San Francisco just renewed its contract with Flock Safety's license plate cameras, bucking a national backlash against the technology.
The city's board adopted a policy last month that keeps more than 400 Flock cameras running, while adding guardrails: officers now need supervisor sign-off and a documented link to an active investigation before pulling camera data older than 30 days. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins credits the system with helping police identify suspects after crimes occur. Citywide, two major crime categories fell by almost 59% and more than 82%, respectively, in the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same stretch in 2022, according to SFPD data analyzed by NPR. Jenkins points to that drop as evidence the cameras work, though the city hasn't published data isolating Flock's effect from other factors.
San Francisco's reversal cuts against the usual script: it's conservative lawmakers and red states, not progressive cities, who've been leading the charge against these cameras on privacy grounds. That makes the city's shrug a useful data point for how durable the surveillance backlash actually is once local tech industry money and crime-reduction narratives get involved. A July poll found 72% of San Franciscans support camera and drone use in active investigations, suggesting local appetite for the tradeoff remains strong even as other jurisdictions walk it back.
Crime is also falling nationwide post-pandemic, which makes crediting one camera network for San Francisco's numbers a harder sell than the press conferences suggest.