Last year, Pensacola entered into a two-year contract with Flock Safety for automatic license plate readers using opioid settlement funds.
The city’s plan that was submitted to Florida’s council overseeing state funds never directly mentioned using the money for the controversial camera system.
The city’s 2024-2025 plan to the Florida Statewide Opioid Abatement Council that is overseeing the nearly $3.1 billion in settlement funds being paid out over 17 years said the funds would be used to buy hand-held narcotics detectors as well as training criminal investigative teams on overdose deaths and “investigative technology support for overdose and overdose death investigations,” and possibly vehicle purchases.
In a written statement to the News Journal, City Attorney Adam Cobb said that the Police Department considers that “operationally, the Flock LPR’s (license plate readers) qualify as investigative technology support for overdose and overdose death investigations.”
In recent weeks, the city has been facing calls from members of the public questioning its contract with Flock Safety, a company that provides automatic license plate readers, and those questions were echoed by at least two members of the Pensacola City Council last week.
Councilman Charles Bare said the Pensacola Police Department needs the tools to do their job, but he doesn’t trust Flock as a company to keep data secure.
“The amount of information you can get about people with Flock and to track their movements everywhere—it’s kind of scary,” Bare said.
Bare added that the council doesn’t necessarily have a role in approving these types of service contracts, however.
“When the people voted to have a mayor-council form of government, they gave the mayor a lot of power,” Bare said. “They gave us a lot of power too, but there are contracting abilities that he has that we may not be able to stop. So, we may all be lobbying the mayor to stop this.”
Councilwoman Jennifer Brahier also questioned the use of opioid funds for the cameras.
“I am a person who has lost her own nephew to an opiate overdose within this city,” Brahier said. “And for me, this has been incredibly big and important that we have this lawsuit, and I’m struggling with opioid money used for this purpose. And I don’t actually like our rationale, and the rationale that was given to me on how this was done.”
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves wasn’t at the council meeting last week, but told the News Journal the decision to use Flock cameras was based on public safety expertise of the Pensacola Police Department.
“Decisions made by this administration in public safety both follow the charter of this government and rely upon decades of actual, real public safety expertise,” Reeves said. “I’m proud to lead a safe community, and to have enough self-awareness as an elected official to ask an expert, not act like I’m the expert.”
The News Journal looked into how the purchase came about, and here’s what we know.
When did Pensacola start using Flock cameras?
In July 2025, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves approved a two-year, $108,000 contract for 18 cameras from Flock Safety. The Pensacola Police Department had conducted a “trial” with five cameras starting in April 2025. The funds were from the settlement money from the national Opioid litigation.
In a memo to the mayor, Interim Pensacola Police Chief Kristin Brown said the cameras had proven “invaluable” across the country in solving cases. The move to Flock first became public when Brown mentioned it at an August 2025 town hall.
How is Pensacola paying for Flock cameras?
Attached to the July 2025 memo was a budget amendment recognizing $152,000 in opioid settlement funds from Escambia County’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Board.
In recent weeks, public speakers at City Council meetings have questioned the contract with Flock, particularly how the city was able to spend opioid funds on the contract.
The agreement with Escambia County required those funds could only be used to purchase five handheld narcotic detectors for police officers to test the presence of fentanyl and similar drugs in the field. However, it was not the Escambia County funds that are funding the Flock cameras.
At the Feb. 26 City Council meeting, Cobb pointed out that the opioid settlement funds were “two buckets” of money, with the second bucket coming from direct state payments, and that the city has more control over how those state funds are allocated.
The first bucket is known as a “regional fund,” for which Escambia County is expected to receive about $19.5 million, managed by the county’s Opioid Abatement Funding Advisory Board.
The second “bucket” of money are payments directly to local governments, which is expected to be about 15% of the $3.1 billion settlement. Under the settlement agreement’s breakdown of payments to local governments, Pensacola could receive up to $1.5 million and Escambia County up to $4.6 million in direct payments over the course of the settlement.
Pensacola has either received or will receive approximately $398,000 in settlement payments from 2023 to 2025, based on cross-referencing information in the state’s annual report and settlement agreement.
Any city receiving funds directly must file spending plans with the Florida Statewide Opioid Abatement Council, which is overseeing the settlement.
Can opioid money be used on Flock cameras?
The settlement agreement requires the funds to be used to address the opioid crisis under eight “core strategies,” and it includes a 10-page list of “approved purposes” for funding that align with those strategies. State law requires each local government to submit annual spending plans for how those direct payments will be used.
The 2025 annual report of the Statewide Opioid Abatement Council reported that 247 city and county governments in Florida received approximately $29.5 million in opioid settlement funds that year. Of that, only 5%, about $1.4 million, was spent on first responders. The majority of funds in local governments, 67% or about $19.9 milion, are going to support treatment and recovery programs.
The annual report also notes that any local government seeking to avoid having its funding clawed back must use the funds “solely for approved purposes and core strategies.”
Pensacola’s 2024-2025 plan said all of its funds for that year would be used to support law enforcement and first responders, and listed the hand-held narcotics detectors as well as training criminal investigative teams on overdose deaths and “investigative technology support for overdose and overdose death investigations” and possibly vehicle purchases.
The News Journal asked the city if the “investigative technology” referred to the Flock cameras, and Reeves said he would defer to the Pensacola Police Department. Pensacola Police Department spokesman Mike Wood said his understanding was that the document was prepared by City Hall, and the only PPD document that references the Flock camera funding was Brown’s July 2025 memo.
The News Journal later received a follow-up statement attributed to City Attorney Adam Cobb:
“PPD leadership has confirmed that yes, operationally, the Flock LPR’s (license plate readers) qualify as investigative technology support for overdose and overdose death investigations.”
KFF Health News, a national nonprofit health policy news outlet, reported last year that nationwide, some local governments were turning to opioid settlement funds to purchase non-abatement items like drones, rifle suppressors, and body cameras, while other states have completely banned any purchases of equipment not related to drug treatment. Florida restrictions are limited to preventing the funds to be used for any type of needle exchange or other drug useage, but it has also banned using the funds to buy firearms, promotional items and major construction projects.
What are Flock cameras?
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.
Flock has become one of the largest providers of automated license plate readers, as its business model focuses on both local governments and private landowners.
Unlike red-light traffic cameras, the readers don’t issue citations. Instead, they log the license plate number and the type of car that passes the camera. Flock also markets its system as having “vehicle fingerprint technology,” where an AI system notes other details about the car, such as if it’s towing a trailer or the type of bumper stickers.
The company allows their customers to share data with one another, creating a network effect that critics have said raises privacy concerns.
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.
DeFlock.me, a website created by a Colorado-based activist, has a national database of every publicly identified license plate reader in the country. While the database is likely incomplete, it shows 36 license plate readers in Escambia County — most of them outside the city limits — and 34 in Santa Rosa County. They cover most high-trafficked areas, including every major bridge crossing and several high-traffic commercial properties.
The website lists 47 cities across the country that have either deactivated, rejected, or canceled contracts since 2025, with 10 occurring this year alone.
However, Flock cameras and license plate reader technology in general have been praised by law enforcement as tools for solving crimes.
Incoming Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom said at his first city press conference last month that there is a balance that has to be struck, but the technology is a part of modern society.
“Flock cameras are extremely helpful in investigating crimes, but there are also ways that you can take away some private information from the system to protect the public,” Winstrom said. “So that it doesn’t take a picture of the driver, for example, and it doesn’t retain the information for too long.”
Winstrom added that he had a homicide case during his time in Chicago where a Flock camera solved the case.
“We tracked a stolen vehicle that had shot a young man,” Winstrom said. “And about an hour before it was involved in that murder, the individual had pulled up. We figured this out through Flock cameras, (they) pulled up to a Dairy Queen drive-thru without a ski mask and ordered. And we had a perfect, crystal clear picture of him eating an ice cream cone. And that same car in the same outfit was then seen when he had a ski mask on committing (the crime), and we got in charge and convicted of murder.”
Other local law enforcement agencies that have similar pushback have still praised their use. This week, Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden announced his agency was launching a transparency portal for its use of Flock cameras that shows the number of cars tracked and the policies his agency follows to use the cameras.
Okaloosa County’s transparency portal showed its 81 cameras had detected 565,142 unique vehicles in the last 30 days, of which 198,676 were on the agency’s “hotlist,” which includes vehicles flagged in multiple federal and state crime databases, Florida-sanctioned drivers, Florida-expired tags, and Florida sex offender lists.
Aden said in a video statement that the cameras have led to hundreds of success stories in cases involving homicides, kidnappings, missing people, and stolen vehicles.
“These cameras are proven tools that help us prevent and solve serious crimes,” Aden said “They are used regionally as well as nationwide by our counterparts and have been for years. Additionally, they are used in the private sector daily. In fact, I cannot think of an area where license plate readers do not exist, and those that do not have them are behind the curve and at a significant disadvantage when solving crime.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola used opioid settlement for Flock Cameras. Was it legal?
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
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