Press Kit — DeFlock Apex

Key facts

7

Flock ALPR cameras installed in Apex. 3 Falcon Flex units are undeployed, 2 of which APD says it will keep for special events. The contract purchased 10 (5 Falcon, 5 Falcon Flex)

6,896

Outside networks a single Apex PD search can reach

2

Federal agencies in the sharing network (Chief said "hard stop, no federal")

133

Documented access requests from agencies across 36 states

100,075

Most cameras reachable in a single Apex PD search across the Flock network

4,506

Documented Apex PD searches, July 2025 to July 2026, recovered from 70 other departments' records

0

Public votes held before deploying Flock in Apex

$35K

Annual cost to Apex taxpayers for the Flock contract

Timeline

June 27, 2023

Council approves a Flock agreement and a purchase order follows in July. It was never implemented. Town purchasing wrote on January 2, 2025 that “due to Flock’s issues with conducting business in NC, we were never able to implement it, so we never expensed any funds to Flock under that agreement.” If you have seen 2023 described as the start of plate reading in Apex, including on earlier versions of this site, that is wrong and this is the correction.
January 14, 2025

Council approves the operative Flock agreement on the consent agenda, effective February 1, 2025 through January 31, 2027. 24-month term, no automatic renewal, $35,000 a year, 10 devices contracted.
October 2025

First cameras actually in use. APD’s own June 9, 2026 presentation to Council: “First cameras in use as of October 2025, alerts activated December 2025 (less than 6 months of full use).”
January 29, 2026

Police Chief presents Flock to Council work session. States: "We do not share with federal entities. Hard stop." System already live ~90 days with 10 cameras.
March 31, 2026

Flock sharing snapshot shows 2 federal organizations in the network, contradicting the Chief's public assurance.
May 2026

Pittsboro Commissioners vote to end Flock, July 1 removal deadline. Chatham County had already terminated in April, the first Triangle county to do so. Hillsborough, in Orange County, had cancelled its own contract six months earlier in October 2025.
June 9, 2026

Apex Council meeting. Council votes unanimously to send ALPR policy to Public Safety Committee. 10-camera expansion contract remains unsigned. Presentation names the two federal shares as the US Postal Inspector's Office and USAFB Police Department, calls them "errant" and "caught/cleared in audit," and states: "We CHOOSE not to share our images/data with federal LE/agencies."
August 11, 2026

Council chamber overflows and the town opens third-floor seating. Eight residents speak against surveillance technology, one in favor. Council pulls a four-year Axon technology amendment off the consent agenda before public forum.
August 20, 2026 — new finding

Apex's search record shows officers running the plate network for federal cases with no federal sharing relationship in place. October 21, 2025: "R. wanted by HSI for trafficking fentanyl," 6,571 networks and 94,700 cameras. September 19 and 21, 2025: four searches reading "Charles H. wanted for Federal Warrant." February 14, 2026: seven searches reading "FLOCK ASSIST FOR MCSO IN REF TO DOUBLE HOMICIDE." HSI is a component of ICE. Fentanyl trafficking is a criminal matter, so this is not immigration enforcement, and it does not contradict APD's claim of zero immigration searches. It contradicts the June 9 slide.
September 2, 2026

Mayor Gilbert confirms the Public Safety Committee date to a resident. It is not posted on the Town calendar at the time.
October 1, 2026 — the committee met

Public Safety Committee, 3:00 PM, Town Hall third-floor training room. The published agenda listed the ALPR item as “discussion only”; the Axon drone item on the same agenda was flagged for a committee recommendation. No recommendation was made. Mayor Gilbert said the committee is seeking a middle ground on safety and privacy and that “we’re not there yet.” Chief Johansen said vehicle thefts are down 60% since the cameras arrived, and was tasked with returning with clearer answers on where the data goes and who can access it.
October 1, 2026 — a federal court suppresses evidence over a Flock search

The same day the Apex committee met, Judge Sara E. Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma granted a motion to suppress in United States v. Kyle, No. 26-CR-00189-SEH. A Tulsa County deputy saw a California plate, followed the car “for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate,” and ran it through Flock, entering “traffic violation” and “investigation” as his reasons when all he knew was the plate’s home state. The query returned more than fifty records across multiple states over a month. The court held the search intruded on a reasonable expectation of privacy in “the whole of her physical movements,” called the system “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” and suppressed everything downstream as fruit of the poisonous tree. District court, binds this case only, appealable, and other courts have gone the other way. The 38-page opinion · our read, with the limits.
December 3, 2026 — next

The committee returns to the ALPR item and is expected to recommend to the full Council. This is the date the committee gave in the room on October 1. ABC11 reported November 5, which does not match what was said, and as of this writing neither date is posted on the Town calendar. Confirm with the Clerk before relying on it.
January 31, 2027 — the contract ends

The Flock agreement expires with no automatic renewal. A December 3 recommendation leaves roughly eight weeks for a Council agenda, a public reading and a vote, with the holidays inside it. If Council does nothing, the contract lapses.

Quote bank

Attributable to DeFlock Apex, a resident-led project, or to a named spokesperson on request. Use them as written or ask for something tailored to your angle. If you need a resident who is not us, we can connect you with people who have spoken at Council on the record.

On the October 1 court ruling

“The Chief’s argument for these cameras is public safety. On the same day he made it, a federal judge made warrantless plate lookups a liability to prosecutions. A deputy ran a plate with no basis, pulled a month of a stranger’s movements, and the government lost its entire case. Apex has no ordinance, no warrant requirement and no published standard an officer has to meet. We are not lawyers and this is one district court. But the Town Attorney should be telling Council what Apex’s exposure is before a renewal vote, not after a suppression motion.”

DeFlock Apex · on United States v. Kyle, N.D. Okla., October 1, 2026 · our read and the limits

On the 60% vehicle theft claim

“The decline is real and we are not calling the Chief a liar. What has no evidence behind it is the attribution. Thefts fell in every town around us, by anything from 10% to 82%, and every one of those towns runs plate readers. Apex’s own biggest drop came before a single camera was switched on, and 2025, the first camera year, went up 41%. His own region is the control group.”

DeFlock Apex · from FBI Crime Data Explorer agency submissions, Apex ORI NC0920200 · workings

On the December 3 timing

“Ten months of review produced no recommendation. The committee comes back December 3 and the contract ends January 31. Renewing needs one agenda item. Removing the cameras needs a disposition plan, a decision on the purchase order and an ordinance. One of those three options fits in eight weeks and it is not the one residents asked for. We are not saying that was the intent. We are saying it is the effect, and it is fixable by writing the removal mechanics down now.”

DeFlock Apex · on the committee schedule and the January 31 contract expiry

On the federal contradiction

“On January 29 the Chief told Council there was no federal sharing, hard stop. The Town’s own audit logs show federal accounts ran 166 searches that reached Apex cameras that same day. We are not alleging anyone lied. We are saying the department did not know what its own system was doing, and that is the more troubling answer.”

DeFlock Apex · supported by the Network Audit the Town produced in August 2026

On why records had to come from elsewhere

“Not one of the 4,506 searches we documented came from Apex. Every one was recovered from a records request to another department, because when an Apex officer searches the network, the towns whose cameras get swept keep the log. We had to ask seventy other governments what our own police department was doing.”

DeFlock Apex · 247 audit files from agencies in at least 13 states

On why conditions were abandoned for prohibition

“We spent months drafting a governance framework on the premise this could be made safe under strict enough conditions. The record changed our minds. A company that can rewrite its own safeguards in a blog post cannot be governed by conditions, and a system nobody voted for cannot be fixed by tuning it.”

DeFlock Apex · on the shift to a prohibition ask

On the vendor swap option

“Seven towns in five states dropped Flock this year and the cameras stayed up, because they switched vendors instead. The problem is mass plate surveillance adopted without consent. A different logo on the pole is the same dragnet with a new sales rep.”

DeFlock Apex · on the second of the three options the Mayor named

On the state program

“While towns argued about their own contracts, the General Assembly made the state program permanent inside a budget section, across roughly 78 percent of North Carolina roadways, with 90-day retention. Nobody cast a recorded vote on plate readers. That is how the biggest expansion in the state happened without a debate.”

DeFlock Apex · on Section 43.26, signed July 7, 2026 · background

What we will not say. We will not tell you Apex is buying from an Epstein company, that Flock data has been proven to flow into a specific federal analytics platform, or that a local ordinance ends plate surveillance in a town. All three circulate online, all three overstate the record, and we have written up why on the Axon page and the industry page. If a source offers you one of those, that is worth knowing about the source.

Story angles nobody has covered yet

Reporting we think is there and have not seen anyone do. We will hand over everything we hold on any of these, including raw files, and we do not need a credit or a heads up.

Angle 1

The ruling nobody in North Carolina has localised yet

On October 1 a federal judge in Oklahoma threw out every piece of evidence in a drug prosecution because a sheriff’s deputy ran a license plate through Flock without a warrant. Most outlets will not open a 38-page district court opinion from the Northern District of Oklahoma. The facts in it are ordinary and they map onto any North Carolina department running the same system: 30 days of history across many states, a free-text reason field the officer filled with “investigation,” and more than fifty records of one car’s movements returned by a single query. The court named Flock, called it “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” and wrote that it “serves up the information to law enforcement on demand.”

The reportable question is not the privacy one, it is the prosecutorial one. Does any North Carolina department have cases resting on warrantless 30-day ALPR lookups, and have their town attorneys looked? Apex has no ALPR ordinance, no warrant requirement and no published standard. Neither do most of the 369 NC towns with reported cameras. One records request to a district attorney’s office asking whether ALPR-derived evidence is in any pending prosecution would be a story in any of them.

We hold the opinion and have it posted. Be aware it cuts both ways and we say so on our page: it is a district court, it binds only that case, it is appealable, and in the Norfolk case a federal judge in the Fourth Circuit reached the opposite result on a 21-day retention period. Apex is contracted at 30.

Angle 2

The 60% claim, and the regional comparison nobody has run

Chief Johansen told the committee on October 1 that vehicle thefts are down 60% since the cameras arrived, giving no dates, no counts and no comparison period. The agency-level data is free and public. We pulled Apex and nine neighbouring agencies from the FBI Crime Data Explorer: Apex went 54 thefts in 2023, 29 in 2024, 41 in 2025, 12 in January to August 2026. The biggest drop in the series came before any camera was in service, and 2025, the first camera year, rose 41%. On the window the coverage implies, December 2025 to August 2026 against the same nine months a year earlier, the figure reproduces at 64%, an absolute difference of 23 vehicles. Take August off both ends and it is 50%, because August 2025 had 10 thefts and August 2026 had none.

The comparison is the part no outlet has published. Jan–Jul 2026 against the same months in 2025: Holly Springs down 82%, Wake Forest down 59% with 25 cameras live since September 2023, Apex down 50% with 7 since October 2025, Clayton down 43%, Morrisville down 35%, Cary down 33%, Garner down 23%, Fuquay-Varina down 17%, Raleigh down 11%, Knightdale down 10%. North Carolina fell 22.6% in the first half of 2026 per NC DPS. The NICB reports US thefts fell 23.2% in 2025 after 17% in 2024. Every agency in that list runs plate readers and the size of the fall tracks neither the camera count nor how long the network has been live.

We hold the full monthly series for all ten agencies with ORI numbers and the retrieval date, and the two charts as SVG and PNG. Ask and we will send them. The underlying figures are also reproducible from cde.ucr.cjis.gov in about ten minutes, and we would rather you checked them than took ours.

Angle 3

Eight weeks to decide something that took ten months to review

The committee recommends on December 3. The contract expires January 31. Regular Council meetings fall on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday, and Apex has historically held only one in December, so there may be as few as three Council meetings in between. The question for the Town is procedural and answerable: if Council chose discontinuation, what are the steps, the costs and the dates, and can that be produced in the time available? Nobody has asked whether the schedule leaves all three of the Mayor’s named options actually executable.

Worth pairing with a records request for the filed 2026 and 2027 Council meeting calendars and the status of purchase order 2026-0476, the draft Year 2 order. We have asked for both and will share what comes back.

Angle 4

The 6.6 million rows nobody has read

The Town produced nine monthly Flock Network Audits covering January 1 to August 18, 2026, roughly 6.6 million rows and 1.4 GB. We published two extracts. Nobody has analysed the full set. Questions in there: which out-of-state agencies query Apex most, what reasons they state, and whether the stated reasons cluster in ways that contradict how the program is described publicly.

We hold the raw exports and will send them on request.

Angle 5

The unsigned expansion contract

The Town has said the additional-camera expansion is unsigned, while a contract and purchase order routed as CONT-2025-0777 was executed by Flock on January 16, 2025 and dated February 1, 2025 on the Town side. We have asked which instrument covers which cameras and have not had a clear answer.

If cameras are operating under an instrument the Town describes as unsigned, that is a procurement story rather than a surveillance story, and procurement stories move councils.

Both documents are in the source documents below.

Angle 6

The written policy state law appears to require

North Carolina General Statute 20-183.31(a) requires a department operating an ALPR system to adopt a written policy covering retention, sharing, oversight, internal access and auditing. Apex’s system went live and ran for months. We have asked for the policy and the date it was adopted.

The question for any NC department, not just Apex: did the written policy exist before the cameras were switched on, and can they produce it with a date.

Our request and the Town’s responses are available.

Angle 7

The same question, asked of 369 towns

369 North Carolina cities and towns have reported ALPR cameras. The records method below works on any of them, and it works from the outside: you request another department’s audit log and you learn what your target department has been searching. One reporter with a template could establish statewide search volumes that no individual town has disclosed.

The request template and the method are below and free to use.

Angle 8

What the state pilot cost against what it produced

The state program ran 140 camera locations and more than 152 million plate reads in about eight months as of March 2026. The strongest public justification offered is 227 stolen vehicle alerts from three cameras in state rights-of-way over seven months, per Raleigh Police. Nobody has published the alert accuracy rate for the state program, or its cost per recovered vehicle.

Context and sourcing on the statewide page.

How we got the records, so you can do it too

The central finding of this project came from a structural quirk worth understanding, because it is reproducible in any jurisdiction and it does not depend on the cooperation of the department you are investigating.

The quirk. When a police department searches the Flock network, the search is logged by every network whose cameras it reaches. So the record of what your department did is held by the other departments it searched. You do not need your own town to cooperate. You need a list of the towns it touched.

Request your own department’s sharing snapshot first. This is usually produced without much resistance and it gives you the list of agencies in the network. Ours showed 994 organizations in March and 1,070 in April.
Send identical public records requests to those agencies asking for their Flock audit exports covering the period, filtered for searches originating from your target department. Volume matters more than precision. We sent roughly 70 and received 247 audit files from agencies in at least 13 states.
Reconcile the returns. Duplicates across agencies are expected, since one search hits many networks. De-duplicate on timestamp plus stated reason plus originating user. This produced our floor of 4,506 searches, which is a floor and not a total.
Request the Network Audit and the Organization Audit separately. They are different documents and departments sometimes produce only one. A Network Audit logs searches by outside organizations that reached your cameras. An Organization Audit logs searches your own operators ran. We needed both to see the federal picture.
Ask for the stated search reasons as a field. This is where the story is. Free-text reasons written by officers produced the HSI fentanyl entry, the four federal warrant searches, and the seven reading “FLOCK ASSIST FOR MCSO IN REF TO DOUBLE HOMICIDE.”

Our own request language and the Town’s responses are posted at deflockapex.org/records-request. Take the template. If you are working on a jurisdiction outside Apex and want help reading a Flock audit export, email us and we will walk through the columns with you. There is no story we are trying to keep.

In the news

Outside coverage of the Apex ALPR program and this campaign, and the canonical list. Some outlets are paywalled. If you have covered this and are not listed, email contact@deflockapex.org and we will add you.

Apex town leaders discuss, take no action on future of Flock cameras

ABC11 · October 2, 2026 · The October 1 committee meeting. Mayor Gilbert on seeking a middle ground and “we’re not there yet.” Chief Johansen on the 60% vehicle theft figure and on what can be done with retention, sharing and restricted access. Note: this report gives the next meeting as November 5; the committee said December 3 in the room.
Apex town leaders discuss what to do with Flock cameras

CBS 17 · October 1, 2026 · The Mayor on balance and middle ground, the Chief on the 60% figure and 30-day retention, and the DCI alert feature. Gives the next discussion as December.
Flock used in Apex arrest ahead of town discussion on the program

WRAL · October 1, 2026 · An arrest the Department highlighted the morning of the committee meeting.
Town of Apex sets meeting date for Flock camera review

WRAL · August 2026 · Mayor Gilbert names the three options the two-person committee will weigh: continue with Flock, switch ALPR providers, or discontinue ALPRs in Apex.
Debate around Apex cameras continues as Axon contract renewal looms

CBS 17 · August 2026 · The Axon Air DroneSense and Interview Room renewal, the Mayor’s operational case for both, and the October 1 committee date.
Questions raised over Flock camera oversight after CMPD officer charged

CBS 17 / Queen City News · August 2026 · A Charlotte officer is accused of sharing Flock data with the subject of a drug investigation. A retired officer describes how agencies without a Flock agreement obtain access through agencies that have one.
Wake County coverage of the Apex plate reader program

The News & Observer · August 20, 2026
Some Apex homeowners pushing back against license plate reader technology

CBS 17
What the Flock? An explainer on the controversial license plate reading cameras deployed across the Triangle

INDY Week
Tinkle Bells & Flock Cameras

The Peak Weekly
Residents urge removal of Flock ALPR cameras; others warn of public safety tradeoffs

Citizen Portal · August 11 meeting
Apex council sends ALPR policy to the Public Safety Committee after the Chief’s update

Citizen Portal · June 9 meeting
Apex Police credit license plate readers after arresting three people on various charges

CBS 17 · the department’s side
Around NC, statewide tracker including Apex

DeFlockNC
Flock cameras in North Carolina, ALPR laws and how to push back

FlipTheFlock
Flock cameras in North Carolina, town-by-town tracker

DeFlockILM

Source documents

All documents obtained via public records requests to the Town of Apex or sourced from public Council materials.

United States v. Kyle, No. 26-CR-00189-SEH (N.D. Okla. Oct. 1, 2026), ECF 62

The full 38-page Opinion and Order granting the motion to suppress. Judge Sara E. Hill. Free to quote and republish. Our reading, with the limits spelled out, is at /fourth-amendment.
Polling, research and department reversals on ALPR

Knox County TN 58.3 percent opposed, Arizona 63 percent opposed, the randomized experiment showing plate readers lower trust in police, and six departments that paused or cancelled since April. Every figure carries pollster, sample and method.
The cameras in Apex: hardware, specs and capabilities

Contract line items (5 Falcon, 5 Falcon Flex, FlockOS, Advanced Search), component teardown, capture envelope, and the vehicle-attribute filters Apex operators actually used.
June 9 Council Presentation on ALPR

Police Chief's presentation to Apex Town Council on the Flock ALPR program.
April 2026 Sharing Snapshot

Flock-generated report showing agency sharing relationships for Apex PD.
March 2026 Sharing Snapshot

Earlier snapshot showing 2 federal organizations in the sharing network.
Flock Contract & Purchase Order (2025-0777)

Contract and purchase order routed as CONT-2025-0777, executed by Flock on January 16, 2025 and dated February 1, 2025 on the Town side. Reporters should note this is a signed document, and the Town has separately said the additional-camera expansion is unsigned. We have asked the Town to clarify which instrument covers which cameras and will post the answer.
Flock Safety Master Service Agreement (FY23-25)

Original master service agreement between Apex and Flock Safety.
Original Purchase Order (July 2023)

Town of Apex purchase order for the initial Flock deployment.
Mayor Gilbert Statement (May 22, 2026)

Mayor's public statement regarding ALPR policy review.
Brevard County FL Hot List Share

Example of hot list sharing arrangement with out-of-state agency.
Schmierer v. Home Depot (ALPR Complaint)

Federal complaint challenging Flock camera use at private retailers, relevant legal precedent.

Pending share request records (16 batches) and additional contracts are available on the main site under the Network tab, or upon request.

Charts, free to republish

Right-click to save. All of these are free to republish with credit to DeFlock Apex, and SVG originals are available on request if you need to restyle or translate them. The three at the top are new as of October 2, 2026.

Change in reported vehicle theft across ten Triangle police agencies, January to July 2026 against 2025, shown against each agency's plate reader deployment

Ten Triangle agencies, all running plate readers, declines from 10% to 82%. FBI Crime Data Explorer.

Reported motor vehicle thefts in Apex by year, 2016 to 2026, with the dates the cameras began operating marked

Apex vehicle thefts 2016 to 2026. Thefts rose 41% in 2025, the first camera year.

Timeline of the Apex ALPR decision from October 2026 to January 2027, showing committee meetings, Council meetings with public comment, and the contract expiry

The decision calendar. Committee December 3, contract ends January 31.

Need the underlying numbers?

Full monthly series for all ten agencies, with ORI numbers and the retrieval date, plus SVG originals. Email contact@deflockapex.org. Everything is reproducible from cde.ucr.cjis.gov and we would rather you checked it.

From the Flock usage audit, July 2025 through June 2026.

Network reach: 7 cameras, up to 100,075 reachable

Network reach per search

Networks reached per search grew from 986 to 6,896

Networks reached per search, 2025 to 2026

Departments whose network audits contain Apex PD searches

Search justification breakdown

Monthly Apex PD search volume, 4,506 distinct searches July 2025 to July 2026

Monthly search volume

Corrections policy, and how to check us

We are residents, not a newsroom, and we would rather be corrected than be trusted on faith. Three things you can hold us to.

We separate what records prove from what they suggest. Where a claim is inference we label it inference. The clearest examples are section 9 of the Axon page, where we state two frequently exaggerated facts in their narrowest form and then say plainly what they do not show, and stage 4 of the industry page, which is marked inferred rather than asserted.
We correct in public, not quietly. If a figure here is wrong, email it and we will fix it on the page and say what changed. We have not had to do this yet, and when we do you will be able to see it.
We publish the right of reply. Our Council tracker carries a standing offer: if a Council member believes their position is misstated, they can clarify it in writing and we publish it in full. The same applies to the Police Department and to Flock Safety.

Two known soft spots, so you do not have to find them. The 4,506 search figure is a floor rather than a total, because it was assembled from other agencies’ partial returns and the true number is higher. And vendor-reported scan volumes and camera counts on the industry page are not independently audited, which we say on the page itself. Treat both as orders of magnitude, not precise counts.

Media contact

For press inquiries, source document requests, interviews, or help reading a Flock audit export:
contact@deflockapex.org

Response within a few hours on weekdays. We can provide: raw audit exports too large to host here, our records request templates, residents who have spoken at Council and are willing to be quoted by name, and high-resolution charts. We do not do off-the-record briefings, because everything we have is already public.

DeFlock Apex is an independent, resident-led project. We are not affiliated with any political party, organization, or vendor, we take no money from anyone, and we have no financial interest in any company named on this site.