Springdale, Arkansas Flock contract: what the Chief said, next to what the City signed

Springdale PD maintains absolute control over our local data.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

Customer hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right to use and distribute such Anonymized Data to improve and enhance the Services and for other development, diagnostic and corrective purposes, and other Flock offerings.

Master Services Agreement § 4.3 — City of Springdale, July 22, 2025 council packet. § 4.1 grants a limited, irrevocable, worldwide licence — limited to providing the Services. § 4.3, above, carries no such limit. · Read the contract

A right the City granted perpetual and irrevocable is, by the plain meaning of those two words, not a right the City can take back. The vendor's own use of anonymized and derived data is not a partner agency, is not bound by department standards, and is not revocable by the department.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Identify the provision under which the City may revoke, limit, or audit Flock's own use of data derived from Springdale — or confirm in writing that none exists.

Flock may use data in aggregate or technical ways to make the platform work better for all customers (for example, to continuously improve the system's read accuracy, to train the system to recognize new and/or special occasion license plate designs, etc.).

Flock Safety, in its own public Data Ownership guide · flocksafety.com/legal/data-ownership, last updated August 21, 2026. · What officials have said

Except as provided under subsection (b) of this section, captured plate data obtained for the purposes described under § 12-12-1803(b) shall not be used or shared for any other purpose…

Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-1804(a). And § 12-12-1802(3)(A) defines captured plate data to include "any other data captured by or derived from any automatic license plate reader system." · Read the contract

Flock's own plain-English page describes training the system on customer data. Arkansas's definition of captured plate data reaches data derived from the system. Two published texts, side by side. What follows from that is a question for a court, and no court has answered it.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Identify the provision of the executed Master Services Agreement that makes the representations at flocksafety.com/legal/data-ownership contractually binding on Flock with respect to Springdale's data. If there is none, identify each document that does govern, and provide the version in effect as of execution.

SPD has 10 ALPR-capable cameras from Flock Safety. We also purchased 14 additional Flock cameras that do not have ALPR technology; these function like any other live-streaming video camera and are used to supplement existing cameras in city parks and on the trails.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

10 + 14 = 24, which matches the Order Form. Springdale Police Department Policy 10.14, effective April 9, 2026, governs ALPR.

Order Form, July 22, 2025 packet; SPD Policy 10.14. · Read the contract

Fourteen of the twenty-four devices sit outside the technology his written policy covers — and every protection described in the rest of the letter is written as an ALPR protection. The letter also never mentions the twelve video integration gateways at all, which carry capacity for roughly 192 additional outside camera streams.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Identify the written policy governing the 14 non-ALPR Flock cameras and the video integration gateways: retention, access, permitted uses, and audit. If Policy 10.14 does not cover them, state what does.

Our ALPR cameras capture a still image of the rear of a vehicle with the focus on the license plate… The ALPR cameras do not allow us to view video, they do not capture images of people, and they do not use facial recognition.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

The Order Form includes FreeForm — AI plain-language search across LPR and video. The vendor's own sole-source materials describe Vehicle Fingerprint (color, make, type, objects, paper plates, no-plate vehicles) and Visual Search from any digital image.

Order Form and Flock sole-source letter, July 22, 2025 packet. · Read the contract

Read the subject of that sentence: it is "our ALPR cameras" — the ten. The other fourteen are described three paragraphs earlier as functioning "like any other live-streaming video camera." A live-streaming camera in a public park views video and captures images of people. The letter does not claim otherwise; it simply never addresses them. The open question is not faces. It is the search layer.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

State whether any AI or computer-vision search capability operates on the 14 live-streaming cameras or on gateway-integrated streams, and what it is capable of identifying.

While we partner with other law enforcement agencies, they are required to adhere to the exact same strict standards and legitimate law enforcement purposes that we require of our own employees.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

A department can discipline its own employees. It cannot discipline another agency's officers. What it can have is an audit log of outside searches.

No audit log of outside-agency searches has been produced in the public record. · Read the contract

The question is not whether the requirement exists. It is who enforces it, and how anyone would know it had been broken. If Springdale is genuinely walled off, the audit log is the proof — and it is a record.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Produce the audit log of searches of Springdale data run by any agency other than SPD for the last 12 months, and identify every network, sharing setting, or partnership through which outside agencies can query Springdale data.

Regular audits of ALPR searches are conducted by the supervisor assigned to the Real Time Information Center (RTIC). Additionally, I personally conduct regular audits of ALPR searches. Any searches that give even a hint of doubt of having a legitimate law enforcement purpose are investigated.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

An entity that uses an automatic license plate reader system … shall … Promulgate rules and policies concerning the manner and method of obtaining, retaining, and destroying captured plate data … and make those rules and policies available for public inspection.

Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-1805(a)(3)(A). · Read the contract

Audits that happen leave records. Records that exist are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And the statute already requires the written rules to be available for public inspection.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Produce the audit records for the past 12 months — dates conducted, number of searches reviewed, number flagged, and outcomes — together with the written rules and policies § 12-12-1805(a)(3)(A) requires to be available for public inspection.

We welcome legislative and legal guardrails related to the use of ALPRs, and look forward to working with our legislators to ensure that the rights of the people are protected. We will continue to set and adhere to strict guidelines related to the use of ALPR technology, and will not tolerate misuse.

Chief Derek Wright · "Dear Springdale Community," Springdale Police Department letterhead, Office of the Chief of Police. Emailed by the Chief to the Mayor as an attachment on July 31, 2026, and produced by the City under FOIA. · What officials have said

Springdale Police Department Policy 10.14 governs LPR only. Fourteen of the twenty-four Flock cameras, the twelve gateways, FreeForm, Flock911 and Nova are not covered by any written policy identified in the public record.

SPD Policy 10.14, effective April 9, 2026; Order Form, July 22, 2025 packet. · Read the contract

The department's own letter shows fourteen devices its written policy does not reach. The Chief says the rules should be written down and welcomes help writing them.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

The rules described for ten cameras — put them in writing for all twenty-four.

hardware and software safety products

The resolution, as it appeared on the public agenda · Resolution, July 22, 2025 council packet. · What officials have said

10 Falcon ALPR cameras · 8 Condor PTZ live-video cameras · 6 community partnership cameras · 12 Video Integration Gateways at 16 streams each · FlockOS Premium real-time crime center · Flock911 live 911 video · FreeForm AI plain-language search across plate data and video · Traffic Analytics · Flock Nova, which fuses CAD, RMS, DEMS and inter-agency networks.

Order Form, same packet. · Read the contract

Council members were told a great deal more than this in committee eight days earlier, on the record. The agenda is what residents saw.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Who drafted the agenda description, and what drafts exist? The public notice a resident reads is the only terms of service they get.

For you guys specifically it's gonna be able to give you guys detailed reads of who is coming into Springdale. So traffic counts, where are they from, you know, when's the busiest time of day, month, year and then are they coming from in town, out of town

Jordan, Flock Safety representative · Police & Fire Committee meeting, July 14, 2025 · What officials have said

An automatic license plate reader system may be used: (1) By a state, county, or municipal law enforcement agency for the comparison of captured plate data with data held by the Office of Motor Vehicle, the Arkansas Crime Information Center, the National Crime Information Center, a database created by law enforcement for the purposes of an ongoing investigation, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for any lawful purpose;

Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-1803(b)(1). The Order Form includes Traffic Analytics. · Read the contract

The statute's law-enforcement exception is written as a purpose limitation, and the purpose is comparison against five named sources. Population-level traffic analysis is a different use. Whether it fits is not something this site decides — the City can say which exception it operates under.

Neither document settles this. The question for the City, in writing:

Is Traffic Analytics enabled on Springdale plate data? Identify the statutory exception under which it operates.