CHICAGO URBAN DAILY
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Chicago police ran more than 23,000 searches of a private surveillance database this summer — and the City Council never voted on it.
That number comes from audit logs obtained by FOX32 Chicago, showing the Chicago Police Department queried Flock Safety’s camera database more than 23,000 times between May and July of this year. The city has been quietly paying a third-party company for access since 2024 — nearly $75,000 in taxpayer money — routed through what the city calls an “existing master services agreement” that bypassed the budget office and the City Council entirely. No public hearings. No votes.
The arrangement traces back to a memorandum of understanding with Flock Safety, signed in January 2023 after a process that began in 2021. Under the MOU, Chicago officers can log into Flock’s portal and pull from its entire national camera database.
A high-ranking source inside the department told FOX32 that only investigators and a designated tech team of civilians have access — but the department itself has not confirmed that.
Now the Mayor’s Office is weighing in. In a statement to FOX32, a spokesperson said the Office of Public Safety Administration “obtained access to the Flock database following the conclusion of a process which began in 2021” and “used their discretionary budget to pay for access, beginning in 2024,” adding that the spending “did not require or involve the approval of OBM or the Mayor’s Office.”
The statement continued: “The Mayor’s Office recognizes the serious concerns raised by this arrangement and is engaged in urgent discussions to identify and implement measures to mitigate any potential harm to Chicago residents and protect their privacy and safety.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson is expected to address the issue himself.
Twenty-three thousand searches. Seventy-five thousand taxpayer dollars. And the people footing the bill never got a say. Privacy advocates have been warning about exactly this — a city plugged into a surveillance machine with no public sign-off.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this story develops.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
