Plymouth City Council voted unanimously on September 22, 2026 to end its contract with Flock Safety, whose automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are mounted around the city.

The city suspended all local Flock user accounts the next morning, then sent a formal cancellation letter by email and US Mail after consulting its City Attorney's Office. According to Yahoo, Flock never replied from its corporate or legal teams beyond contact from a local representative.

The plug-pulling is the unusual part because canceling a subscription does not reclaim the physical infrastructure. Gadget Review explains that Flock owns the cameras, so the devices remained mounted on poles weeks after the cancellation with no removal timeline given.

A city can revoke user accounts and disable devices, but how quickly a vendor must retrieve hardware and delete collected data depends on the contract and applicable law — and neither Plymouth nor Dayton had confirmed answers on those terms in available reporting.

Gadget Review calls it a structural gap no one planned for: the vendor's silence costs it nothing, while unplugging costs the city labor.

The corroborated sequence is documented across pack reporting: council vote September 22, account suspensions September 23, formal written cancellation, then silence.

Yahoo quotes Chief Fadden directly: 'After hearing nothing for more than a week, I directed our staff to disconnect the power cords from the cameras in order to be sure that they are not functioning or recording plates.'

Tom's Hardware reports a parallel case in Dayton, Minnesota, ten miles north, where Flock submitted a maintenance work order on September 17 after the city had suspended the program on August 25 and told it not to proceed — and reinstalled two cameras anyway, prompting citizen complaints and a September 29 city Facebook post ordering removal.

There are over 300,000 Flock cameras installed nationwide, and their coverage makes vehicle tracking highly effective. According to Yahoo, the system goes beyond reading plates, using AI to identify vehicles by stickers, paint color, make and model.

The network has drawn multiple controversies: officers arrested for misusing the system, a car reviewer wrongly 'ambushed' by Plymouth police over an administrative error made in California, and reports of police stopping motorists when an AI algorithm flagged their travel history as suspicious.

Tom's Hardware adds that Flock's chief information security officer falsely told Oshkosh's council the system had no license plate heat map, when it does.

Plymouth was still seeking a firm equipment-removal timeline that Flock had not provided at publication, and Flock had not publicly explained its delayed response, per Gadget Review.

Tom's Hardware reports Flock later acknowledged Dayton's cancellation with a reported 60-day removal estimate, though it is not established from available reporting whether either city pursued litigation or invoked contractual penalties.

Critics are pressing city councils nationwide to remove the cameras over privacy concerns, and moves like Plymouth's shrink Flock's coverage area while forcing labor the company would otherwise avoid.

The unresolved contract gap — cancellation versus actual hardware recovery — now looks likely to shape every city's next negotiation.