Dunwoody's roughly $500,000-a-year Flock Safety surveillance contract is in limbo after the City Council deferred renewing the bulk of the agreement, bowing to organized resident opposition over privacy and immigration enforcement concerns.

The deferral makes Dunwoody one of a growing number of cities nationally where public pressure has stalled the Atlanta-based company's license plate reader technology. No date has been set for the council to revisit the contract.

At the council's April 13 meeting, members unanimously approved a narrow $15,000 Flock contract for 911 dispatch technology and authorized a second Flock drone. But the broader renewal covering the city's network of approximately 80 automated plate readers and 25 live-view cameras was put on hold after attendees chanted "shame" during the proceedings, as we reported July 29.

Mayor Lynn Deutsch presided over the April 13 meeting. Council members John Heneghan, Jill Dunn, Ken Bernard, Jonathan Coachman and Eric Linton were present, Rough Draft Atlanta reported.

Privacy and ICE concerns drove the opposition

Residents' objections centered on two issues: data security and the potential for Flock data to reach U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Flock does not contract directly with ICE, but local agencies with Flock systems can choose to share data with immigration officers. The Atlanta Police Department allowed ICE to search its Flock data at least 15 times as of October 2025, Scalawag Magazine reported.

Unverified social media posts circulating in early August alleged that a Flock Safety vice president accessed the Dunwoody camera network and watched a children's gymnastics class feed, passing more than 400 other cameras to do so, citing what they described as internal company logs. The claim has not been independently confirmed.

Dunwoody Police Chief Mike Carlson defended the 911 component at the April 13 meeting, saying the technology "has significantly reduced the response time between receipt of calls for service and officer arrival on scene." The council also added guardrails to the approved portions of the agreement, barring Flock from using Dunwoody's data for demonstration purposes.

A national wave of Flock pullbacks

Dunwoody's deferral fits a pattern. Between August 2021 and May 2026, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states, with 39 cancellations in the first five months of 2026 alone, according to the San Francisco Standard. The Los Angeles Police Department let its Flock contract expire July 11, according to TechCrunch, with LAPD chief information officer Dean Gialamas saying at the time that the decision stemmed from "serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues."

A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers nationwide have been charged or accused of improperly using Flock technology. In Georgia, three Coweta County Sheriff's Office employees resigned in early August after an internal audit flagged their use of the system. State law classifies unauthorized use of license plate reader data as a criminal misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.

Flock Safety, which operates at least 80,000 cameras serving more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, said in response to the Georgia cases that its system logs every search and ties it to an individual user to help agencies detect misconduct.

As of July 29, no future council vote on the deferred contract had been scheduled.