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Residents, scholars and advocates urge Richmond to end Flock Safety ALPR contract

Richmond City Council · February 23, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Dozens of Richmond residents, academics and civil-rights advocates told council during public comment that the city's contract with Flock Safety's automatic license-plate readers harms privacy and is deployed unevenly; speakers cited documented unauthorized access by federal agents and asked the mayor and council to cancel the contract.

Dozens of Richmond residents, scholars and civil-rights advocates told the City Council during public comment that the city should end its contract with Flock Safety, a private vendor that sells automated license-plate readers (ALPRs).

Speakers urged the mayor and council to cancel the contract on the grounds of privacy, racial equity and data-security risks. "Flock Safety is a private company that has anecdotally been said it's essential to solving crime, but most of the empirical evidence demonstrating effectiveness primarily comes from the company itself," said Jing Lei, a resident of the 1st District.

Experts and advocates framed their case around…

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