Harrisonburg is the third Shenandoah-corridor city out. Staunton announced the end of its contract on December 19, 2025, in a city release. Charlottesville discontinued its contract on December 15, 2025 after a 1-year pilot. Three university towns within 60 miles of each other reached the same answer by different routes: an announcement, a pilot allowed to end, and a recorded 4-0 vote.
The 21-day rule
Virginia caps how long reader data can be kept, and the records show the cap working. Every Virginia record with portal data reports 21-day retention. No other state shows that uniform figure, and it sits below the 30-day default the portals report almost everywhere else. The state-law explainer tracks the pattern alongside Nebraska’s search-logging rule and the rest of the state-by-state picture.
Richmond extended without a vote
Richmond shows the quiet path a contract can take. The police department bought its Flock system through procurement vendor Insight Public Sector, so no council vote sits in the record. The contract ran through June 30, 2026, and the department said in February it chose to extend through June 30, 2027. The signed extension has not yet surfaced in public records, and the record notes that the end date rests on the department’s statement.
Tidewater keeps buying
The southeast corner holds the state’s biggest networks. Suffolk runs 74 cameras across downtown and the main roads into the city, approved through the 2022 city budget at about $100,000 and used for real-time alerts on stolen vehicles and wanted suspects. Chesapeake lists 64 cameras along corridors such as Battlefield Boulevard on its police transparency page, alongside Axon in-car readers; no approval document for the contract has been found.
Norfolk carries $2.2 million in documented spending and 175 cameras in portal data, and it is the state’s legal test. The Institute for Justice sued the city over the network on Fourth Amendment grounds, and in February 2026 a federal judge ruled the cameras do not invade privacy yet, leaving the door open as the record’s sources put it. The approval history behind the $2.2 million is still missing from public records, and the record says so.
The campus pair
Virginia Tech runs 15 cameras on the Blacksburg campus. The department keeps camera locations confidential and says data deletes every 15 days, a shorter window than the state cap requires. George Mason confirms through student-press coverage of its annual security report that Flock sits among its investigative tools; no cited source makes the contract terms public.
How the approvals split
The 9 records reach approval 4 different ways, and only 1 of them produced a recorded vote. Suffolk’s cameras rode a budget line. Richmond’s came through a procurement vendor. Charlottesville’s arrived as a pilot the council later declined to continue. The 2 campus networks were department purchases that no elected body voted on. That spread matches the national pattern in the tracker: most contracts enter through channels that leave no roll call, which is why the officials index stays shorter than the record count.
The 2 Virginia cancellations sit in the cancellations ledger with dates documented in city releases and council action. If Harrisonburg votes yes, it becomes the third, and the first of the 3 with a full council vote behind the exit.
What to watch
Two open questions close out the state. Richmond’s signed extension should surface in procurement records this fiscal year. Norfolk’s approval history, the largest documented spend in the state without a named approver, stays on the records-request list. The decision calendar carries the dates, and the states page keeps the totals current.
Find your city. The tracker lists every documented Flock contract, the vote that approved it, and the renewal date. Alerts email you before the next decision.