Plymouth, Minnesota council votes to end Flock contract after wrongful gunpoint stop

First reported: September 23, 2026 · 4 sources

The Plymouth City Council voted to discontinue all Flock Safety services and its 16 license plate readers, rejecting Police Chief Erik Fadden's request to renew a $21,000 contract covering eight cameras. The decision followed public backlash over the detention at gunpoint of automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife in a Kohl's parking lot, after a Flock camera misread a New Jersey manufacturer plate on a Range Rover and matched it to a missing-plate record from Los Angeles. Police told the council the cameras had aided investigations, pointing to cases such as a Minneapolis shooting where plate reader data was combined with ballistics evidence. Residents and civil liberties advocates cited the scale of automated scanning and the risk of errors.

Why this matters

Plymouth joins a growing list of Minnesota jurisdictions reassessing ALPR contracts after a documented misread led to an armed stop, showing how a single error can shift a local cost-benefit debate. The vote also illustrates the limits of vendor accuracy claims when elected bodies, rather than police departments, make the final call.

Key facts

The council voted to end all Flock services and all 16 readers; the renewal at issue was $21,000 for eight cameras.
City transparency data showed more than 580,000 plate scans, 14,800 hotlist alerts, and 45 manual user searches in a single 30-day period before July.
Columbia Heights, Fridley, Isanti County, Sherburne County, and Duluth have also voted to cancel or restrict Flock contracts, per FOX 9.
Minnesota Statute § 13.824 requires destruction of ALPR data not tied to an active investigation within 60 days; a bill to bar warrantless out-of-state data sharing stalled in committee.
Flock reduced default scan retention from 30 days to seven and added tools for agencies to block federal immigration enforcement searches, FOX 9 reported.

Sources

This summary was written from the published reporting below and links to it; BlockFlockNow does not reproduce article text.

Plymouth Council Votes To End Flock Cameras After Gunpoint Stop Sparks Backlash (Hoodline, September 23, 2026)
Plymouth city council votes to stop using all 16 of its Flock license plate readers (kare11.com, September 23, 2026)
Plymouth stops using Flock cameras (mprnews.org, September 23, 2026)
Plymouth City Council votes to terminate contract with Flock (CBS News, September 23, 2026)

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About this record

BlockFlockNow documents reported incidents involving Flock Safety cameras and automated license plate readers: council votes, contract decisions, misuse by authorized users, lawsuits, audits, and community response. Every record is reviewed by a person before publication. New to the topic? Start with What is Flock?, find meetings near you, or learn how to request your town's camera records.

Updated September 25, 2026. Corrections: blockflock@bytebunny.io. See all documented incidents or search the full article archive.