.webp)
Flock Evidence Policy
Introduction
Flock Safety (“Flock”) places the utmost importance on delivering exceptional customer service, backed by objective evidence. Our commitment to providing unparalleled support is demonstrated through our distinctive capability to capture such evidence as well as Flock’s dedication to assisting law enforcement investigations.
Flock uses Kodex for receiving, tracking, processing, and responding to legal requests from government, law enforcement, and private customers. Flock’s Evidence Division, a trained team within our legal department, reviews and evaluates all requests as they are received. Flock then provides detailed and adequate responses to the requesting agency through Kodex.
Flock reserves the right to challenge or reject any requests that are determined to be vague, inappropriate, overly-broad or without legal basis.
In strict adherence to Flock’s Privacy Policy, we will use reasonable efforts to provide notice to our customer when evidence requests are received, unless we are explicitly prohibited from doing so by law.
Not a Flock customer?
If you are not a Flock customer, please note that ownership, title and interest in the customer data, belong to and are retained solely by our customers. Flock maintains a limited license to access the customer data for the sole purpose of providing our services. Flock does not own customer data and as a result does not maintain records of customer data after the retention period. Accordingly, Flock encourages that you contact the customer regarding your request. Please note, that after the retention period all customer data collected by Flock is hard deleted and will no longer be accessible or retrievable .
Please see the below processes for requesting evidence from Flock.
Evidence Certification Requests
Flock’s Standard Retention Period: Flock’s standard retention period is thirty (30) calendar days from the date of capture. This standard retention period applies to all customer data, unless otherwise specified in the individual customer’s agreement.
Non-LPR Evidence: For requests other than License Plate Readers (such as video, audio, or drone), customers should submit a request through Kodex by selecting “Evidence Certification" in the Legal Process field.
License Plate Reader (LPR) Image Certification within Retention Period: For requests that are still within the retention period, customers can automatically download an affidavit to validate the images at the bottom of each Search Card. For all purposes, these documents would be considered self-certifying affidavits from Flock for use at trial.
For more information on accessing the self-certifying Image Certification Affidavit, please see our help article.
LPR Image Certification Request Outside Retention Period: For images outside of the retention period that have already been downloaded and stored without self certification, please use Flock’s Evidence Validator to upload your original images for validation and to obtain court-ready authentication. For more information on how to use the Evidence Validator, please see our Help Article.
NOTE: The Evidence Validator only applies to files (PDFs, images) downloaded after July 1st, 2025. If you are unable to use the Evidence Validator, please submit a request for certification through Kodex.
Please contact your local agency regarding any extended data retention periods.
Large Requests (over 25 images): If your request includes 25 images or more, please download and submit a CSV file or spreadsheet along with your Kodex request. For more information on how to download a CSV file from your user interface, please see our help article.
Witness Requests
To request a Flock witness for testimony, please follow the below instructions for your entity type:
- Law Enforcement: All requests for witness testimony from law enforcement MUST be accompanied by a subpoena submitted through Kodex. Flock requires submission of the complete legal process, including all attachments to be submitted via uneditable PDF format.
- Non-Law Enforcement: All legal requests that are not made by law enforcement must be properly served either via Flock’s Registered Agent, or at the below physical address:
Flock Group Inc.
1170 Howell Mill Road NW
Ste 210, Atlanta, GA 30318
Attn: Flock Legal
For information on the registered address for your state, please contact evidence@flocksafety.com.
A courtesy copy of the subpoena may be forwarded via email to evidence@flocksafety.com from the official email address of the requesting party.
NOTE: Receipt of such courtesy copy sent to Flock via email shall not be deemed a waiver of proper service.
Once the subpoena is properly served and received, Flock will supply a witness in those instances where the above mentioned methods of certification are insufficient. Unless otherwise specified, the requestor is responsible for covering all applicable travel expenses and lodging.
Flock reserves the right to resist subpoenas for witness testimony that are served fewer than fourteen (14) calendar days from the scheduled date of appearance.
Document Subpoenas
For Document Subpoenas, please follow the below instructions for your entity type:
- Law Enforcement: All requests for witness testimony from law enforcement MUST be accompanied by a subpoena submitted through Kodex. Flock requires submission of the complete legal process, including all attachments to be submitted via uneditable PDF format.
- Non-Law Enforcement: All legal requests that are not made by law enforcement must be properly served either via Flock’s Registered Agent, or at the below physical address:
Flock Group Inc.
1170 Howell Mill Road NW
Ste 210, Atlanta, GA 30318
Attn: Flock Legal
For information on the registered address for your state, please contact evidence@flocksafety.com.
A courtesy copy of the subpoena may be forwarded via email to evidence@flocksafety.com from the official email address of the requesting party.
NOTE: Receipt of such courtesy copy sent to Flock via email shall not be deemed a waiver of proper service.
Flock will notify customers when any such data is sought in response to required disclosures from government, law enforcement, or third parties. Notice may be reasonably withheld if prohibited by law, or if Flock believes that such notice may pose immediate risk of serious injury or death to a member of the public.
Flock reserves the right to disregard requests for information that are not accompanied by a properly served subpoena. Flock carefully reviews all submissions to ensure that there is a valid legal basis for each request. If any request is considered to be unclear, inappropriate or over-broad or without legal basis, Flock reserves the right to challenge or reject such request.
Support
Response Time
Flock typically responds to valid requests within (14) calendar days. However, certain requests may take longer than the standard response time depending on the complexity and scope of the request.
If you require an expedited response, the required response deadline should be stated clearly in both the submission documentation and the formal request itself.
Emergency or exigent requests can be made through Kodex by selecting “Emergency” in the Legal Process field. Flock will only process emergency requests that provide the following information:
- Grounds to believe that there exists a risk of danger of death or serious physical injury that Flock may have information necessary to prevent;
- The nature of the emergency that requires disclosure, without delay, of the information requested;
- How the information sought will help avert the threatened death or serious physical injury and why normal disclosure processes would be insufficient or untimely in light of the deadline requested;
- The name and contact information of the individual law enforcement or authorized government agent serving the request;
- The categories of records sought, stated with particularity; AND
- The specific time period for which the records are requested.
Reimbursement
Flock reserves the right to seek reimbursement for costs in responding to unusual or burdensome requests. Flock will not seek reimbursement for costs associated with responding to emergency requests or requests relating to child endangerment.
FAQs
These guidelines are regularly reviewed by Flock and are subject to change at our discretion. For further information and answers to some frequently asked questions regarding evidence, please read below.
What does Flock Safety do?
Flock Safety is a public safety technology platform that builds hardware and software to collect objective evidence, surface investigative insights, and solve crime to create safer communities. Our products include License Plate Reading (LPR) cameras, video cameras, gunshot detection sensors, real-time crime center software, and Drones As First Responder systems.
How does the Flock LPR camera work?
The camera uses passive infrared motion detection to detect when a vehicle moves past it. It captures an image of that vehicle, alerts local law enforcement if the vehicle plate is on a state or national crime database, and transmits and stores the images in the cloud, fully encrypted, for a default period of 30 days.
Is the Flock LPR only for law enforcement?
The Flock LPR camera can be used by law enforcement as well as private neighborhoods or businesses. These devices can all be shared with law enforcement so that regardless of the owner/purchaser, law enforcement is still able to access their data to help solve crime.
How do we know the Flock LPR was working during a certain date and time?
Flock’s cloud software maintains a suite of “health checks” that run regularly. Flock develops this software in house. These health checks validate essential functionality and let Flock know when a device is operating abnormally.
How do we know timestamps on the device are accurate?
The Flock LPR device syncs its clock with the LTE network. If the device goes offline, it would resync the clock once it is back online.
How does Flock’s LPR software work?
Flock builds our in-house, proprietary machine learning technology which is capable of identifying types of vehicles, license plate information, and various other objective vehicle characteristics (e.g. roof rack). Flock maintains a high standard of quality check and validates every machine learning model with a large, diverse dataset of vehicles, ensuring that our accuracy is inline with industry standards.
How does data security work?
The license plate data is securely captured, transmitted to the cloud, stored for thirty (30) days, and then permanently deleted. The data and footage is encrypted throughout its entire lifecycle. All data is securely stored with AES256 encryption with our cloud provider, Amazon Web Services. On the camera itself, data is only stored temporarily for a period of seven (7) days until it is uploaded to the cloud, at which point it is removed automatically from the local camera. This means the data is secure from when it is on the Flock camera to when it is transferred to the cloud, using a secure connection to Flock servers. While stored in the cloud, all data (both footage and metadata) is fully encrypted at rest. Flock defaults to permanently deleting all data after thirty (30) days on a rolling basis unless otherwise required by law or the individual customer agreement. Data collected, stored, and processed on devices and within Flock Safety’s cloud platforms are secured in accordance with Flock’s adoption of policies, procedures, and security controls necessary to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from cybersecurity events which can be found on our website Flock Safety Trust Center.
What is Flock’s Retention Period/ How is the Retention Period decided?
Flock Safety’s default data retention period for data collected by license plate readers is thirty (30) days, after which data is hard deleted from the cloud. We believe thirty days provides strong protection for community privacy while still enabling the provision of sufficient evidence in the majority of cases. There are also administrative benefits for our customers by retaining and storing less data.
Flock will respect existing LPR retention laws and regulations that differ from 30 days. If a customer wishes to impose a longer retention period that is not already required by its jurisdiction’s laws, Flock will offer an extended retention for up to one year, but shall require the agency to first obtain approval from an elected official and/or a governing body. This allows the decision to be made transparently and with the support of the community.
What constitutes a governing body or elected official:
- Democratically elected bodies include, but may not be limited to: state, local, county, city, and town governments.
- Democratically elected officials include, but may not be limited to: state and local elected officials, elected sheriffs.
The information contained within these guidelines is for the purposes of providing information to government agencies, law enforcement agencies and private customers regarding the legal process that Flock requires in order to disclose information.
The frequently asked questions (“FAQ”) section of these guidelines is intended to provide answers to some of the more common questions that Flock receives. These guidelines are not intended to provide legal advice or as a substitute for witness testimony and nothing within these guidelines is meant to create any enforceable rights against Flock.
Flock’s policies may be updated or changed in the future without further notice.