How to find Flock cameras near you
Search your town on a camera map such as FlockDetour or DeFlock, then check your police department's Flock Safety transparency portal and council records, because maps only show the cameras someone has documented.
Use a camera map
On the FlockDetour live map, search a city, street or place, or tap the locate button to center the map on you. Set the filter to Flock to hide other camera types. Select a camera to see where its record came from, how confident that record is and when it was last confirmed. The map is free on the web and in the FlockDetour apps, with no account.
DeFlock's map at deflock.org draws on the same OpenStreetMap data, and the free DeFlock app is built for adding cameras to it.
Check your police department's transparency portal
Many agencies that use Flock publish a transparency portal, one page per agency at transparency.flocksafety.com. Flock Safety says more than 1,500 agencies have one. A portal can list the agency's camera count, retention period, sharing partners and search activity. Pair the camera count with a map to see how much of the network has been documented.
Portals are optional, so a department without one may still use Flock. The FlockDetour agency directory lists 365 portals across 34 states, from a dataset The News & Observer collected through April 2024, and links each agency's portal.
Search council agendas and contracts
Camera contracts are usually approved in public meetings. Search your city council or county board agendas and minutes for “Flock” or “license plate reader.” The contract usually states the camera count, the term and the renewal date. If you can't find it, a public records request for the contract and invoices is usually the easiest kind to get answered.
City police aren't the only buyers. Sheriffs, transit agencies, universities, homeowner associations and businesses buy their own cameras, and Atlas of Surveillance, from EFF and the University of Nevada, Reno, records which agencies use which technology.
Spot them on the street
A Flock camera is usually a small black housing on its own slim pole, with a solar panel above it and no cable running to the ground. If you find one that isn't mapped, add it to OpenStreetMap with the DeFlock app or another OpenStreetMap editor, and it will reach every map that reads the open data.
What a Flock camera looks like · Add a camera to OpenStreetMap
Questions people ask
Is there a map of Flock cameras near me?
How do I know if my city has Flock cameras?
Why isn't a camera I saw on the map?
Related guides
How to avoid Flock cameras, legally · DeFlock, FlockHopper and FlockDetour compared · How to request your city's Flock audit logs · All guides · Live camera map · Get the app
Sources
- DeFlock: the volunteer camera map
- Flock Safety: privacy and accountability update: the 7-day default, Evidence Mode, case codes and the portal count, August 13, 2026
- Flock Safety: how transparency portals work: what a portal can publish, including a public search audit, May 22, 2026
- The News & Observer: Private Eyes data: the transparency-portal dataset behind the FlockDetour agency directory
- EFF: Atlas of Surveillance: which agencies use which surveillance technology
- DeFlock app source code: features and AGPL-3.0 license of the mapping app
- OpenStreetMap: surveillance tagging: how cameras are recorded in the open map
FlockDetour is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Flock Safety or any surveillance vendor.