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Inside This Report

• Flock Safety's drone division, "Drone as First Responder," is now its fastest-growing business line.
• The pivot comes as the company's license plate camera network faces mounting scrutiny over misuse and misreads.
• CEO Garrett Langley says the technology can stop dangerous encounters before officers ever arrive — but privacy advocates aren't convinced.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

Flock Safety built its reputation — and its $8.4 billion valuation — on a network of license plate cameras now watching traffic in more than 6,000 communities nationwide. But the company's next chapter may not be about cameras at all. It's about what's flying above them.

In an interview released Monday on the "All-In" podcast, Flock CEO Garrett Langley revealed that the company's drone program has quietly become its fastest-growing business segment, now accounting for close to half of its forward-looking revenue. The technology, which Flock brands "Drone as First Responder" or DFR, dispatches drones to 911 calls ahead of patrol officers, feeding real-time aerial video back to dispatchers before anyone sets foot on scene.

Langley framed the shift as a matter of officer and civilian safety. He described drones as a way to defuse the split-second panic that can turn a routine call deadly.

A Case Study From Dallas-Fort Worth

To illustrate the stakes, Langley pointed to an incident near Dallas-Fort Worth, where a woman called police after spotting what she believed was a man wielding a gun. Rather than send an officer racing to the scene lights blazing, dispatchers launched a drone instead. The aerial footage revealed the "weapon" was nothing more than an oversized lighter — a discovery Langley suggested could have prevented a tragedy had an adrenaline-fueled officer arrived gun-drawn.

It's a compelling anecdote, and one Flock is clearly eager to repeat as it markets DFR to police departments and private security clients alike. The company says it has already signed more than 200 DFR customers, and it's ramping up production of American-designed drones set to be manufactured in Georgia.

The Privacy Backlash Hasn't Gone Away

Flock's expansion into the skies arrives at an inconvenient moment. Its flagship license plate technology — the product that built the company — is under sustained fire.

Civil liberties groups have long warned that automated license plate readers create sweeping surveillance networks with little oversight. ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley captured the unease in a March white paper, warning that aerial surveillance can observe people with startling precision while leaving them "little way of knowing what information it's collecting."

The concerns aren't merely theoretical. Investigations have documented cases where Flock's cameras misread license plates and officers failed to double-check the alerts — mistakes that have led to innocent people being stopped at gunpoint or jailed. In Roseville, California, one review found the system misread plates in 71% of the alerts examined. And in early August, The Washington Post reported that at least 50 law enforcement officials nationwide had been accused or charged with misusing license plate-reading technology, with Flock's cameras implicated in 46 of those cases.

The fallout has been tangible: several communities have canceled, paused, or reconsidered their Flock contracts as public pressure has mounted.

Flock's Response: Tighter Rules, Bigger Ambitions

Facing the heat, Flock moved last Thursday to tighten its privacy and security protocols, cutting the default retention window for license plate data from thirty days down to just seven — though existing customers can retain their previously approved, longer retention periods.

Langley has pushed back on the narrative that Flock is part of the problem, casting the company instead as an accountability tool. In a video sent to Business Insider, he said the company is focused on identifying "bad cops and holding them accountable," and added that he hopes to see broader regulatory reform take shape.

The company insists its growth still far outpaces the fallout. A Flock spokesperson noted that the company's growth rate currently runs seven times its churn rate — a sign, Flock argues, that the controversy hasn't slowed its momentum.

Whether that holds as scrutiny intensifies — and as drones increasingly take center stage over cameras — may determine whether Flock's next act cements its dominance in public safety tech, or invites a new round of the same privacy battles it's still fighting today.

About the Author

Samuel López is a Senior Legal Analyst, investigative journalist, and legal researcher with more than two decades of experience dissecting high-stakes litigation, regulatory disputes, and emerging technology law. His work sits at the intersection of civil liberties, law enforcement oversight, and corporate accountability — subjects he has tracked closely as surveillance technology has moved from courtroom footnote to front-page controversy. López has built a reputation for translating dense legal and technical developments into reporting that's rigorous enough for practitioners and accessible enough for the public, drawing on years of source relationships within law enforcement, civil rights organizations, and the legal community to bring readers coverage grounded in both the facts and the fine print.

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