Smyrna council approves 10-year $5.7 million contract with Flock Safety for cameras and drones
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
The Smyrna mayor and council voted unanimously to enter a 10-year, tiered contract with Flock Safety worth $5,717,500 to expand license-plate readers, add roughly 70 cameras and provide remote-launched drones; the city will pay $123,500 at signing and reserves the right to terminate the agreement.
The Smyrna mayor and council voted unanimously to authorize a 10-year subscription and implementation agreement with Flock Safety to expand the city’s Safe City program, adding about 70 cameras, license-plate readers and a remote-launched aerial drone capability. The contract total is $5,717,500 to be paid over 10 years, with an initial payment of $123,500 from the adopted FY2026 general fund budget.
Mayor Derek Norton told the council the program is intended to make Smyrna residents safer and described the contract as tiered with an option for the city to terminate in the future. City staff said the expanded system would include two drone units (one north, one south) to provide rapid incident oversight and to reduce the need for multiple emergency vehicles to respond to low-priority incidents.
City Administrator Mike Jones told the council Flock has made multiple presentations to staff and that both the police and fire departments support the expansion. “We are currently using this service and are expanding it by about 70 additional camera and license-plate readers,” Jones said. He compared Smyrna’s growth in cameras to nearby jurisdictions, citing Dunwoody and others as examples.
Councilwoman Hines, a longtime prosecutor, said she supported the contract: “I just want to say I’m very happy about this as a person who’s been a prosecutor for 20-something years.” Other councilmembers agreed the system would be a force multiplier for public safety. Staff noted the system can support AMBER alert searches, license-plate flagged hits, and rapid aerial assessment of crashes or incidents.
The council approved the motion to enter the agreement 6-0. City staff said the program will be implemented by the police department with vendor integration services and that the contract includes a termination right to avoid long-term lock-in. The mayor is authorized to sign related documents.
The council did not hold a formal privacy policy debate at the meeting; staff said the agreement and presentations detailing operations had been shared with council in prior briefings.