Flock System Alerts Arizona Police To Shooting Before 911 Call Amid Surveillance Backlash

An Arizona police department credited an automated gunshot-detection system with alerting officers to a weekend shooting before the first 911 call arrived, providing a new public-safety example for Flock Safety as opposition to the company’s surveillance technology grows in Arizona and nationwide.

The El Mirage Police Department said in a statement provided to California Globe that officers received an instant alert from the Flock audio-detection system shortly before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, August 1, reporting gunfire in the 12000 block of West Larkspur Road.

Officers arrived within moments and saw a vehicle speeding away from the area, according to the department. Police later located two victims at a hospital. One had sustained a gunshot wound, while the other had been struck by debris. Both injuries were described as non-life-threatening.

Using information from the Flock alert and subsequent 911 calls, officers located a suspect at a nearby residence on Larkspur Road and made an arrest, the department said. The suspect faces several felony charges, but the department’s initial statement did not identify the person or disclose the specific charges.

Just before 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 1, EMPD officers received an instant alert from the Flock audio detection system reporting shots fired in the 12000 block of West Larkspur Road.

Thanks to that real-time alert, officers were on scene within moments — and immediately… pic.twitter.com/tlGeJbfp0g

— El Mirage Police (@ElMiragePD) August 3, 2026

“The Flock audio detection system allowed our officers to respond immediately, in this instance, even before a 911 call came in,” the department said.

Police said the alert helped investigators connect the shooting scene, victims and suspect.

El Mirage deployed Flock Safety’s Raven gunshot-detection system in 2023, along with the company’s Falcon automated license plate readers.

Then-El Mirage Police Chief Paul Marzocca said at the time that integrating the systems could move investigators from a gunshot alert to “a list of suspicious vehicles entering and leaving the area within minutes.” Arizona’s Family reported that acoustic sensors and computer algorithms are used to distinguish suspected gunfire and estimate where it occurred.

Flock’s current materials market the former Raven product under the broader description of Audio Detection and Gunshot Detection. The company says its sensors can identify public-safety events including gunfire, fireworks, vehicle crashes and illegal street takeovers, while estimating locations through detections from multiple sensors.

Flock also says the system analyzes most audio on the device and immediately discards it, retaining only short, encrypted clips associated with qualifying events. The company says customers cannot access a live audio feed and that the system does not identify voices, understand speech, transcribe conversations or search for spoken words.

The company previously tested a feature designed to recognize sounds of human distress, including screaming, prompting the Electronic Frontier Foundation to warn in October 2025 that the capability represented potential surveillance “mission creep.” Flock announced in July that it had ended the limited pilot, and the EFF subsequently credited public scrutiny with helping stop the rollout.

Much of the political opposition in Arizona has centered on Flock’s automated license plate readers rather than its acoustic sensors.

According to Flock’s own license plate reader policy, the cameras collect license plate and vehicle images, plate numbers and states, vehicle characteristics, dates, times and camera locations. Flock’s search tools allow authorized users to filter records by time, vehicle type, color, identifying characteristics and partial or complete license plate numbers, according to the company’s frequently asked questions.

That capability has generated an extended fight in Chandler, where residents packed City Council chambers in May to oppose renewal of a contract worth more than $153,000, according to Fox10.

Chandler police installed 14 cameras in March 2024 as part of a pilot program. The council approved the purchase of another 26 cameras in May 2025, expanding the city’s network to approximately 40.

Between July 2025 and April 2026, Chandler police said the cameras generated 556 stolen-vehicle notifications that led to 16 recoveries, 22 missing or endangered-person alerts that helped locate nine people, and 94 arrest-warrant alerts that resulted in eight warrants being cleared, according to AZ Family. Police attributed 39 total arrests to the system during that period.

Opponents argued that the network creates a searchable record of vehicle movements involving residents who are not suspected of crimes. An ABC15 examination of Chandler’s audit records found nearly 40,000 searches of Chandler’s data by outside law-enforcement agencies during January 2026 alone.

The opposition crossed ideological and partisan lines. ABC15 reported that representatives of the progressive organization Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) and the Maricopa County Libertarian Party both questioned whether sufficient controls could be placed on the system’s extensive data-sharing network.

Chandler officials initially delayed the contract decision after the May meeting and scheduled another vote for July 16. The city later moved the vote to August 13, saying council members needed additional time to have their questions answered.

Councilman OD Harris said promised discussions had not occurred and criticized the city’s handling of the delay.

“It takes away the transparency and accountability,” Harris told the outlet.

The Chandler dispute is part of a broader Arizona backlash. ABC15 reported in March that three Arizona cities had canceled Flock contracts amid concerns about surveillance, outside access and insufficient oversight.

Arizona lawmakers also debated statewide restrictions during the 2026 legislative session.

Sen. Kevin Payne introduced Senate Bill 1111, which would have limited automated license plate readers to official law-enforcement purposes and required training, access controls, documented searches and annual audits.

The proposal would also have exempted data and images collected by the systems from ordinary public-records requests, except when disclosure was required by subpoena or another law, according to the Legislature’s official analysis.

The legislation did not become law before the Arizona Legislature adjourned June 13.

Republican lawmakers were divided over the proposal. Sen. Jake Hoffman argued that its protections contained broad loopholes and would still allow police to reconstruct citizens’ movements.

“I am a no surveillance guy,” Hoffman told lawmakers, according to KJZZ. “I do not think the state should be able to surveil us under any circumstances.”

The controversy has also reached California.

The Los Angeles Police Department allowed its operating agreement with Flock to lapse in July and temporarily lost routine access to data collected by 138 pole-mounted cameras while negotiating a new contract.

Under LAPD’s proposed agreement, the department would retain ownership of every image, record and item of metadata collected by the cameras. Flock would be prohibited from selling, publishing, disclosing or sharing the data with outside entities or using it to train artificial intelligence or for other commercial purposes, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Other cities have ended their relationships with the company. The Fort Collins City Council voted 6-1 in June to cancel its contract early, immediately stop data collection and remove the city’s 15 Flock cameras following months of public opposition.

In Tennessee, Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler paused the planned installation of hundreds of additional cameras after Mayor Glenn Jacobs called for local, state and federal officials to halt the expansion until privacy rules were established. The sheriff’s office had planned to use a $1.5 million grant to install 270 cameras across the county.

The scrutiny has also been fueled by allegations that officers used the databases for personal purposes.

At least 10 Georgia officers had been arrested by July 19 in investigations involving alleged misuse of automated license plate reader systems, while three Fayetteville officers were fired and remained under investigation, according to CBS News Atlanta.

A Conyers Police Department real-time crime center supervisor was accused of using Flock data to track her domestic partner’s vehicle, the outlet reported. A former DeKalb County sheriff’s sergeant was separately arrested and fired following an internal investigation into unauthorized use of the system.

Gunshot-detection systems have generated a separate debate over accuracy.

Flock has said Raven is more than 90 percent accurate, but a San Jose evaluation reviewed by Wired found that only 50 percent of the system’s alerts during the first four months of a pilot program were confirmed as gunfire. Thirty-four percent were confirmed false positives.

After Flock recalibrated the sensors, 81 percent of subsequent alerts were confirmed as gunfire, 7 percent were false alarms, and the remaining 12 percent could not be conclusively classified, according to the San Jose data.

The El Mirage shooting gives Flock and police supporters a fresh example of the audio technology operating as intended. According to the department, the alert reached officers before a witness called 911 and contributed to a rapid arrest.

The department’s initial account did not disclose the precise interval between the Flock alert, the first 911 call, officer arrival and the arrest. It also did not state whether investigators recovered a firearm or whether the speeding vehicle observed by officers was connected to the suspect.