Tompkins County, NY
The Tompkins County Legislature voted 12-1 on April 14, 2026 to terminate the county's contract with Flock Safety and remove both the license plate reader network and Flock gunshot detection devices. The vote came before a May 28 automatic renewal that would have extended the agreement two more years. The Tompkins County Sheriff's Office and Ithaca Police Department had contracted with Flock since 2023, funded through New York State's Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) initiative.
What moved this decision
- Contract faced an automatic two-year renewal on May 28 absent action
- Reports of camera data used to track undocumented immigrants and people seeking abortion care
- Mass surveillance and data privacy objections raised at repeated public meetings
- City of Ithaca had ended its own Flock contract five weeks earlier
What happened afterwards
The county terminated before the May 28 auto-renewal, ending Flock use by both the Sheriff's Office and Ithaca Police Department. Questions were subsequently raised about access to Flock's 'transparency' portal as the county's agencies exited the system.
What we still don’t know
These are the records we would need to describe this decision completely. If you can help obtain them, or already have them, get in touch.
- Whether the New York State GIVE grant funding had to be returned or redirected
- Whether gunshot detection was replaced by another vendor or simply dropped