Citizen Briefing: Surveillance Camera Networks (Flock and Similar Systems) in Southern Indiana
What is happening locally
Evansville Police Department has operated 55 Flock automated license-plate readers since at least 2022. The cameras were funded through donations and grants. Camera locations are not publicly disclosed by department policy.
Source: https://news.wnin.org/2022-07-11/55-license-plate-readers-installed-in-evansville
The Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office announced its countywide Flock deployment in November 2023 and signed a $240,050, 60-month agreement with Flock Safety. The contract began with 13 devices and, as of late 2023 reporting, was structured to grow to roughly 45. Data is retained for no more than 30 days. Access requires a stated reason and a case number but does not require a warrant. Three of the cameras are designated for the University of Southern Indiana.
Sources: https://vanderburghsheriff.org/2023-nr-1116/ | https://www.aol.com/usi-receive-flock-safety-license-101517833.html | https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2024/01/vanderburgh-county-sheriff-s-office-to-install-three-flock-safety-cameras-on-usi-campus
Those camera counts come from 2023 and early 2024 reporting, and the current numbers may be higher. Unite The Divided has filed public records requests for the current contracts, camera counts, and data-sharing agreements, and will publish what comes back.
These are the concrete local arrangements currently in place. The rest of this briefing examines the broader pattern these contracts sit inside and the questions residents can still ask.
The rest of Southern Indiana
Vanderburgh County is not an outlier. According to Eyes Off Indiana, a volunteer mapping project that documents camera locations using the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance and crowdsourced field reports, every county surrounding Evansville has license plate readers of its own.
In Warrick County, 21 cameras have been mapped, including 14 Flock devices, operated by the Warrick County Sheriff’s Office and the Boonville, Chandler, and Newburgh police departments. The sheriff’s office ordered its first Flock cameras in March 2023 and reported solving a missing person case within two weeks of deployment. In Posey County, 12 mapped cameras, all Flock, are operated by the Posey County Sheriff’s Office and the Mount Vernon and New Harmony police departments. In Gibson County, the Princeton Police Department operates 4 mapped Flock cameras. In Dubois County, 30 mapped Flock cameras are operated by the Dubois County Sheriff’s Office and the Jasper, Huntingburg, and Ferdinand police departments.
Spencer County deserves its own sentence: 21 mapped cameras, 20 of them Flock, operated by the Spencer County Sheriff’s Department and the Rockport and Santa Claus police departments. At roughly 104 cameras per 100,000 residents, Spencer County has the second highest camera density of any county in Indiana.
These counts are documented minimums from a crowdsourced project, not official totals. The same project maps 118 cameras in Vanderburgh County, 67 of them Flock devices, broadly consistent with the official figures above. According to the project, Indiana currently has no statewide law governing how long this data is kept, who can search it, or how it is shared, which is exactly why the questions below matter in every one of these counties.
Sources: https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/warrick | https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/posey | https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/gibson | https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/spencer | https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/dubois | https://eyesoffindiana.org/counties/vanderburgh | https://www.14news.com/2023/03/23/these-cameras-have-been-amazing-flock-cameras-helping-with-crime/
National scale and pattern
Flock Safety states that it operates in more than 5,000 communities and is connected to more than 4,800 law enforcement agencies across 49 states, conducting more than 20 billion license plate reads per month.
Reporting has shown that many city officials learned after the fact that their data was being shared more broadly than they realized, including searches by federal agencies such as U.S. Border Patrol. In October 2025, the town of Hillsborough, North Carolina ended its Flock relationship over contract language that allowed disclosure based on the company’s “good faith belief.”
Documented concerns
Verified examples illustrate the range of uses that have occurred.
A Texas sheriff conducted a nationwide search across more than 83,000 cameras to locate a woman who had self-administered an abortion. The sheriff said the search was a safety check requested by her family, not an attempt to prosecute. Court records obtained by reporters later showed the case was logged as a death investigation and that police considered charging her with a crime.
Sources: https://therecord.media/police-searched-license-reading-cameras-abortion-investigation | https://www.404media.co/police-said-they-surveilled-woman-who-had-an-abortion-for-her-safety-court-records-show-they-considered-charging-her-with-a-crime/
A federal law enforcement agency used the readers to identify attendees at a gun show, and local ALPR data has also been shared with ICE. These cases span different political contexts and show that the technology’s reach is not limited to one side of any debate.
According to the ACLU’s count, more than 55 localities have ended Flock contracts in the past year alone.
What supporters usually say
- The cameras help recover stolen cars and find missing people faster.
- They provide objective data that does not rely on eyewitness memory.
- Access is limited to law enforcement with legitimate purposes.
- The systems have solved crimes that would otherwise have gone cold.
What residents should demand
(These questions can be asked about the existing contracts in any of these counties and about any future expansions or renewals.)
- Will the full current contracts, including all data-sharing agreements, retention periods, and lists of agencies with query access, be posted publicly?
- Exactly which camera models are deployed (fixed ALPR only, or also pan-tilt-zoom units capable of tracking people)?
- How long is location and image data actually retained in practice, and can any resident obtain a complete record of every time their vehicle was logged?
- What independent audit of access logs is performed, and will those logs be available for public or third-party review?
- What is the documented error rate for plate reads and subsequent stops in this jurisdiction, and how is that rate disclosed?
- If cameras or data streams are found exposed or compromised, what automatic public notification and remediation steps are required? (In Coralville, Iowa, a contract signed without council discussion, a viral video demonstrating relatively easy unauthorized access to Flock cameras, and an Iowa Attorney General inquiry ended with the city council voting in February 2026 to terminate the contract and remove the cameras.)
Sources: https://www.aol.com/articles/coralville-sharing-license-plate-data-160901312.html | https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2026-02-25/coralville-flock-automated-license-plate-readers
A practical standard that protects the community
The technology should not be rejected or accepted on slogan alone. A responsible standard requires:
- Full public release of contracts and data-handling rules.
- Clear, short retention limits for data not tied to an active investigation.
- Complete, auditable logs of every search.
- Regular independent reporting on actual outcomes versus costs and privacy impact.
- Explicit limits on using the system for purposes beyond the original public-safety justification without new public authorization.
Bottom line for Southern Indiana
Evansville and Vanderburgh County already operate these systems under specific contracts, and every neighboring county now has cameras of its own. The public has a right to see those contracts in full, to understand exactly what data is collected and shared, and to know whether the claimed benefits are being measured. Transparency is the minimum condition for trust.
Where to raise these questions
- Public comment periods at city council and county commissioner meetings, in Evansville and Vanderburgh County and in the surrounding counties named above.
- Written requests to your police chief, sheriff, mayor, and county commissioners for the current contracts and data-retention policies.
- Questions to state legislators about statewide standards for ALPR data sharing and retention (multiple states are already enacting privacy and retention laws, and Indiana currently has none).
