Cops Are Asking Axon to Make Their Cameras Look Different From Flock So People Don't Destroy Them

Axon says some police departments are asking it to change the look of its automatic license plate readers so they won’t be mistaken for Flock cameras. The pitch is simple and grim: if the hardware looks different, maybe fewer people will smash it up. That came out in a webinar Axon hosted on August 26 and later deleted from Vimeo.

The discussion happened under the banner “From backlash to trust,” which is about as close as you get to a company admitting the pitch is on fire. Axon CEO Rick Smith said the company was considering whether to alter the general shape of Outpost, its fixed ALPR camera. He also said customers wanted something that “looks different” because of “all this blowback.”

And the pressure is not abstract. Across the country, people have torn down Flock cameras, backed trucks into them, and sprayed paint over their lenses. Police have arrested and charged people in some of those cases. In one instance, officers even used a fake, 3D-printed Flock camera as bait and then charged a man who damaged it with three felonies.

The shift away from Flock has another edge to it. Some cities are moving to Axon because of Flock’s national network, which lets officers search cameras across state lines and far outside their own jurisdiction. That system has already drawn criticism after 404 Media reported that cops used Flock lookups for ICE, tracked a woman who self-administered an abortion, and abused access to stalk ex-spouses.

Smith floated one more idea: instead of hiding the cameras, make them more obvious. Put up signs. Say where they are. Spell out the city’s ALPR rules. For now, though, the clearest signal from the webinar was not about transparency. It was about optics, vandalism, and a market where even the shape of a camera has become part of the backlash.