ATLANTA, GA – Flock Safety, the first public safety operating system for cities, has expanded its product suite in the company’s largest announcement to date, revealing a set of fully-integrated crime fighting tools that work together to provide a comprehensive safety platform for communities.
Today, in a webinar keynote by Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley, the Flock Safety Platform was revealed as a comprehensive, city-wide solution for eliminating crime. The Flock Safety Platform brings a turnkey, scalable evidence-gathering solution to cities of any shape and size, increasing case clearance rates and improving officer safety for better overall public safety outcomes.
“Ultimately, Flock Safety’s aim is to improve the quality of life of all people in the community, with the firm belief that everyone deserves a right to feel safe. These new tools build on the Flock Safety mission to offer an affordable, scalable, and effective solution that can be tailored to fit all types of communities, urban, rural, small and large,” said Langley.
Flock Safety currently serves 3,000 communities across the U.S. with its automated license plate recognition (ALPR) and audio crime detection devices. The company’s devices and software provide the evidence for police to solve about 7% of reported crime in the U.S.
The Flock Safety Platform includes existing ALPR and audio detection devices, with the addition of video evidence-capturing tools, advanced machine learning-powered software, and mobile tools to ensure that law enforcement agencies have the full suite of vehicular, audio, and video evidence they need for comprehensive situational awareness and investigative purposes.
Making Flock Safety ALPR an option for every roadway
Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Reading (ALPR) device, the Falcon™, currently helps law enforcement agencies in thousands of communities solve hundreds of crimes every week. Vehicular evidence is often the most valuable investigative lead a detective can have while investigating the roughly 70% of crime that occurs with a vehicle (estimated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, IACP).
Flock Safety ALPR has helped agencies across the country improve case clearance and reduce violent crime, as was seen in the 13% drop in violent crime last year in Fort Worth, TX. Fort Worth Police leadership specifically point to Flock Safety ALPR cameras as an important factor in this significant crime drop.
Flock Safety previously augmented the standard Falcon ALPR camera with Falcon Flex, a location-flexible camera that helps law enforcement address moving crime trends, such as organized retail theft.
Today, the company introduced two new versions – firstly, the Falcon SR, or short-range camera, a tactical solution designed to capture tighter angles and distances such as inner-city spaces, business or school parking lots, park entrances, and the like.
Meanwhile, the new Falcon LR is a long-range ALPR camera designed for high-speed, high-volume roadways. Most existing ALPR devices service smaller roadways with narrow lines, missing offenders traveling on interstate highways. Falcon LR fills this gap in coverage.
Like all Flock Safety devices, both Falcon SR and Falcon LR are solar-powered, infrastructure-free, and fully maintained by Flock Safety. These new camera versions ensure that a community can access the benefits of ALPR coverage no matter the roadway infrastructure or situation.
“The Flock Safety license plate readers have been a force multiplier for us,” said Tulsa Police Department Captain Jacob Johnston. “There’s no way you could put an officer where these locations are, 24/7, and capture the amount of information the cameras are able to capture.”
Integrated audio evidence to get a full picture of the crime scene
The recent rise in violence that began in 2020 has been attributed largely to gun violence. But many shootings go unreported or are reported too late for police to access reliable, useful evidence from the scene.
Flock Safety Raven™ alerts officers in real-time when a gunshot is detected with a 90% accuracy rate, and allows dispatch teams to triangulate the location of the gunshot within 90 feet. This allows for rapid, more accurate response in active shooter situations, allowing officers to develop an informed response plan to minimize injury and potentially, save lives. Getting to the scene quicker also enables more quality evidence collection at the scene of the crime.
However, Raven is not just a gunshot detection system. The real power of Raven’s audio detection is its deep integration with the rest of the Flock Safety platform, such as Flock Safety ALPR devices. When a gunshot occurs, Flock Safety ALPR cameras are able to capture vehicular evidence simultaneously, providing a full picture of the scene when the gun was discharged.
“When you have gunshot detection by itself, you’ll have officers going to an area to search for shell casings, but that’s all you’ll get,” said Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer. “The reason we chose Raven is due to the incredible power of Flock Safety’s LPR.”
Prior to installing Raven, Cobb County utilized stand-alone Flock Safety LPR for many years, which leaders said contributed to demonstrably increased case clearance rates – culminating in a 100% homicide solve rate in Cobb County over the past two years.
New video subscription service provides on-demand live and recorded video, integrated into the Flock Safety platform
Video evidence provides a valuable layer of intelligence to augment the vehicular and audio evidence already provided by Flock Safety. Today, Flock Safety revealed Condor™, a live and recorded video subscription service that allows officers to respond to public safety incidents safely in real time and to access historical video to build better cases.
With Condor, Flock Safety provides agencies with both live video streaming and 30 days of accessible recorded video. Flock Safety offers two hardware options: a bullet-style camera and a PTZ camera.
For agencies that already have their own live video infrastructure, Flock Safety’s Video Connect software provides the option to display that video in the platform’s interactive map.
To bring all of this evidence together, FlockOS software provides an infrastructure-free platform that redefines the Real-time Intelligence Centers (RTICs). RTICs are becoming increasingly common for cities that aim to consolidate their own cameras with third-party data and devices to speed up live response and investigations.
However, a physical RTIC is not possible or prudent for every agency. FlockOS harnesses the power of Flock Safety’s real-time response and evidence-collection tools and integrates them into one view alongside community cameras and third-party data.
This layered solution puts the right evidence into the right hands, at the right time, to ensure a more informed and effective public safety response.
“The PTZ function of the Condor camera has allowed our RTIC operator to zoom in during traffic stops and provide real-time information during the stop. In many cases, officers are timing stops near these cameras for the additional safety it provides,” said Lt. Wesley Herman, a member of the Investigations Division of Citrus Heights Police Department in California.
By combining the power of LPR, Audio, and Video, agencies can revolutionize the way they respond to incidents and investigations, creating safer communities and fostering more trust between citizens and the officers who risk their lives to protect them.
From the beginning of the company’s history, Flock Safety has been deeply committed to principles of protecting privacy and enabling transparency and accountability. This is one of the most commonly-cited reasons that thousands of communities, from Rhode Island to Florida, Illinois to California, choose Flock Safety.
All data collected through Flock Safety devices, whether vehicular, audio, or video, is subject to the strictest standards of security. Data is encrypted on-device to cloud storage, and by default, deleted after 30 days.
Flock Safety enables robust auditing of its devices to promote accountability and transparency. All searches conducted on any ALPR device require a search reason and are saved in an indefinitely-available audit trail. All views of live or recorded video, as well as video download events, are saved and available for audit indefinitely.
“Our community is highly engaged in the public safety process, and we know that when looking at any technology, it’s important to consider how we can hold officers accountable, what our community can expect of us, and be transparent about how we use it,” said Lexington Police Department Sergeant Tyson Carroll. “Flock Safety engaged in a productive partnership to meet our needs for accurate auditing, enabling transparency, and protecting the privacy of our citizens.”
To learn more about Flock Safety’s public safety platform and to schedule a demo of any specific products, visit www.flocksafety.com.