If you’ve driven past a Flock Safety camera in Reno in the past 30 days, footage of your vehicle and anything or anyone around it at the time is being stored in the Reno Police Department’s Flock Safety database.
When then-Reno Police Chief Kathryn Nance presented the Flock Safety surveillance system to Reno City Council in 2024, she said her goal was to quicken RPD’s response to crimes and assist police investigations. Flock Safety surveillance promises to do this with tools like its gunshot detection system and automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras.
Gunshot detection systems listen for the sound of gunshots and vehicle collisions to help officers respond in real-time without needing to wait for someone to report them to police.
The ALPRs create a database of footage with vehicles and their license plate numbers on a rolling, 30-day basis. The surveillance system can be set to notify law enforcement if vehicles of interest are spotted by cameras, or RPD can search for license plates in the database to discover what locations those vehicles frequent.
The RPD’s Flock Safety Transparency Portal states that the department’s policy is to only detect license plates and vehicles, but according to Flock, its cameras track 130 data fields including those “relating to bumper stickers, roof racks, window stickers, vehicle pose and the like.”
“These cameras just grab as much information as they can on whatever goes through their field of view,” said Daniel Jenkins, a member of the Northern Nevada Democratic Socialists of America (NNDSA) legislative team. He and other members are working on a proposal for more regulations on AI-integrated surveillance in Reno.
In the words of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “If there are Flock cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant.” The group filed a court brief in April arguing that “the use of ALPR systems gave the government unprecedented powers of surveillance that upset traditional expectations of privacy in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
“Just think about how much someone could learn about your life if cameras constantly tracked where you drove,” the ACLU wrote on its website. “They could find out which doctors you visit, what house of faith you worship at, who you visit or drive around with—even which political meetings and protests you attend.”
RPD and Flock Safety can access this footage and data at any time, and the police department shares this data with hundreds of other organizations across the nation—at press time, the number was 507—including city law enforcement agencies in states as far as Florida.
In its contract with Flock Safety, RPD also agreed to allow the surveillance company to share this data with virtually anyone outside of those organizations—other law enforcement agencies, government officials and third parties—if Flock decides that it is “reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process … or detect, prevent or otherwise address security, privacy, fraud or technical issues, or emergency situations.”
There are no guidelines in the contract on how Flock defines “reasonably necessary.” Vague contracts and the unregulated use of this surveillance technology have drawn sharp criticisms in Reno and across the country.
“It’s a system ripe for abuse,” Jenkins said.
According to 404 Media, there have been more than a dozen cases across the country in which police officers have used Flock to illegally stalk people. A Colorado woman was wrongfully accused of theft because an officer was “100 percent sure” that Flock and Ring camera footage placed her at the scene of the crime.
Similar trust in AI-integrated surveillance led to the wrongful arrest of Jason Killinger in Reno in 2023. The arresting officer, Richard Jager, arrested Killinger using facial recognition software from the Peppermill Hotel and Casino. Killinger is now suing Jager and alleging that RPD has made thousands of wrongful arrests using facial recognition software.
This Is Reno reported in March that Jager told his attorney that he had probably arrested hundreds of people based solely on facial recognition. Two years after the wrongful arrest, in September 2025, officers did receive PowerPoint training on facial recognition, but in January, Nance stated that she did not believe such training was necessary for every single officer.
“I would not trust anybody with this level of technology,” Jenkins said. “Just having this data is dangerous, because not only do we have to trust that RPD would follow all of the data and privacy law … we also have to trust that Reno PD has the cybersecurity structure to avoid (a situation like the Nevada ransomware attack last year).”
According to Jenkins, the data that Flock collects is extremely valuable. It can be used to improve similar surveillance systems by training AI machine-learning (ML) algorithms to process that data better. In their contract, RPD has given Flock permission to collect, analyze and anonymize RPD data to train cameras’ ML algorithms, which in turn can increase the value of their product.
“The cybersecurity needed to protect something like that is not cheap and is not necessarily easy to execute, especially with the data sharing within the software,” Jenkins said.
An early look at the proposed policies
While the NNDSA members are still working to fine-tune their proposal, they are calling for a ban on the use of AI-integrated surveillance technology, including the integration of Ring cameras into the RPD’s Connect Reno surveillance network. Non-AI integrated systems like CCTVs would still be OK.
The NNDSA would also like the city to conduct a “surveillance assessment” before installing new non-AI integrated cameras. The assessment would document the impact of the technology on the public and include options for less-intrusive alternatives, with explanations why the city wouldn’t use one of the alternatives.
Additionally, the NNDSA will request that any software updates be without new AI systems or data processing methods. The proposal would also ban the city from signing non-disclosure agreements with surveillance technology vendors.
The NNDSA plans to submit the proposal to Reno City Council members for their review and consideration.
The Reno News & Review reached out to the Reno City Council via email, phone and text for comment on Flock Safety cameras. While we were able to reach Mayor Hillary Schieve’s chief of staff, Brian Kulpin, and Cassie Harris from the City Manager’s Office, they ultimately stopped responding after a few days, and we did not receive a statement or comment in time for publication.