Newly hired Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom defended the use of Flock cameras to the City Council in response to continued calls at the council’s public forum for the city to stop using the license plate readers.
Winstrom, appearing before the Council on April 23 in a PPD uniform for the first time, told the council that PPD was working on a draft policy that would be released soon, which would lay out how PPD officers would use the controversial system.
At most council meetings this year, there has been a consistent call from members of the public for the city to cancel its contract with Flock Safety for its automatic license plate reading cameras. The cameras also use AI software to capture specific details about each vehicle, including details like colors and bumper stickers.
Why is Flock controversial?
The company allows its customers to share data with one another, creating a network effect that critics have said raises privacy concerns.
Flock cameras have become the subject of intense scrutiny over the last year over privacy concerns and backlash to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.
Those concerns only deepened when news outlets began reporting that the cameras were also used to assist federal immigration enforcement actions.
The backlash led the company to issue a statement that it stopped all pilot programs with federal agencies in August 2025 and that it’s up to Flock’s individual customers to decide whether they would share data with federal agencies.
While federal agencies may not have direct access to Flock, local police departments will often conduct searches of the Flock system to assist them. TCPalm, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida, conducted an analysis of over 5 million searches of a statewide Flock search history database it obtained from the Vero Beach Police Department and found that several Florida law enforcement agencies had used the cameras to track immigration enforcement cases, as well as searches that police were tracking protesters around the time of the No Kings Protests last year.
There were no instances of Pensacola PPD using the cameras to track protestors.
How is Pensacola using Flock cameras?
Law enforcement officials have praised the technology and its ability to aid in solving crimes, including Winstrom.
Winstrom pointed out that the arrest of a man in Okaloosa County on April 22, who was allegedly plotting a mass shooting in New Orleans, was made possible thanks to Flock cameras. He said the suspects in a Pensacola March 21 shooting, as well as the guns used in the shooting, were found thanks to the city’s new Flock cameras.
Winstrom said PPD’s new policy on using the Flock system while protecting constitutional rights is under legal review and will be released soon.
“I am ensuring that those constitutional safeguards are there, not just from the Pensacola Police Department, but from anyone with access to our cameras,” Winstrom said. “And I would suggest very strongly, we are providing an excellent police service to everyone in the city of Pensacola, and this is a very valuable tool.”
Much of the outcry at City Council meetings has been organized by members of the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a national communist party formed in 2004 when its members split from the Workers World Party.
Some members of the Pensacola City Council were unhappy when they learned the city had paid for the Flock cameras with opioid settlement funds.
Wintrom told the City Council that he’s used the systems at his previous departments. He heard similar concerns about the systems in those jurisdictions, but when he came to Pensacola, he wanted to learn how the system was being used here.
“I know that the cameras had been installed and had been started, so I asked Flock representatives to come meet with us,” Winstrom said. “And they also offered to come speak to you, if that would be helpful at all. They assured me of several things. Some things that I knew were obviously incorrect. That is, there’s never been a hack in the Flock system. It is not possible to break into them. The data is completely controlled by us. I can determine who has access to the cameras in the city of Pensacola, completely.”
What will PPD’s Flock usage policy include?
Flock allows law enforcement agencies to partner and share data 1-on-1, but also opt in to statewide and national networks.
Winstrom said PPD doesn’t use its camera for immigration enforcement.
“Just from a law enforcement point of view, the utility of using automated license plate readers for immigration enforcement is only there if it’s a high-level offender, which would be out of the administrative realm and be in the criminal realm,” Winstrom said. “So even if you talk to somebody in immigrations custom enforcement, there’s no use for it there.”
TCPalm’s analysis found Florida law enforcement agencies increased the number of immigration-related searches on Flock’s database by 84% in 2025 compared to the previous year. Of the 5 million searches analyzed, Florida officers marked an immigration-related reason in only about 2,650 searches.
Winstrom said that all searches of the Flock cameras controlled by PPD will require not only a public safety reason but a specific case number.
“So that I can go back and find out whether you’re a Pensacola police officer or an Escambia County Sheriff’s deputy that’s using our system, because we allow you to do it for your investigation,” Winstrom said.
Winstrom said audits will be conducted that will review those case numbers to see if the search was for a legitimate law enforcement purpose.
“We have access to a lot of very sensitive information, and there have been police officers who have gone to prison because of abuse of that,” Winstrom said. “And I certainly will not tolerate that in the Pensacola Police Department or anyone who has access to our database.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom defends PPD using Flock cameras
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
