How a Unanimous Norman, OK Council Killed the Flock Pitch

Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman says every member of the nine-seat Norman city council voted against Flock Safety cameras. The reason: 30-day retention on every passing car and a private vendor holding the keys.

State of Surveillance Editorial Team

TL;DR: Norman, Oklahoma's nine-member city council voted down Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras on both pitches the company made to the city, the most recent of which was rejected on a 9-0 vote. Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman told 404 Media the deciding concerns were the 30-day data retention window, who inside Flock can read the data, and the fact that a private company runs the camera network. The Norman rejection sits inside a national deflock wave: more than 80 cities have canceled Flock contracts, and the rest of the Oklahoma City metro around Norman is already covered in Flock cameras.

Two pitches, two 9-0 votes against

Holman, who served twelve years on the Norman city council before becoming mayor last year, said Flock made two formal presentations in the last three years, both at the request of Norman's police department. The entire council said no both times [1].

Flock's selling points, Holman said, were the standard ones: crime prevention, faster case clearance, amber and silver alerts. The pitch that landed hardest in his memory asked "don't you want to find kidnapped kids and elderly people that have wandered off who have Alzheimer's?" [1]

That framing did not move the council. The earlier presentation, dated August 19, 2025 and covered by Government Technology on August 21, drew the same pushback. Norman Deputy Police Chief Ricky Jackson argued the department only needed plate reads: "that's all we need. We don't need anything else." Councilmember Helen Grant answered that it was "not hard to imagine somebody making up a reason to track someone down" [2]. Mayor Holman, presiding, called the privacy concerns "a real concern" on the record [2]. Flock "hasn't been back since I've been mayor," Holman said [1].

30 days was the line that would not move

The retention policy Flock offers to agencies is "selectable per agency," and most agencies pick 30 days, according to the August 2025 presentation [2]. Holman said that window is the problem. Thirty days, he told 404 Media, means "you're gathering data on every single car vehicle that goes in and out of the city of Norman, regardless of if they've committed a crime or not, and then that's stored for 30 days on some kind of database?" [1]

Some council members wanted retention measured in minutes rather than days. "It should only be an hour. Thirty minutes," Holman said, describing where several members landed [1]. Flock's product does not appear to support that window; plate reads only help when a hit can be matched to a later crime report, so short retention defeats the investigative use case the company is selling. The result in Norman was not a negotiation over the dial. It was a no. Flock's deck in Norman leaned on a national number: 2,200 crimes solved per week, roughly 10 percent of U.S. crimes solved [2]. None of that moved the nine council seats.

The private-vendor question was the other half

Even before the retention argument landed, the question of who runs the database was already a sticking point. "There's a lot of folks here who are weary about government surveillance, especially giving that over to a private company," Holman told 404 Media [1].

The structural concern is the one the Deflock movement has been hammering for two years: a private vendor holding the camera network and the searchable plate database creates a chokepoint that is neither fully inside government accountability nor fully outside it. Deflock's revolt against Flock Safety names more than 80 cities that have walked away from Flock contracts, none near Norman, according to the mayor [1][3]. No Oklahoma municipality sits on the cancel list as of August 2026. Flock's pricing was also on the table at the August 2025 meeting: about $3,500 per camera per year, with lifetime hardware and software upgrades bundled in [2].

Norman is the hole in the Flock map around it

The reason Flock has been returning to Norman is geographic. Norman sits on the edge of the Oklahoma City metro, and the rest of the metro is, in Holman's framing, "covered in Flock cameras" [1]. The August 2025 presentation named the other Oklahoma agencies already running the network: Cleveland County Sheriff's Office, Oklahoma City PD, Moore PD, Purcell PD, and Del City PD [2]. Cleveland County commissioners separately approved a one-year contract for 20 Flock cameras at the sheriff's office, with those cameras operating inside Norman city limits, according to The Norman Transcript [4].

Flock cameras also live inside Norman's borders in a second way the city council does not control: private homeowners associations that buy the same cameras and put them on neighborhood entrance gates. "Numerous homeowners associations" in Norman use Flock, the mayor said [1]. Those cameras are not part of any city contract, but they feed the same national plate-read network Flock runs for law enforcement. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation has separately been pressing cities to remove LPR cameras from state rights-of-way, drawing a line between collecting insurance information (acceptable to the agency) and collecting crime evidence (not acceptable) [2].

What to Watch

The Flock pitch could come back. Holman said the company has not returned since he became mayor, but Norman's police department still wants the cameras, and the regional pressure (Cleveland County, OKC, Moore, the HOAs) keeps the network growing around the city limits.

The Cleveland County sheriff's office Flock deployment is the closest surveillance footprint to Norman, with cameras physically inside the city even though the city council said no. How that county-level network is used, and whether any plate reads end up in cases originating in Norman, is a separate fight worth tracking.

Oklahoma's broader legislative lane also matters. The state passed a comprehensive consumer privacy law in 2026 (Oklahoma became the 21st state with a consumer privacy law), but consumer privacy statutes do not generally cover government-held ALPR data. Whether the state legislature moves on a retention cap or audit requirement for LPR networks is the policy next-step worth watching.

Sources

  1. 404 Media, Matthew Gault: “The Mayor Who Said ‘No’ When Flock Came to Town,” August 10, 2026. https://www.404media.co/the-mayor-who-said-no-when-flock-came-to-town/
  2. Government Technology: “Norman, Okla., Council Considers Using License Plate Cameras,” August 21, 2025. https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/norman-okla-council-considers-using-license-plate-cameras
  3. State of Surveillance: Deflock Flock Safety Revolt 90,000 Cameras Cities Cancel. /news/deflock-flock-safety-revolt-90000-cameras-cities-cancel-2026
  4. The Norman Transcript, cited by 404 Media: Cleveland County commissioners approve 1-year Flock contract (20 cameras for the sheriff's office). https://www.normantranscript.com/news/county-commissioners-approve-1-year-of-flock-cameras/article_a7e398c8-42f3-4ad6-b116-950fec736a77.html
  5. State of Surveillance: Oklahoma SB546 Privacy Law 21st State 2026. /news/oklahoma-sb546-privacy-law-21st-state-2026