Flock cameras, which have found controversy in the news due to concerns around surveillance and misuse of information, have found a home in Riverside.
Public Safety Director Matthew Buckley told the Landmark that there are two Flock cameras in use in Riverside: one on Longcommon Road near Byrd Road and one at the intersection of Longcommon and East Burlington Street.
According to deflock.org, which has an interactive map of Flock cameras and other license plate readers, there is another Flock camera just over the border in Berwyn at 30th Street and Harlem Avenue, as well as one at the intersection of 31st Street and First Avenue, which is the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Buckley said the two cameras were installed around the same time in March 2024 after village officials discussed their implementation at public village board meetings in November 2023.
“The department considered Flock technology because many crimes involving Riverside also involved a vehicle that quickly crosses our municipal boundaries into other jurisdictions. With only the two local cameras that we have, the goal was to give officers a timely way to identify stolen or wanted vehicles, assist with missing or endangered persons, corroborate witness information and develop objective investigative leads to crimes,” Buckley told the Landmark.
The installation was budgeted at $12,000 for fiscal year 2024, according to village documents.
Buckley said Riverside police make use of three non-Flock license plate readers elsewhere in town as well as mobile readers that squad cars are equipped with, which he said “automatically scan license plates while officers are on patrol and check them through the authorized state law enforcement database, similar to an officer manually entering a plate on the in-car computer.”
In Brookfield, police do make use of pole-mounted cameras, but none of them are license plate readers, said Bob Uphues, the village’s communications manager and the former Landmark editor, in an email. Uphues said Brookfield does not make use of Flock cameras, either.
Buckley said the Riverside police department stores data from the Flock cameras for 30 days, but that number is going down to just seven days starting in January except for records that are manually extended by police staff.
He said the cameras provide police with “timely, objective vehicle information” and can alert officers when a license plate is recorded that is associated with a stolen vehicle or a wanted or missing person.
“After a crime, only authorized users can search by plate, vehicle description, location and time to corroborate information or narrow possible leads. It’s a great investigative tool. Because offenders and vehicles move rapidly between communities, responsible interagency access can also extend that investigation beyond the view of Riverside’s two cameras. The Flock technology is just one of many tools used in the support of police work,” he said.
Buckley said data captured by Flock cameras “is usually one part of a larger investigation” and is used in tandem with witness statements, physical evidence and more.
“We have solved numerous crimes using the license plate reader technology that may have gone unsolved without access to the system,” he said.
He gave an example of an abducted child from Ohio who was able to be located driving along Ogden Avenue when the vehicle associated with the abduction was captured by a license plate reader.
“We were able to catch up to that vehicle on Ogden Avenue in LaGrange, take the offender into custody and recover the two-year-old child,” he said. “It does have its definite benefits to law enforcement and criminal justice.”
Buckley said Riverside does not share its Flock data with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in alignment with department policy and Illinois law.
Flock has come under fire in recent years for alleged illegal use of data sharing by out-of-state police and multiple examples of police officers allegedly using Flock data to track individuals for personal reasons. Buckley said the village has only heard concerns from residents recently and not in the first years of the cameras’ use.
While there is interagency sharing within Illinois, Buckley said federal agencies do not have access to Riverside’s data and that it is safeguarded even within the village’s own systems.
“Access is not public or unrestricted. Users must be authorized. Searches are logged, and activity can be reviewed by the user, date and time,” he said. “All these are audited. Any search within our system is audited by the command staff here at the police department.”
He said the police department has a policy against misuse of license plate reader data that officers read and sign, knowing the consequences if they go against it.
“If we find that there is misuse of the system, there’s the internal discipline process, and the different consequences could be pretty severe, depending on the purpose, and up to termination and depending on whether or not it raises to the level of different criminal charges,” Village Manager Jessica Frances said.
Buckley said Riverside’s Flock cameras do not use facial recognition, record audio, identify the occupants of vehicles or even enforce speed limits, like some cameras do in Chicago. While he acknowledged the concerns people may have about the increased surveillance that Flock cameras represent, he said Riverside “maintain[s] strong safeguards to ensure the technology is used properly.”
“It requires a two-factor authentication when logging in. It limits access only to trained, sworn personnel and requires a documented case-related purpose. Our audits are maintained and kept up to date. We restrict sharing; it’s only allowed with departments that actually apply to our system, and shortening the routine retention to seven days beginning January 1 will assist with that,” Buckley said. “Our goal is to use the smallest reasonable amount of technology to address legitimate public safety needs while remaining transparent and accountable to the community.”
Correction, Sept. 16, 2026, 12:30 p.m.: A previous version of this story misstated the location of one of two Flock cameras in Riverside, confusing it for a regular police camera. The second camera is at East Burlington Street and Longcommon Road. The Landmark regrets the error.
