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Good morning, Wichita!

Yesterday was National Coffee Day! Did you partake? Where’s your go-to spot?

Let's get to it!

- Landon Huslig

Together with Advanced Orthopaedic Associates

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What the flock?

You’ve probably driven past one without realizing it.

A small black camera, usually sitting on its own pole with a solar panel attached. You’ll typically see them scattered along Wichita streets, intersections, entrances and parking lots. Mostly placed at areas where cars drive in and out of.

They’re called Flock cameras, and there are a lot of them around Wichita. Honestly there are a lot of them around a lot of places nowadays. Google any city + flock cameras and you’ll likely find an article.

Once you see one, you won’t stop seeing them. Some call this the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon like when you get a white Jeep and start seeing white Jeeps everywhere.

Lately, these little black cameras have become a pretty big source of controversy.

Wichita is facing a lawsuit challenging its use of the cameras. The r/Wichita subreddit has had multiple threads discussing Flock. Wichita State students have raised privacy concerns. Cameras have been vandalized. And Flock itself recently announced new safeguards following cases of law enforcement misuse.

So what exactly are these things? What are they collecting? Who can see it? And why are people so worked up about them?

Let's dive in.

What are Flock cameras?

Flock Safety makes automated license plate readers, commonly called ALPRs. Unlike a typical security camera recording continuous video, these cameras are designed primarily to identify vehicles.

As your car passes, the system can capture your license plate along with the time, location and characteristics of your vehicle, including things like vehicle type, make, color and distinguishing features.

According to Flock Safety, its ALPR system does not use facial recognition or identify the person driving the car. It says online that the ALPR system does not even have the capability to do so, although Flock does have other products that have this capability.

Police can then search that information. The general public can not access this info (even your own) as it is limited to authorized users. Private users could have their own flock system that they can search, but that is separate than the city-wide system.

Say a witness reports a white Ford F-150 leaving the scene of a robbery. Investigators could search for vehicles matching that description that passed nearby cameras around the time of the crime.

The system can also generate real-time alerts when a camera spots certain vehicles, including stolen cars or vehicles associated with wanted or missing people.

But here's the important part that has people thinking we’re living in 1984 (the novel about Big Brother, not the era of When Doves Cry and Footloose).

The camera doesn't only photograph vehicles police are looking for. It photographs vehicles passing in front of it.

Your car. My car. The DoorDash guy's car.

And that's where things get complicated.

How many are in Wichita?

A lot.

The Wichita Police Department has 191 Flock cameras, according to recent reporting from KWCH.

But those aren't the only cameras around town. Businesses, neighborhoods, universities and other organizations can operate Flock cameras too.

An independent, community-maintained map of Flock camera locations around Wichita shows just how widespread the cameras appear to be. It isn't an official inventory, so locations shouldn't be treated as definitive, but pull it up and zoom around Wichita.

Wichita began deploying Flock technology in 2020 and has continued expanding the network.

Wichita State has gotten into the game too. According to The Sunflower, WSU purchased 19 Flock cameras in 2024 under an agreement worth $118,175 over three years.

What does Wichita use them for?

This is where the argument for Flock is pretty easy to understand.

Police use the cameras to find stolen vehicles, locate missing or abducted people, identify vehicles connected to crimes and develop leads after crimes occur.

And there are real examples of that happening here.

In July, Wichita police used Flock cameras along with phone-location information and other investigative tools to track a suspect and safely recover a 2-year-old child during an AMBER Alert.

City officials have also said Flock has helped Wichita police locate homicide suspects and recover stolen vehicles.

So this isn't technology that simply sits around collecting information. Police are actively using it to solve cases.

But solving crimes isn't really the controversial part. What happens to everyone else's information is.

Who can access it?

According to Wichita's rules, an officer isn't supposed to casually type in your license plate because they're curious about where you've been.

Searches must have a legitimate law enforcement purpose and are logged. Wichita officials have said searches generally require a police case number or other information documenting why the search was conducted.

The data is currently retained for 30 days before being deleted unless it is preserved for an investigation. But Flock is much bigger than a camera sitting at 21st and Rock.

Flock has built a network.

Wichita's agreement describes tools allowing law enforcement to request access to privately owned Flock cameras at businesses, schools and neighborhoods, as well as cameras belonging to other law enforcement agencies.

Depending on an agency's sharing settings, a camera in Wichita can potentially become part of a much larger law-enforcement network which is one of the biggest concerns surrounding the technology.

Wichita is being sued over it

In July, Wichita resident Mason Grimmett filed a lawsuit challenging Wichita's Flock system under the Kansas Constitution.

The lawsuit argues that collecting and storing the movements of ordinary drivers without a warrant amounts to unconstitutional surveillance.

According to KCUR's reporting, Wichita's system captures roughly 900,000 vehicle photographs per month.

Wichita sees the issue differently.

The city has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing in part that license plates are openly visible on public roads and drivers don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information exposed to public view.

The lawsuit remains pending but it does get right to the heart of the debate:

At what point does observing something in public become surveillance?

A police officer seeing your license plate while you drive down Kellogg probably doesn't bother many people.

A network of cameras automatically recording when and where your vehicle appears and making those observations searchable?

That's a different conversation.

There have been real cases of misuse

Privacy concerns aren't entirely hypothetical.

There have already been two documented cases involving law enforcement officers in Sedgwick County improperly using Flock technology for personal purposes.

I won’t get into the details, but you can google them and find them pretty easily. Those cases are part of the reason safeguards matter.

Flock recently announced additional protections, including moving toward a seven-day default retention period, requiring case codes for law-enforcement searches, misuse detection and automatic lockouts when suspicious search behavior is detected.

People are vandalizing them

The controversy has gone beyond public meetings and lawsuits.

Flock cameras around Wichita have recently been vandalized, with KAKE reporting multiple cameras damaged in September.

Whatever your opinion of Flock, destroying the cameras is obviously different from challenging their use through public meetings, records requests, lawsuits or policy changes.

It does go to show how contentious the technology has become.

What safeguards exist?

There are protections in place.

Wichita says searches must have legitimate law-enforcement purposes. Searches are logged so they can be audited, and access is limited to authorized users.

WPD says its Flock data is currently stored for 30 days and then purged unless it is needed for a specific case.

Flock says its cameras don't use facial recognition and aren't designed to identify race, gender or individual people.

And the company's newly announced safeguards should further restrict how the system can be used.

The question isn't really whether safeguards exist.

It's whether they're strong enough for a system this powerful.

SoOoOo...good or bad?

There probably isn't a satisfying one-word answer. And I am not here to tell you what to think.

If your child is abducted or your car is stolen, having cameras capable of locating the vehicle could be extraordinarily valuable.

If you're driving to work, church, a doctor's appointment, a political meeting or a friend's house, you may be less comfortable knowing your vehicle's movements can be recorded in a searchable database even though you've done nothing wrong.

Both realities exist at the same time.

And that leaves Wichita with some pretty important questions:

How long should this information be stored? Which agencies should be able to access Wichita's cameras? Should police need a warrant to reconstruct someone's movements over time? How often should searches be independently audited? Should residents be able to easily see when their own vehicle has been searched?

And maybe the biggest one:

How much surveillance are we comfortable accepting in exchange for the crimes it helps solve?

Those aren't questions Flock Safety gets to answer for Wichita. They're questions Wichita has to answer for itself.

The cameras are already here. And now that you know what they look like, good luck not noticing them.

What do you want to see us go deep on in a future deep dive?

Let us know!

Together with the Holiday Galleria

Holiday Galleria is back October 1–3 at Century II! Shop local, regional, and national merchants while supporting the Junior League of Wichita and its work in our community.

Oct. 1: A Very Merry Soiree Preview Party | $50

Oct. 2: Sleigh Girl Sleigh Girls’ Night Out | $30

Oct. 2–3: General Shopping | $10

Saturday includes a Grinch appearance, entertainment, and the best merchants!

Get your tickets and kick off the holiday season in style!