WHERE THE FLOCK?
Two Flock devices installed in Mammoth Lakes were stolen and potentially vandalized in mid-July, according to Mammoth Lakes Police Department Chief Dan Casabian.
A suspect has not yet been named, so the motive remains unclear, but the theft lands at a moment when Flock Safety, the manufacturer, is facing national scrutiny over how its technology gets used, and misused, by the officers who have access to it.
The devices weren’t cameras. They were Flock’s Raven Gunshot Detection microphones (one installed at the Mammoth Lakes School District offices, the other on Manzanita Road) designed to detect sounds that may indicate gunfire within a quarter-mile area.
This coverage includes Mammoth’s three public schools, the hospital and public daycare.
“It is a shame that people think this is an appropriate course of action,” Mammoth Lakes Town Manager Rob Patterson said in an email, adding that he wishes the vandals “would educate themselves on the use of this system and how it functions to keep our citizens safe.”
But educating the public on how Flock’s systems function is exactly the problem the company, and the police departments that rely on it, have been struggling with all year.
So here’s how they work:
When a Raven microphone detects a sound that could be gunfire (a loud boom; sometimes the machine mistakes fireworks or cars backfiring), it alerts school and hospital leadership along with the police department.
The recording is retained for 30 days before being automatically deleted. Unlike Flock’s infamous Falcon cameras, which use automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology, the Ravens have no camera function and, per Casabian, cannot record or track conversations.
“So say we’re out driving around, we get notification that there was a gunshot detected,” Casabian said. “The system can pinpoint the location within about 90 feet, allowing officers to respond before someone has to call 911 and a dispatcher has to relay the information to police.”
In the case of an active shooter situation, the ALPR cameras installed in Mammoth could then be used to track down a vehicle linked to a run-away suspect.
Flock first arrived in Mammoth when the Town Council unanimously approved eight Falcon cameras on July 17, 2024.
About six months later, three additional Falcon cameras and the two Raven microphones were added through a cost-sharing agreement between Mammoth Unified School District, Mono County Office of Education (MCOE), Cerro Coso Community College and Mammoth Hospital.
A master services agreement with Flock was unanimously approved by MCOE on Jan. 30, 2025 for the new devices.
Casabian has repeatedly told the Town Council and the public that Flock’s cameras track vehicles, not people, and that they’ve been instrumental in several cases.
But that reassurance runs up against a pattern playing out in police departments elsewhere this year.
In Milwaukee, an officer was charged with misconduct after prosecutors say he used the department’s Flock network to track the location of two people, one of them a former partner. Audit logs cited in the criminal complaint showed he had searched the license plate used by one woman 55 times and the other’s 124 times over the same time period.
Because of stories like this, public skepticism of police accountability has run high, and some cities, including Bishop, have recently decided to end their contracts with Flock.
Bishop Police Chief Nate Derr said there had been no vandalism of Flock cameras before the city’s decision to exit the contract.
The City is currently looking for an in-house, closed-circuit provider so that Bishop would have total control over the footage and data.
When The Sheet asked Casabian whether he would consider recommending ending the contract in Mammoth due to public backlash, he said “no” flatly.
“I can’t refute the fact that other officers are out there using it in a way that it’s not supposed to be used, but then that’s why we have a disciplinary process,” he said. “We have a policy in place and do reviews and audits of our system to make sure that that’s not happening.”
MLPD’s written ALPR policy doesn’t fully back that up.
Officers are required to use department technology “in a professional manner,” and the department reserves the right to access and audit its systems, but the policy doesn’t require officers to document a law-enforcement purpose before running a search, doesn’t explicitly prohibit personal-reason searches, and doesn’t mandate routine supervisory review of individual searches, according to the policy document approved during the July 17 Council meeting.
In other words, the audits Casabian points to as a safeguard aren’t required by the policy itself; they’d have to happen as a matter of practice, the same way Milwaukee’s audit trail existed but didn’t prevent misuse until it was reviewed after the fact.
The Town is treating the theft and vandalism as a serious offense.
“The Town is actively investigating this vandalism and will request the District Attorney consider charges to the fullest extent possible,” Patterson said.
In California, theft becomes a felony above $950 in value or in certain circumstances involving firearms or automobiles; vandalism becomes a felony above $400 in property damage. The Raven system costs roughly $12,000 a year to maintain, and Flock’s reinstallation fee schedule lists camera replacement at around $800 and pole replacement at about $500, costs the school district would absorb, since Flock isn’t liable for lost service if a stolen device isn’t replaced.
Last week, Flock Safety announced a round of privacy and oversight changes nationally in response to the growing scrutiny, including shortening the recommended ALPR data-retention window from 30 days to seven, requiring case numbers for law-enforcement searches, expanding automated monitoring and lockouts, limiting outside-agency access, and offering more transparency around data ownership.
However, most of those changes won’t take effect until the end of 2026, and existing customers, including Mammoth’s, may be able to keep their current retention policies regardless.
