Village's History with Flock License Plate Reading (LPR) Cameras 

The Village entered into an agreement with Flock at the March 21, 2023, Village Board Meeting. Staff intended for this service to be used for the reading of license plates and assist in tracking of stolen vehicles, locating vehicles of interest, assisting in local criminal investigations, and helping find missing persons in Amber alerts and Silver alerts.  

Staff cited these cameras being used in multiple neighboring communities during the explanation of this program, the communities at the time of implementation included: Des Plaines, Arlington Heights, Elk Grove Village, Palatine, Barrington, Prospect Heights, Northbrook, Glenview, Park Ridge, and Wheeling. Of the communities mentioned, specific attention was given to Highland Park, which used these cameras to locate and apprehend the shooter from the July 4, 2022, mass casualty incident.  

Data collected from Flock cameras has since proven to be an important resource multiplier. Officers and investigators have utilized these devices to aid in their investigations. Recent uses of the cameras have gone beyond criminal activity, in such situations involving the locations of individuals connected to silver alerts.

Timeline of Recent Events

May 9, 2025 – License plate readers located in Mount Prospect were used in a Flock National Lookup for a missing persons case in Johnson County Texas without Village notification or request. Mount Prospect Information was not the specific target of the search. Johnson County searched all cameras in the National Lookup, over 83,000 cameras nationwide, in hopes of locating the missing person’s vehicle. Please see the press release issued by Flock regarding the purpose of the search. The Mount Prospect Police Department did not have a data sharing agreement with the Johnson County TX Sheriff’s Office and the license plate searched by the Johnson County Sheriff was never found on any LPR cameras in Mount Prospect. No data from Mount Prospect was provided to Texas. 

May 21, 2025 - An audit of Flock license plate data for cameras in the Village was requested using the Freedom of Information Act. The information being requested pertained to the searches that were conducted on Flock cameras specifically located in Mount Prospect. 

June 11, 2025 -The Illinois Secretary of State's Office requested a meeting with the Mount Prospect Police Department (MPPD). During the meeting, the Secretary of State mentioned seeing an article, which had to do with MPPD possibly sharing LPR data with the Johnson County Sheriff, possibly in violation of State Law (625 ILCS 5/2-130). As a result of the article, the Illinois Secretary of State decided to conduct an audit on MPPD’s Flock cameras data and located the incident out of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas. Their audit also revealed 262 searches, from law enforcement agencies around the country, where the reason for the search was cited by those Departments for immigration purposes. The MPPD was unaware of these searches until notified by the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office.

 Since being notified by the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office of these LPR data immigration related searches in violation of Illinois law, the MPPD immediately implemented the following actions: 

  • MPPD opted out of the Flock Safety “National Lookup” feature
  • MPPD canceled any data-sharing agreement with law enforcement agencies who violated Illinois state law.
  • MPPD revoked access to Mount Prospect’s ALPR data for all law enforcement agencies outside of Illinois.

What Happens Next?

The Village also learned Flock had filters in place, so searches related to immigration or reproductive healthcare services would not be allowed to access any of their cameras located in Illinois. These measures were put in place so all Illinois law enforcement agencies would be in compliance with the law. It would appear the filters had stopped thousands of other searches, but for unknown reasons, 200 plus searches still made it past the software and were allowed to access cameras in Illinois. Flock is actively working to enhance and strengthen these filters, to prevent any of these types of searches from looking at their Illinois LPR cameras again. They are also working with the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office.

 It is the Village’s intention to keep the stricter guidelines, which were implemented in June, in effect until such time Flock can demonstrate and provide assurance the filters and other security measures installed within their software program are able to meet the ethical and legal standards of Mount Prospect. Until such time, access to our LPR cameras will be limited to those agencies in Illinois who we have data sharing agreements with and have been approved by our department.

MPPD will be updating its ALPR policy to include regular audits of the searches being conducted by internal and external users.