What the Flock? How the City of Hagerstown is Tracking Residents and Visitors Every Road Trip, Even Beyond City Limits

Over the past 30 days, City of Hagerstown Flock cameras captured the license plates of 227,775 unique vehicles, creating a searchable database of every vehicle recorded in the area over a rolling window. But only a few actual Flock cameras have been spotted in the wild. So how does the City of Hagerstown capture so many vehicles? After being provided through social media a Public Information Act denial for locations of Hagerstown’s Flock Cameras, we did some digging into the City’s Flock camera system, and the answer surprised us.

Flock Safety is a prominent law enforcement and private security technology company known primarily for its widespread network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs). Powered by solar energy and connected via cellular networks, these specialized cameras are mounted at fixed roadside locations to capture point-in-time, high-resolution still images of passing vehicles. Instead of video, the system uses machine learning algorithms to generate a unique “vehicle fingerprint,” cataloging data points such as the license plate number, vehicle make, model, color, and even distinct physical traits like roof racks or bumper stickers.

The core function of the technology is twofold: it allows police departments, neighborhoods, and businesses to retroactively search historical vehicle data (typically retained for 30 days) during criminal investigations, and it cross-references scans in real time against state and national “hotlists”—such as the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC)—to immediately alert local law enforcement to stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, or missing persons.

While proponents celebrate the technology as a highly efficient tool for solving crimes and reducing human bias, it has also faced significant scrutiny from civil liberties groups concerned about mass surveillance, the expansion of a centralized tracking database, and individual privacy rights. Recently, an auto reviewer found himself at the wrong end of a Flock Camera after the vehicle he was testing was incorrectly flagged as stolen.

The Hagerstown Police Department (HPD) utilizes 20 Flock Safety ALPRs to assist in retroactive investigations and real-time monitoring of high-interest vehicles. HPD cross-references detections against major databases (NCIC and Amber Alerts) and maintains inbound data-sharing partnerships with dozens of jurisdictions and entities nationwide. This network includes regional sheriff offices (such as Franklin County, PA), out-of-state police departments (ranging from New England to the Midwest), and select private partners (such as Lowe’s Corporation).

But not all of the Hagerstown Flock ALPRs are actually Flock equipment.

According to a 2025 quote document, City of Hagerstown’s Flock implementation utilizes their existing cameras through “Flock Safety Wing”. Flock Wing (comprising the Wing Gateway and Wing LPR product line) is a hardware and software integration solution developed by Flock Safety to bring third-party security cameras into its unified public safety ecosystem. Rather than requiring agencies or businesses to replace their existing infrastructure, the Wing system acts as a bridge; by connecting directly to existing third-party cameras, it injects them with Flock’s AI-driven computer vision capabilities. This upgrade transforms standard video feeds into “smart” cameras capable of real-time livestreaming, license plate recognition, and advanced vehicle characteristic searching (such as sorting by make, model, or color).

So what does that mean? Any city-owned camera could potentially be one of the twenty Flock cameras, including the speed cameras which recently switched from ground-based boxes to pole-based cameras. And the City of Hagerstown’s information sharing agreements gives them access to a lot more cameras, including those being used in Lowe’s parking lots. Before their public audit logs stopped including the information, the City of Hagerstown’s camera searches were examining up to 75 cameras at once, most of which have 30-day retention periods. That means a HPD officer could type in your license plate, and likely see everywhere you’ve been in the last 30 days.

But how often does that happen? As of publishing, the City of Hagerstown conducted 70 vehicle searches over a 30 day period according to their transparency portal. That’s over two searches per day. Unfortunately we have no idea why these searches are being conducted, because the audit log contains very basic information which makes the “transparency” aspect of the audit log pretty useless.

So just keep in mind the next time you drive through Hagerstown, that the City is watching 24/7, and can still track you long after you’re gone.

Associated documents for this story are available in our Public Information Archive.

Direct link to City of Hagerstown documents here.

Article by Ken Buckler, President of Radio Free Hub City.

Video Spotlight