Flock cameras reinstalled in Dayton, Minnesota

Two Flock Safety license plate cameras were back in service in Dayton, Minnesota, in September, weeks after the city had switched off and taken down all seven of its cameras and its city council had voted to pause the program. The city says it never approved the reinstallation.¹

The city laid out the sequence in a post to residents. On September 17 the Dayton Police Department learned that Flock had produced a maintenance work order. On September 18 city officials told the company that the program was on hold and that no work orders should be completed.² “Unfortunately, the City’s direction was not followed, and the camera was placed back into service without authorization,” the city said.²

Once it knew about that camera, the city checked the other places where Dayton’s Flock cameras had stood and found a second one reinstalled without its knowledge. Officials said both would be removed promptly,¹ and KARE 11 reported that the police department then took them down.² FOX 9 asked Flock why the cameras went back up; the company had not answered when the story ran on September 30.¹

• January 1, 2025. Dayton’s Flock agreement begins: a one-year term, approved with the city’s 2025 budget, that renews for two years unless the city cancels.³
• August 18, 2026. The city holds an information meeting for residents about the cameras.³
• August 20. Police turn off and remove all seven cameras after several are damaged.³⁴
• August 25. The council votes 5–0 to suspend every automatic license plate reader program in the city, Flock’s included, through December 31, 2027.³
• September 17. Police learn that Flock has produced a maintenance work order.²
• September 18. The city tells Flock the program is on hold and no work orders should be completed.²
• Late September. The city finds two cameras back in service and has them removed.¹²
• September 30. FOX 9 and KARE 11 report the city’s account.¹²

Dayton’s cameras came down before the council voted. Police turned off all seven and pulled them from their locations on August 20, KSTP reported, to keep the cameras that had not been damaged from being targeted next.⁴ Two days earlier the city had held an information meeting, and residents brought privacy concerns to it.³

Police Chief Paul Enga told the council he still saw value in the technology. “I believe automatic license plate readers have a great benefit to the city of Dayton,” he said. “The cameras allow officers to get alerts for vehicles that could potentially cause harm.” He also answered the residents: “We deeply appreciate your feedback and hear your concerns regarding automatic license plate readers.”³

The council chose a pause with an end date over an outright cancellation. Council Member Stephanie Henderson called a time limit “a nice middle ground.” Mayor Dennis Fisher put the decision in terms that bear directly on what happened next: “We could give direction and say that we as a group don’t want to reinstate it without our direction.”³ The vote was unanimous.

Why it happened. Neither the city nor Flock has explained how a maintenance order became a working camera after the city said no, or how a second camera went back up without the city’s knowledge.¹

Whether they recorded. The reports do not say whether the two cameras captured plates while they were back in service, who could have searched anything they captured, or what became of it.

The rules that would apply. Minnesota law requires plate data that is not part of an active criminal investigation to be “destroyed no later than 60 days from the date of collection.” It also requires a police agency to keep a public log of when and where its readers actively collected data, to commission an independent audit every two years, and to notify the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension within ten days of installing or using a reader.⁵ Flock’s own default is shorter, as how long Flock cameras keep data explains, and Minnesota’s statute sits alongside the other states’ in license plate reader laws, state by state.

Dayton is not the first city to find Flock cameras running after it ordered them off. In Evanston, Illinois, the city told Flock on August 26, 2025 to shut down its 19 plate readers and put its contract on a 30-day termination notice. By September 23, all 15 cameras that had come down were back up, alongside three that never had. The city sent a cease-and-desist; “Flock committed to promptly removing the cameras,” a city spokesperson said.⁶

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city said Flock had notified it that two cameras “were installed by their technicians in late November — without the City’s awareness,” called that a “material breach of our trust and the agreement,” and ended its contract. In Eugene, Oregon, at least one camera was still capturing plates weeks after police ordered all 57 turned off. A Flock lobbyist said the Cambridge cameras had been uninstalled and no data had been accessed.⁷ Those decisions are recorded, with Dayton’s, in our tracker of cities that have dropped Flock.

Florida has the opposite problem. When St. Lucie County went to remove the license plate readers on its roads, it found cameras that no agency would claim.

Dayton’s pause is part of a wider Minnesota retreat from Flock cameras. Columbia Heights’ council voted unanimously in June to end its contract, which covered 12 cameras, after residents raised concerns about federal immigration access to the data. “Even though it’s a really great tool that’s been so valuable, we just really need to pause it for our community,” the mayor said.⁸ In September Plymouth stopped using all 16 of its cameras, with only the mayor voting no.⁹

The Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office discontinued its cameras in August. “There has been a growing backlash against how some agencies have used the data collected by the cameras,” Commander Ben Zawacki said.¹⁰ Winona decided not to replace its cameras after all eight were stolen, and Duluth and West St. Paul moved to suspend or end their contracts. A Star Tribune investigation found hundreds of immigration-related searches of Flock data across the Twin Cities, most involving cameras in Fridley, which then restricted access to its data.¹¹

Flock answered with changes in August, among them a seven-day default for deleting plate data and a tool that flags unusual search activity. “Hindsight tends to be very clear,” CEO Garrett Langley said. “And I think, of course, we could have done more earlier.”¹⁰

As of October 1, 2026, this site documents 1,612 license plate readers in Minnesota, about 86% of them made by Flock Safety. Dayton has no camera page of its own: a city gets one once volunteers have documented ten readers inside it, and Dayton’s whole program was seven. Readers in neighboring Maple Grove and, across the river, Ramsey are on the Flock and ALPR camera map, which records where a camera has been documented, not whether it is switched on.

Searches for Dayton’s Flock cameras often turn up a different city. Dayton, Ohio suspended its fixed plate readers in May 2026, after its police department found 7,100 search requests from outside agencies citing immigration-related purposes, contrary to city policy. “It was definitely user error,” the outgoing police chief, Kamran Afzal, said. “It’s not a system issue, it’s an us issue.”¹² That case is covered in whether Flock shares data with ICE. The reinstalled cameras on this page are in Dayton, Minnesota, a Hennepin County city on the Mississippi River northwest of Minneapolis.

The contract clock. The pause runs through December 31, 2027, the end of the current contract term. The agreement then renews for two more years unless the city gives notice at least 30 days before the term ends.³ “After that first year, it renews for two years unless the city cancels that,” City Attorney Cynthia Kirchoff told the council.³

Flock’s explanation. The company has not said publicly why the two cameras went back up. Whether Dayton’s council treats the reinstallation as a reason to end the contract outright, as Cambridge did after its own unauthorized installations,⁷ is the next decision to watch.

Your own area. What residents can and cannot do about plate readers near them, including how to read an agency’s published policy, is in can you opt out of Flock cameras?