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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The Alexandria Police Department will not publish the locations of its Flock license plate readers and has not decided to shorten the 21-day period it keeps the data, the department said in written responses to The Alexandria Brief on Saturday.
The answers arrived three days before City Council is scheduled to receive an update on the program Tuesday night. No supporting materials have been posted with the docket for that item.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins said in August that she had asked Police Chief Tarrick McGuire and Parajon to publish the camera locations, along with the department's sharing partners and search activity. The other two appeared on the city's transparency page within two days. Locations never did, and the department now says they will not.
"At this time, however, APD will not publish specific camera locations due to operational and investigative considerations," Strategic Communications Manager Tracy Walker wrote. The department said it would keep providing information about the program's purpose, governance, safeguards, use and oversight while balancing transparency against operational security, and that it would expand what it publishes online over the coming month.
Locations have become the central question in the debate over the program, in part because the count itself is disputed. The Alexandria Times reported Tuesday that it had identified and verified 77 Flock cameras in the city or on its borders, a figure that rises to at least 81 counting four Axon readers APD reported to state police, against the 61 listed on the city's portal. In documents obtained by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism and the Virginia Mercury, Gaskins wrote to City Manager James Parajon in June 2025 asking how many cameras the city had and who could access the data. Her own email put the number at 67.
On retention, APD said it keeps Flock data for 21 days, consistent with Virginia law, and has made no decision to change that. Any change would be weighed under state law and the department's governance framework, Walker wrote, including the need for reasonable investigative timelines to follow up, review evidence and develop leads. Some investigations require more than seven days, the department said.
Flock cut its recommended default retention period from 30 days to seven on Aug. 13 and told existing customers they could keep their current settings. Twenty-one days is the maximum Virginia law allows. Charlottesville police operated on a seven-day policy before the state law took effect, and that city's council ended its Flock contract in January.
The department also addressed a change in the list of agencies with access to Alexandria's data. That list appeared on the portal Aug. 18 with 161 names, all of them Virginia agencies, with no federal or out-of-state department among them. It showed 158 last week. Agencies drop off when they stop participating, Walker wrote, and the list is maintained through a database rather than by APD. All agencies that receive Alexandria's data are subject to the same state requirements the department follows. Walker did not say which agencies came off.
The list has kept shrinking. As of Sunday it carried 153 names, eight fewer than three weeks ago. One of the departures can be identified by comparing the two versions: the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, one of the few entries that was neither a municipal police department nor a sheriff's office, no longer appears. Fifty-six sheriff's offices remain, along with Virginia State Police, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Wildlife Resources, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and campus forces at seven colleges and universities.
Two other figures on the portal have moved. Searches of Alexandria's cameras fell to 337 sessions over the past 30 days, from 479 in August. The camera count has not changed. It still reads 61.
What the department has not answered
The answers close out an exchange that began three weeks earlier. The Brief sent APD seven questions on Aug. 14, the day after Flock announced changes to its product. Walker acknowledged them that afternoon and said she was working on them. On Aug. 27 the Brief narrowed the request to the three questions answered Saturday.
The original seven remain open. They asked:
- Whether APD would adopt Flock's new seven-day retention recommendation, and who makes that decision — the chief, the city manager or City Council.
- Whether the department will enable Flock's new control letting agencies block other departments from searching Alexandria's cameras for particular categories of offense. The company's own example was permitting stolen vehicle, missing person and violent crime searches while blocking immigration-related ones. Directive 10.40 already lists immigration enforcement as a prohibited use.
- Whether APD has adopted Flock's audit assistance feature or will comply under the company's year-end deadline, and whether any audit of user activity has flagged an abnormal search or led to discipline or referral.
- Whether the department requires a case code for every search.
- Why the portal did not display sharing partners or search activity. Both fields appeared four days later, on Aug. 18, without explanation.
- Which agencies have access to Alexandria's data, and how many searches of its cameras outside agencies ran in the past 12 months. The sharing list answered the first.
- Whether there is more recent data than the two 2023 success stories on the portal showing Flock contributed to an arrest or recovery.
Saturday's response answered the first in part, saying no decision has been made to change the retention period, without addressing who would make it.
Two of the unanswered questions have gained weight since. The American Civil Liberties Union says an earlier version of the offense-based control was defeated by officers entering meaningless text in the required reason field. The Alexandria Times reported Tuesday that it found more than 50 instances of Alexandria officers improperly labeling why they searched the database.
The portal does not break searches out by offense type or describe how the department audits them. Directive 10.40, which McGuire signed in October, requires an internal audit every 30 days, the minimum state law sets. An earlier version of the directive called for weekly audits, and both Gaskins and McGuire have described the review as weekly.
Council's Flock update is one of four oral reports from Parajon on Tuesday's docket, none of which have documents attached. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center, 4850 Mark Center Drive, following a 6 p.m. executive session.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
