A privacy advocate is suing the city of Wichita over its use of hundreds of Flock Safety surveillance cameras throughout the city — what he calls a “warrantless surveillance dragnet” program that is practically impossible to avoid.
Mason Grimmett, a local machinist represented by the Kansas Justice Institute, says the Wichita Police Department’s surveillance program violates the Kansas Constitution’s privacy protections. He’s not seeking money.
Instead, he’s asking a Sedgwick County District Court judge to issue a formal ruling that declares Wichita’s surveillance program unconstitutional, ends the program and purges the city’s database — and any other law enforcement agencies storing Wichita data — of historical records it has compiled since adding the Flock cameras in 2020.
Wichita’s database, which includes real-time and historical records that can be used to track anyone whose car has driven past an automated license plate reader, can be accessed by “virtually every police office in Wichita,” along with thousands of other officers across hundreds of other law enforcement agencies, the lawsuit alleges.
Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers are used by thousands of law enforcement agencies across the United States to identify stolen vehicles, locate missing people and track down suspects fleeing a scene. The company claims its technology assisted in solving 20% of cleared cases in jurisdictions where it is used and helped locate 10,000 missing persons in 2025.
But privacy and abuse concerns have led at least 39 jurisdictions to terminate contracts with Flock in the first five months of 2026, including the Los Angeles Police Department earlier this month. Police officers in at least 12 states — including Kansas — have faced allegations of misusing Flock Safety license plate reader systems, a recent Newsweek investigation found.
The city’s surveillance network and Flock database are supposed to be used only for a legitimate law enforcement purpose, but the department and Flock have no way of knowing whether reasons officers key in for accessing the information are actually related to an investigation.
One such example played out in 2022, when a Kechi officer used Wichita’s Flock database to stalk his estranged wife. His unlawful use of the Flock system went unnoticed by police until the wife reported that she believed she was being tracked. The Sedgwick Police chief also lost his law enforcement certification for using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend for more than four months. His misuse was discovered when he told investigators about it while being investigated for an unrelated misconduct case.