Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley says the company “helped clear just over a million crimes in America” last year. The evidence he cites does not back that up.
CBS News reviewed the numbers behind Langley’s claims. The company’s own blog posts and census data offer a narrower picture than the headlines suggest.
The Million-Crime Claim
The Drive reported that Langley made the claim during a March 2026 podcast interview. He repeated it to The Drive, saying “over a million cases were solved last year with this technology.”, and he also posted about it in a June blog entry announcing new privacy updates, where he wrote that “Today, Flock technology assists your officers in more than one million crimes solved annually.”.
CBS spoke with Flock spokesman Paris Lewbel, who said the figure includes “investigative leads, cross-jurisdictional assistance, searches conducted during active investigations, and other Flock deployments.”. Lewbel described the most accurate way to characterize the 2025 national estimate as the result of Flock technology “supported approximately 1 million investigations and incidents.”.
A distinct and wider figure was presented for the “one million crimes”. That number included direct case resolutions, investigative leads, cross-jurisdictional assistance, and field deployments. According to the census, agencies that formally tracked results supplied raw counts, while other agencies gave percentage estimates instead.
The 20% Finding
About 700 law enforcement agencies that rely on Flock’s system took part in the census. Some contributed raw headcounts, while others offered percentage estimates instead. Of those cleared cases in customer jurisdictions in 2025, the study found that 20% were aided by Flock technology.
Flock explained the 20% finding by saying that 307 agencies provided percentage estimates, which were then compared against FBI crime and clearance data for each agency that responded.
On July 21, the Costa Mesa, California, city council voted 6-1 to retain its deal with Flock while negotiating new terms, following deliberation over the $151,800 yearly expense. The local police department offered a favorable recommendation, pointing to the assertion that “Flock technology assisted in solving an estimated 20% of cleared cases” in 2025.
“Across all use cases — direct case clearances, investigative leads, cross-jurisdictional assists, and field deployments — Flock supported approximately 1 million investigations and incidents during the year.”
Expert Pushback
Experts in crime data say the company’s crime-solving statistical claims are not reliable. Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute said the claims are “worth about the paper it’s printed on.”
Andrew Wheeler, a criminologist, argued that Flock’s examination of 2025 crime failed to employ well-established empirical techniques to determine whether cases would have been resolved without the use of Flock technology. He said the “a million crimes solved” number is “probably a gross over-estimate based on that particular work.”.
The numbers in Flock’s blog post come with footnotes and warnings about how they were arrived at. They state that these figures are “directional estimates rather than audited totals”, and that its method for arriving at them is “not a finished product.”.
| Claim | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Million crimes solved | 2025 | Langley’s podcast, The Drive, blog post |
| 20% cleared cases assisted | 2025 | Flock’s 2025 Impact Census |
| 10% of reported crimes | 2024 | Flock-authored white paper |
The 10% White Paper
A February 2024 press release, which promoted a white paper penned by two Flock employees, is where the company’s assertion about its technology was put forward. In 2024, Flock said its technology “is instrumental in solving 10% of reported crimes in the U.S.”.
The paper concluded that every additional camera per sworn officer is associated with a 9.1-percentage-point increase in the agency’s license plate reader-assisted clearance rate. It was “created with the consultation” of Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University and Richard Helfers of the University of Texas at Tyler.
477 agencies responded to the survey, but only 123 of them supplied data for the final model. None of the agencies were chosen at random.
In his blog post at the time, Wheeler took issue with the white paper’s methodology and labeled the 10% conclusion “ridiculous”.
What the Company Has Not Answered
Flock did not answer whether Langley had been imprecise in claiming Flock solved one million crimes in 2025. It also did not provide CBS News with underlying data supporting that claim.
A May 2026 blog post announcing the results of its 2025 Impact Census was where the company first spelled out the origin of its claims.
The difference between the two figures matters. The million-crimes figure includes non-case-clearance items like cross-jurisdictional assistance. The 20% figure applies only to cleared cases.
Neither the million-crimes claim nor the 20% figure has been verified. The figure comes from self-reported data from 307 agencies. Both fall short of supporting the headline the company has been running.
A review of the evidence was conducted by CBS News, and it found that there is no support for the claim that Flock assisted in solving a million crimes in 2025.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs the citizens and local groups pushing back against camera networks and data dragnets, and is against the vendors like Flock lobbying to keep them. The company’s own census data offers a much narrower picture than the headlines suggest, and the experts who have examined the methodology agree.
The 20% figure comes from self-reported percentages from 307 agencies, and the million-incidents figure includes non-case-clearance items like cross-jurisdictional assistance. Neither figure has been verified independently. The company has not answered questions about the accuracy of its claims, and it did not provide CBS News with underlying data supporting the million-crimes figure.
The paper supports cities like Costa Mesa that are negotiating new terms for their contracts. The company’s own white paper, created with consultation from Texas Christian University and the University of Texas at Tyler, found that every additional camera per sworn officer is associated with a 9.1-percentage-point increase in the agency’s license plate reader-assisted clearance rate. That figure comes from a survey where only 123 of 477 responding agencies supplied data, and none were chosen at random.
Source material: “Stats don't support Flock's claim of solving 1 million crimes,” CBS News.
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