Flock Safety Recommends Seven-Day ALPR Retention, Expands Required Search Controls

Retention policy shifts from 30 days to a seven-day recommendation

Flock Safety announced August 13 that it is changing its recommended and default automated license plate recognition (ALPR) data-retention period to seven days, replacing the company’s previous 30-day default. The company said the revised position is based on its analysis that more than 90% of searches conducted without a complete plate occur within one week.

The change does not automatically shorten every existing deployment. Flock said current customers will retain the retention periods already approved by their local processes, while communities choosing the seven-day recommendation will receive the new Evidence Mode capability at no additional charge. For agencies, municipalities and private-sector camera-network operators, that distinction matters: retention duration remains a policy, contractual and records-governance decision rather than solely a platform setting.

Evidence Mode is designed for cases that need longer preservation

To address investigations that extend beyond the routine retention period, Flock is introducing Evidence Mode. The feature is intended to preserve specified ALPR data in cold storage when it is connected to an active investigation. Flock said detectives would preserve that information using a case-specific workflow, subject to applicable law and policy.

Integrators and system owners should confirm how the workflow will fit existing evidence practices before reducing routine retention. Questions include who may place data into Evidence Mode, whether a case or incident number is required, what audit trail is created, who can release preserved information, and how preservation and deletion schedules align with local public-records, discovery and evidence-retention obligations. Flock described Evidence Mode as a forthcoming rollout rather than a feature already available universally on August 13.

Case codes and misuse reviews move toward mandatory use

Flock said it will require case codes for all law-enforcement searches by the end of 2026. The requirement had been optional since July 2025. Under the announced model, an agency user will associate a search with a code from the agency’s records-management system. Emergency or exigent searches may bypass the requirement, but Flock said those searches will be flagged for administrator review.

The company also said Audit Assistance, a feature that identifies atypical search patterns for administrator review, will become mandatory for law-enforcement customers by the end of the year. Flock plans to add proactive lockouts: when activity meets its defined abnormal-behavior criteria, the affected user will be suspended pending an administrator’s review. Associated Press reporting confirmed that these controls were among the platform changes announced August 13.

Sharing filters and MFA add layers to access governance

Flock is also adding offense-based controls for interagency sharing. A customer will be able to decide which categories of investigations outside agencies may use to search its camera network. Flock offered examples including allowing searches for stolen vehicles, missing persons or violent crime while blocking searches related to immigration enforcement. The usefulness of this control will depend on careful configuration, clear definitions of eligible offense categories and regular review of sharing agreements.

Separately, Flock said multi-factor authentication became mandatory for all users at the beginning of August. MFA is a foundational control, but it does not replace governance over valid user accounts and authorized searches. Organizations should ensure administrator roles, account provisioning, offboarding, audit-log review and incident-response responsibilities are documented alongside MFA enforcement.

What buyers and installers should validate

For procurement teams, the announcement is a reason to revisit requirements that are often handled outside the camera specification: default and maximum retention, evidence-preservation procedures, search authorization, audit-log access, alerting, administrator response times, interagency sharing and emergency overrides. These requirements should appear in the agency policy and contract exhibits, not only in informal deployment guidance.

For integrators, the practical work may include mapping Flock user roles to the customer’s identity-management process, training administrators on case-code and exception-review procedures, and confirming the handoff between ALPR data, records-management systems and digital-evidence workflows. Buyers should also request a written implementation schedule from Flock, since the announced changes have different effective dates and existing retention settings are not automatically converted.

The measures may improve traceability and reduce the amount of routinely retained plate-reader data in deployments that adopt the seven-day setting. However, their operational value will ultimately depend on local policy choices, administrator review and consistent enforcement of the new controls.