The police chiefs in Burlington and Graham are holding firm in their use of an AI-enabled technology that has been alternately hailed as breakthrough in policing and condemned as a threat to personal privacy rights.
Widely referred to as “Flock” cameras after their leading American distributor, these sophisticated surveillance systems have been popping up in communities a-cross the U.S. as both a private security tool and a resource for law enforcement.
Despite their growing ubiquity, these camera systems have come under increasing scrutiny from privacy advocates. In the meantime, the alleged abuse of these systems has ended the careers of several police officers, while an ever-lengthening list of communities has begun to rethink or even abandon this new technology.
In spite of these gathering doubts, the use of Flock cameras has not lost any of its luster for Burlington’s police chief Alan Balog. Nor have any of the recent scandals fazed Brian Neil, Balog’s counterpart in the city of Graham.
“Has it been abused elsewhere? Sure. But, from the beginning, we have put in strict guidelines to prevent the misuse of this technology.
“. . . There’s been a lot of misinformation about what it does. It doesn’t do facial recognition, and it doesn’t catch suspects. And if your information is in our system, it’s because we’ve entered it as part of an investigation.”
– Graham police chief Brian Neil
“Has it been abused elsewhere? Sure,” Neil conceded in a recent interview with The Alamance News. “But, from the beginning, we have put in strict guidelines to prevent the misuse of this technology.”
Joining the flock
The systems that Neil and Balog continue to swear by are just one example of the products on offer from Flock Safety, the eponymous company behind this technology.
Flock Safety’s wares, which are marketed to both public and private customers, range from audio gunfire locators to surveillance cameras that can automatically zoom in on faces, phone screens, and other fine details. But for most law enforcement professionals, the company’s signature line is its automated license plate readers, which account for most of the so-called Flock cameras in Alamance County.
The first municipality in this area to acquire these cameras for police use was reportedly the town of Gibsonville. Since then, Elon University’s campus police have also embraced the technology – as have the police departments in Burlington and Graham.
In December of 2024, Burlington’s then city manager Craig Honeycutt signed an agreement with Flock Safety that has placed 30 of these license-plate readers across the city’s municipal limits. The city’s police department has also acquired one mobile device that can be deployed as necessary, along with all of the computer hardware and software needed to operate the equipment.
According to the city’s agreement with Flock, this new technology cost $123,050 in the first year of use – with a subsequent expense of $92,800 per annum.
In November of 2025, Brian Neil, who had just been installed as Graham’s new police chief, brokered a similar deal with Flock Safety to introduce six stationary cameras and one mobile device to his jurisdiction. Under this three-year agreement, the police department has been billed $25,400 for the first year and will pay another $21,500 for each of the subsequent two years.
Neil, who personally inked the contract with Flock, told The Alamance News that decided invested in this technology, in part, because he was able to pay for it with federal asset forfeiture funds.
Meanwhile, Burlington’s chief Balog recounts a more round-about route for his own agency’s introduction to Flock.
How Burlington got its start with Flock
“We were part of a pilot program. The SBI got permission from the state legislature to put up the cameras in the state right-of-way, and there are a lot of state highways in Burlington.”
– Burlington police chief Alan Balog
“We were part of a pilot program,” he recalled in an interview Tuesday. “The SBI got permission from the state legislature to put up the cameras in the state right-of-way, and there are a lot of state highways in Burlington.”
All in the details
The cameras that both Burlington and Graham have obtained are examples of Flock’s “Falcon” model of automated license plate reader. These devices are designed to take rapid, film reel-like photos of vehicles from the back as they coast along public roadways. These images are then processed by computers that use artificial intelligence to recognize and decipher the license plates.
Neil contends that, as useful as he has found this technology to be, the actual capabilities of the license plate readers are quite modest compared to what some critics suggest.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation about what it does,” he conceded. “It doesn’t do facial recognition, and it doesn’t catch suspects. And if your information is in our system, it’s because we’ve entered it as part of an investigation.”
According to Flock System’s contracts, data from the company’s cameras can be compared against state and federal databases as well as an agency’s own internal records. In this way, police can identify stolen vehicles, find people who’ve been reported as missing, and track down criminal suspects by zeroing in on their cars. Users can also set up automated alerts to let them know when a specific vehicle appears on one of the cameras.
The computerized systems that operate these cameras are also able to store images of the license plates that the cameras record. In Burlington, these images are preserved for 30 days before they’re erased, while Graham has opted for a 7-day retention period for its images.
Another feature of Flock’s systems is the ability to search these digital archives. Authorized users can look up a particular license plate or home in on the images that certain camera captured at a specific moment in time. An additional “Vehicle Fingerprint” function allows law enforcement agencies to search for vehicles by make, model, and state of registration – or to trawl the archives for “other unique features like bumper stickers, decals, and roof racks.”
Thanks to Flock Safety’s expansive network of customers, the two police departments can also swap data with other law enforcement agencies that use the company’s cameras. They can requisition records from Flock’s private clients, which include Lowe’s Home Improvement and other prominent retailers. In each case, the department must make a request to access information from outside its own archives, and there’s no indication that the flow of information can be reversed to allow private clients to obtain data from law enforcement.
Satisfied customers
Earlier this year, The Alamance News did a deep dive into Burlington’s use of these cameras that revealed an overwhelmingly positive response from the top-ranking members of the city’s police force.
Josh Light, an assistant chief with the department, assured the newspaper that the system which Burlington has acquired isn’t the sort of Orwellian nightmare that some people fear.
“The flock cameras we use are not surveillance cameras. It’s not much different than when an officer sits in a vehicle looking at cars. The main difference is that it enhances your ability to recognize plates and recognize vehicles.”
– Burlington assistant police chief Josh Light
“The flock cameras we use are not surveillance cameras,” Light said at the time. “It’s not much different than when an officer sits in a vehicle looking at cars. The main difference is that it enhances your ability to recognize plates and recognize vehicles.”
While it may be narrowly tailored, this technology has scored no shortage of investigative successes, according to the top brass in Burlington.
During a series of conversations in February, Light and his colleagues pointed to at least 10 missing elderly or disabled individuals who were safely tracked down with the aid of these cameras as well as dozens of stolen vehicles that were recovered after their license plates pinged in the system.
The department’s higher-ups also recounted several fugitives who the cameras helped apprehend – including a man wanted in a Stokes County shooting whose car ultimately materialized near Burlington’s Springwood Park. In another case, the Flock archives enabled officers to key in on a suspect’s vehicle after a random drive-by shooting along the interstate. Thanks to this lead, the department filed felony charges against 33-year-old Destiny Shavonta Quanshall Poole – who Balog insists would never have been identified without the automated license plate readers.
Still on the fence
The office of Alamance County’s sheriff currently isn’t using Flock cameras to keep tabs on motor vehicles. Nor is the municipal police department in Mebane.
Yet, the county’s easternmost city, which proudly dubs itself “positively” charming, could very well be the next jurisdiction to adopt this technology, which critics insists smacks of the “surveillance state.”
Mebane’s police chief Mitch McKinney concedes that he’s actively evaluating Flock Safety’s products as well as the wares of a competitor known as Verkada to see if either is worth adding to his own arsenal of investigative resources.
McKinney, who has led Mebane’s police force for roughly three years, has told The Alamance News that he has not yet made a decision about whether or not to adopt this technology.
“We are researching it, and there’s some discussion that we want to have with the city leadership.”
“But I’m not going to get a technology that violates Constitutional law or due process, and while there’s a lot of benefits to these cameras, there are also opportunities for it to be misused.”
– Mebane police chief Mitch McKinney
“We are researching it,” he acknowledged in an interview earlier this week, “and there’s some discussion that we want to have with the city leadership.”
McKinney added that he’s familiar with the benefits of Flock’s license plate readers.
“But I’m not going to get a technology that violates Constitutional law or due process, and while there’s a lot of benefits to these cameras, there are also opportunities for it to be misused.”
