Publisher: 404 Media (Jason Koebler)
Date Published: July 13, 2026
Relevant To: News coverage of the LAPD OIG ALPR audit and LAPD’s decision to drop its Flock contract — companion to the primary OIG report already catalogued in this archive (BPC #26-184)
Verification Status: Verified (confirmed via full-text fetch)
Notes: 404 Media (Jason Koebler) reports that LAPD let its Flock Safety contract expire over the weekend of July 11-12, 2026, becoming the largest PD in the country to drop Flock, following an LAPD Office of Inspector General audit (see companion Primary Document entry, BPC #26-184) that found the department improperly “investigated” 161 people whose cars were wrongly flagged as stolen in a two-month period. Article situates this within a pattern of other ALPR hot-list failures nationally: Joel Feder (The Drive) was tracked for days and pulled over in Minnesota after his review car’s plate was wrongly entered as stolen by a California PD; a Minnesota woman was jailed 13 days after her Dodge Durango matched a hit-and-run suspect vehicle description. LAPD’s response attributed the false-positive stolen-vehicle flags to delays by other jurisdictions or vehicle owners in clearing hot-list entries after recovery — highlighting the risk of networking separate ALPR systems together. LAPD OIG recommended suspending new ALPR camera deployment/contracts pending a full vendor and data-practices review; LAPD said it would not sign new contracts until that audit process concludes.