Counting the Flock: Transparency policies for Flock cameras differ depending on the department

FARGO (KVRR) — With all the different departments using Flock cameras and other ALPRs, we looked into what safeguards are in place to protect the public from it’s misuse. We found that these can differ greatly between the cities of Fargo, West Fargo, and Moorhead.

Like we said in the first part of our series, Flock offers what’s called a transparency portal allowing departments to inform the public about the cameras in their town, and provide a public log of the times the department accessed the system.

“We offer the Flock Transparency portal to all of our law enforcement customers, and there they can decide what specific information they share with the community,” said Flock Representative Paris Lewbel.

West Fargo has a transparency portal which includes information such as what the cameras do and don’t detect, and acceptable ways the data they do collect is used and how long it is stored. It also has a public access log, though some of the information is redacted.

West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen sent us this statement regarding their transparency policy:

“The Flock transparency page provides readily available public information, in accordance with state law, regarding the use of Flock cameras without compromising any ongoing criminal investigations. This information is available to the public at any time and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to transparency while continuing to protect and serve the community of West Fargo at the highest level. The Flock transparency page is just one of many resources available on the department’s overall transparency dashboard, which contains crime statistics, calls for service, crime maps, and more.”

In contrast, The Fargo Police Department currently has no transparency portal. They say they are looking into the possibility of adding such a portal to their system, but they were not able to say when the portal could be up and running.

“We’re actually working with our customer service representative with Flock right now to try to identify what we want on our, and how ours would look, and then we’ll have ours up and running here in the very near future, I’m sure,” said Capt. Matt Christensen, with the Fargo Police Department.

Something we learned during our talk with Fargo police is that they told us they do partner with private companies, like Scheels, regarding ALPRs.

“So Scheels has a Flock system that they purchased on their own, long before we had ours,” Christensen said. “And kind of what that partnership is (…) when we search Flock, we’ll get results that hit off their cameras, with their permission. So that’s kind of the partnership there. They own those cameras. We just have access to it. When we search a plate that went through and was read by one of their cameras we would get that result (…) I think Lowes has Flock cameras that recently came online, that we would have permission to search those as well.”

The Minnesota Legislature passed a law in 2015 regulating the use of ALPRs in the state.

In the first part of our look at Flock cameras, we learned the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has to keep a public website listing the locations of Flock cameras each department has.

Minnesota law also requires that agencies using the technology must also keep a public log of the times they accessed the system.

Moorhead’s transparency portal does not contain an access log. Moorhead Police Chief Chris Helmick sent us this statement:

“Moorhead Police Department began using Flock in early summer 2025, and as part of our first year of implementation, we are continuing to expand the information displayed in the portal to ensure it aligns with all statutory requirements. The system collects data 24/7, and we are working to incorporate both the specific time‑of‑collection details and the category breakdowns referenced in Subdivision 5. During our recent website redesign, the link to that portal was unintentionally left off the new site, but it has now been added. Even while the link was missing from our website, the information remained publicly accessible directly through the Flock portal.

Camera locations are listed on the BCA website, and we are looking into the possibility of including Flock collection data in a public crime data dashboard that we are currently developing with the help of the city’s GIS Department.”

Agencies in Minnesota also have to conduct an audit of their Flock system every two years, the results of which are also supposed to be public.

Since the Moorhead Police Department only started using the cameras a year ago, no audits have been done at this time. They should be due in 2027.