Burr Ridge officials describe the Village’s new Flock Safety system as a tool for identifying vehicles connected to crimes.
The contract reveals a much larger capability.
Burr Ridge did not simply lease cameras positioned along local roads and subdivision entrances. Its five-year, $1.264 million agreement includes access to a nationwide system that Flock says generates 10 billion additional license-plate reads every month.
The platform allows authorized users to search for vehicles recorded by participating cameras beyond Burr Ridge. Searches may be based on a license plate, location, time or a vehicle’s physical appearance.
The contract also includes Advanced Search, which Flock says provides visual search, searches across multiple geographic areas and “convoy analysis”—the ability to identify vehicles observed traveling together.
For a Village with approximately 11,000 residents and 248 reported Group A criminal offenses in 2025, those capabilities deserve closer public scrutiny.
What the system records
Flock’s license-plate readers capture more than plate numbers.
The company’s “Vehicle Fingerprint” technology can classify or identify attributes including:
Vehicle type
Make
Color
License-plate state
Missing or covered plates
Bumper stickers
Decals
Roof racks
Bike racks
Other distinguishing features
Police can use the information after a crime to search for a suspected vehicle. Officers may also receive real-time alerts when a vehicle on a law-enforcement or custom hotlist passes a camera.
Those features can help locate stolen vehicles, missing people and suspects in serious crimes.
But the system records vehicles before police know whether they have any connection to criminal activity. Every passing vehicle contributes another time-and-location data point that may later become searchable.
In practical terms, the system can help reconstruct where a vehicle has been observed and when it was there.
A search can extend far beyond Burr Ridge
The order form included in the Village’s July 13, 2026 board packet describes several network features:
State Network: Allows license-plate lookups across participating cameras within Illinois.
Nationwide Network: Allows agencies to use Flock’s broader sharing network and billions of additional monthly plate reads.
Law Enforcement Network Access: Allows an agency to request direct access to cameras operated by law-enforcement agencies outside its jurisdiction.
Community Network Access: Allows police to request access to privately owned Flock cameras at neighborhoods, schools and businesses.
The existence of those features does not mean Burr Ridge can automatically see every Flock camera in the country. Access depends on network participation, sharing settings and agreements between agencies.
But it means the system is designed to make vehicle information portable across jurisdictional boundaries.
A plate entered in Burr Ridge could potentially return sightings captured far from Burr Ridge if the relevant camera data is available through the network.
The stalking scenario
Imagine that a police officer develops an improper personal interest in someone—a former partner, neighbor, relative or acquaintance.
If the officer knows the person’s license plate and has access to Flock, the system could potentially be misused to search for that vehicle’s recent sightings.
The results would not provide continuous GPS tracking. They would show individual observations made when the vehicle passed participating cameras.
But repeated observations could reveal where someone lives, where they work, the routes they regularly travel and the places they visit.
Moving to another community would not necessarily prevent that kind of search if cameras in the new location participate in a shared network.
This is not evidence that any Burr Ridge employee has misused the system. The records reviewed by CityNewsWire do not establish such misuse.
The risk, however, is not hypothetical.
The Associated Press recently reported that nearly 50 police officers had been charged or accused of using license-plate-reading systems for unauthorized purposes. Many of the allegations involved officers searching for romantic partners, former partners or family members.
In Savannah, Georgia, six police employees were reportedly fired after searches involving friends and relatives and after an outside officer was allowed to use the city’s cameras. Read the Associated Press report.
Flock is changing its safeguards
Following growing criticism and reports of improper searches, Flock announced additional safeguards for law-enforcement customers.
The company says users will be required to connect searches to specific case numbers. An auditing tool is expected to detect abnormal search activity and lock accounts pending review. Emergency searches that override normal requirements would be flagged.
Flock is also reducing its standard data-retention period from 30 days to seven days, although information connected to an investigation may be preserved longer.
These changes are significant because Burr Ridge’s newly adopted subdivision-camera policy provides for a 30-day retention period. The Village has not publicly explained whether it will move to the shorter default or deliberately preserve the longer period.
Auditing also does not necessarily prevent an improper search from occurring. It creates a record that may allow the misconduct to be discovered afterward—if someone reviews the logs, recognizes the problem and acts on it.
What Burr Ridge tells the public
Burr Ridge recently launched a Flock Transparency Portal.
The Village says the cameras do not use facial recognition and that strict policies and safeguards protect residents’ privacy. It also says an alert is an investigative lead rather than proof that a crime occurred.
Those are useful assurances, but the public-facing page does not itself answer several important questions:
How many Burr Ridge employees can search the system?
Are nationwide searches enabled for every authorized user?
Must every search be associated with a valid case number?
Who reviews the search logs?
How frequently are audits performed?
How many searches have been conducted?
How many searches were performed by outside agencies?
Has an audit ever identified an improper or questionable search?
Would a person be notified if an officer searched for the person’s vehicle improperly?
The portal also does not provide the public with Burr Ridge’s search logs, a list of connected agencies or regular statistics showing how often different capabilities are used.
Unlimited users and custom hotlists
The Flock contract describes access for “unlimited users.” That does not necessarily mean every Village employee will receive an account. Burr Ridge controls which employees it authorizes.
But the contract does not set a numerical limit on the number of users the Village may add.
It also provides “unlimited custom hotlists.” These allow authorized users to create lists of vehicles of interest and receive alerts when those vehicles pass a Flock camera.
Custom hotlists can serve legitimate purposes when police are searching for a missing person or a vehicle connected to a documented investigation.
They also create an obvious risk if a plate is entered without an adequate law-enforcement basis. The relevant safeguards are therefore not merely whether searches are logged, but who may add a vehicle, what documentation is required, how long an entry remains active and who reviews it.
Low crime does not eliminate legitimate police needs
Burr Ridge is not crime-free. Its location near major highways and valuable residential and commercial property may make vehicle-based investigative tools useful.
The Village’s 2025 report documented burglaries, theft, fraud and assaults. Police may reasonably conclude that vehicles are frequently involved in crimes committed by people traveling into or through the community.
But Burr Ridge’s own report also says property crime fell 5% in 2025 and burglaries declined from 36 to 12. The report attributes the Village’s results to proactive policing rather than rising crime. Read the 2025 crime report.
The issue is therefore not whether police should have useful investigative tools. It is whether a nationwide vehicle-surveillance capability is proportionate to the Village’s needs and subject to adequate independent oversight.
Trust requires verification
Mayor Gary Grasso has said Burr Ridge would not use the cameras to violate anyone’s rights.
That is the expected position of responsible public officials. It is not a permanent safeguard.
Administrators, police chiefs and officers change. Network settings change. Technology gains new capabilities. Information shared with another agency may be used by people Burr Ridge does not supervise.
A durable system of accountability cannot depend entirely on confidence in the people currently holding office.
It requires written limits, mandatory documentation, regular audits, public reporting and meaningful consequences for misuse.
Burr Ridge has committed $1.264 million to technology capable of searching vehicle movements across an enormous public-private network. Residents should not have to wait for an abuse allegation to learn how that power is controlled.
Questions to Ask
Are nationwide searches enabled for Burr Ridge users?
Which employees are permitted to conduct those searches?
Must every search include a valid case or incident number?
Who reviews searches involving personal acquaintances, public officials or sensitive locations?
How frequently are user and hotlist audits conducted?
Which outside agencies can search Burr Ridge camera data?
Can federal agencies obtain Burr Ridge information directly or indirectly?
Will the Village reduce its retention period from 30 days to seven?
Would a resident be notified if an audit found that an officer searched for the resident’s vehicle improperly?
Will Burr Ridge publish quarterly statistics on searches, alerts, outside access and confirmed outcomes?
Sources
How we made this: CityNewsWire reviewed Burr Ridge’s July 13, 2026 board packet, including the Flock order form, product descriptions, payment schedule and subdivision-camera policy. Crime information comes from the Burr Ridge Police Department’s 2025 report. National context comes from the Associated Press report linked above. The records reviewed do not establish that Burr Ridge personnel have misused the system.