A Flock camera is a camera product made by Flock Safety. In many public discussions, the phrase refers to one of the company’s license plate readers. ALPR and LPR, however, describe a technology category used by multiple manufacturers. Not every license plate reader is a Flock camera, and not every product Flock Safety offers is a license plate reader.

PlateReaderMap is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Flock Safety. On this site, a location is counted as Flock Safety only when its public source record explicitly supports that manufacturer classification.

An operational guide archived by the Office of Justice Programs describes license plate reader systems without tying the category to one manufacturer. Flock Safety’s own product directory separately lists license plate readers alongside video, audio-detection, software, and other offerings.

Explore explicitly tagged locations on the Flock camera map and state breakdown, or compare documented manufacturers and unknown records on the national camera map.

Is every ALPR camera a Flock camera?

No. Flock Safety is one manufacturer within the broader license plate reader category. Other companies make ALPR/LPR systems, and some public map records do not document a manufacturer at all. Calling every plate reader a Flock camera would misstate both the technology and the source data.

What do ALPR, LPR, and ANPR mean?

In U.S. sources, automated license plate reader and license plate reader are commonly shortened to ALPR and LPR. Automatic number-plate recognition, or ANPR, is another name for the same general technology category. A source’s choice of acronym does not identify the manufacturer.

When PlateReaderMap calls a record Flock Safety

OpenStreetMap’s ALPR tagging documentation allows contributors to add manufacturer=* and model=* when those details are known. Those fields are optional. A record tagged as an ALPR can therefore have no documented manufacturer.

PlateReaderMap groups clear naming variants for analysis while preserving the original tag. It does not identify a vendor from a camera’s location, nearby contracts, or visual resemblance alone. “Manufacturer not documented” is a statement about the source data, not proof that no manufacturer exists.

Reading manufacturer statistics

Three totals answer different questions:

  • all documented ALPR locations includes records with unknown manufacturers;
  • known-manufacturer locations excludes unknown values from its denominator;
  • documented Flock Safety locations includes only records whose source supports that classification.

Separating those totals prevents a known manufacturer’s share from being overstated. It also leaves room for records from other manufacturers as public source data improves. The Flock camera map applies these rules to the current source snapshot, while the interactive map keeps all documented and manufacturer-unknown ALPR/LPR records in view.

Sources and further reading