Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley has repeatedly said the company’s technology helped solve more than one million US crimes in 2025. A CBS News review found the claim was not supported by available evidence. Company spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the figure includes not only case clearances but also investigative leads, cross-jurisdictional assistance, searches during active investigations and other deployments. He described the measure as approximately one million investigations and incidents supported.
Flock did not provide CBS with underlying data for the one-million solved-crimes claim. About 700 law-enforcement agencies participated in the company’s 2025 Impact Census. Some supplied raw counts; others offered percentage estimates. For a separate finding that Flock assisted in 20% of cleared cases in customer jurisdictions, 307 agencies supplied estimates that the company compared with FBI crime and clearance data.
The census was not an audited count of one million resolved cases: Flock described that figure as a broader total of clearances, leads, cross-jurisdictional assistance and field deployments. Criminologist Andrew Wheeler said the study did not compare outcomes with a counterfactual showing whether cases would have been solved without the cameras. Charles Fain Lehman, a technology proponent, also said the effect could be smaller than claimed.
Flock materials have cited figures that do not readily reconcile: more than 2,000 crimes per day in a 2026 fact sheet, 2,800 per week elsewhere in the same document, and 1,000 per day alongside 2,200 per week in an FAQ. The weekly figures equal about 400 and 314 per day. The company attributed the differences to varying time periods, datasets and methods. Some public documents disappeared after CBS inquiries, and the FAQ was changed.
In Costa Mesa, California, the city council voted 6-1 on July 21 to retain the cameras while renegotiating an annual $151,800 contract. Police cited the company’s claim that the system assisted in 20% of cleared cases. Flock also said its cameras logged 1,025 unique vehicle detections linked to missing-person records and 22,000 linked to stolen-car records in July; a vehicle detection is not the same as locating a missing person. The company says its license-plate cameras do not use facial recognition.
Flock has raised more than $1 billion and was valued at about $8.4 billion in an Inc. article. As municipalities weigh surveillance costs and benefits, CBS’s review highlights the need for transparent underlying data and independent methods when vendors make crime-solving claims.