Needles / FlockAn independent guide. Not a government or Flock website.
More on plate readers
Costs, results and the evidence.
Finding a stolen car, helping close a case and preventing crime are different outcomes. A study can find a benefit on one measure without finding it on another.
The authors argue that value depends on how police use the technology. Reading more plates, by itself, does not show an improvement in public safety.
Peer-reviewed literature review and analysis. It does not pool studies into a single effect estimate, so we do not call it a meta-analysis.
Authors, funding and what we read
Cynthia Lum, Christopher S. Koper, Hyunji Lee, Daniel S. Nagin and Lawrence Sherman. Published December 11, 2025 in the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing.
The authors declare no funding and no competing interests. That is their disclosure, not an independent verification.
The outcome and comparison matter more than a simple “works” or “doesn’t work.” These studies concern plate readers generally; none establishes results for Flock in Needles.
Vehicle recovery
Arizona
2012 · Peer-reviewed study
More stolen vehicles recovered
LPR patrols produced more stolen-vehicle recoveries and arrests than manual plate checks. That gain did not establish crime prevention.
Keep in view: The abstract associates less auto theft two weeks later with manual specialist patrol, not LPR, compared with the control. Full article not reviewed.
Modeled how often and how quickly cases closed (survival analysis). NIJ abstract reviewed.
Equipment
Fixed-reader network; not a verified Flock study.
Funding
NIJ’s listing labels this publication NIJ-sponsored. This page has not assessed funder influence.
A study finding no statistically significant effect does not prove there is no effect. A favorable association alone does not prove the cameras caused the change.
The local cost record
What can we say about Needles?
$29,000 paid over two years
City check registers show $15,800 paid to Flock in February 2025 and $13,200 in February 2026, the amounts in the 2024 quote, from the City’s state COPS fund. The proposal names four cameras. Current contract terms and any cost beyond the 24-month quote remain unverified. Earlier Council purchases: $39,375.84 for Vigilant Solutions cameras at the North K Street bridge in 2016, and in 2021 an $18,511.67 plate-reader trailer and a $19,321.25 Vigilant reader for it, all from COPS funds. The City’s resolution log also lists a 2010 purchase of a mobile plate-recognition system; its price is not held. 2010 log entry · 2016 resolution · 2021 trailer · 2021 reader · First payment · Second payment · Vendor quote · p. 145
These figures describe the town, not the cameras. They are published by three state agencies and are here so the camera spending can be read against something. None of them measures whether the cameras work.
FY2023–24, the most recent year published, against $2,445,358 in FY2016–17. Not adjusted for inflation. State Controller filing
Each Flock payment, as a share of that
0.4%
$15,800 in February 2025 and $13,200 in February 2026, or 0.3%, against one year of police spending. First payment · Second payment
Needles contracts its policing to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, so the police line is mostly that contract, which the City’s filing does not itemise. The most recent year the Controller has published ended on June 30, 2024, before either Flock payment.
Offenses reported to the state, 2015 to 2025
Counts Needles reported to the California Department of Justice. Offenses reported to police, not crimes committed.
Needles sent the Department of Justice six months of 2023: January, then August through December. February through July are absent from the state’s monthly file. Each year’s totals are the sum of the months submitted, which holds for every year checked here, so the 2023 figures cover half a year and cannot be compared with the rows above or below them. The state’s file does not say why the months are missing, and their absence does not mean nothing happened in them. Monthly and yearly state files
Vehicle theft, and why 2025 settles nothing
Vehicle thefts reported in Needles fell from 29 in 2024 to 14 in 2025, the first full calendar year after the City’s first payment to Flock. That is not evidence the cameras worked, and the reason is not caution. In a town this size, a one-year fall of that size is ordinary variation whatever the cause. Needles reported 11 vehicle thefts in 2019, 13 in 2021 and 14 in 2022, every one of those years before a Flock camera was paid for, so 14 is a number this city reaches regularly rather than a new low. One town’s years are not independent of each other either. The same roads, the same residents and the same contract policing run through all of them, so a run of 11 years here is not 11 separate tests of anything. There is no comparison town, and nothing in these records shows how any case was solved. Property offenses in 2025 were 81, the lowest of the full years shown; violent offenses were 53, up from 44. Both statements have the same limits.
Establishing that cameras changed any of these counts would need a study designed for it, of the kind compared further up this page. See what those studies found.
Does Flock bring in ticket revenue?
No Flock-related income has been established. The City of Needles’ proposal describes Falcon plate readers and alerts. It does not describe automatic ticketing. Product description · p. 146
Needles’s FY2026–27 budget lists $15,000 for court fines, $35,000 for city code fines and $10,000 for parking violations. These are budgeted amounts, not verified receipts. The accounts do not identify Flock-related income. Revenue accounts · p. 6
To answer the question, the City of Needles and San Bernardino County Sheriff would need to identify any existing records connecting a Flock-assisted citation to money received by Needles. Ask local leaders about costs and results.
How this reading list was assembled
Selected research, checked September 9, 2026. We looked for evaluations of real police deployments and a review of cost-effectiveness. The selection includes favorable, mixed and undetected effects; it is not an exhaustive systematic search or a pooled analysis.
These results do not establish Flock’s effects in Needles. Equipment, deployment, comparison groups and outcomes differ. We have not calculated a local return on investment.
Recognition-accuracy papers, vendor benefit claims and accounts of particular cases answer other questions; they are not treated here as controlled crime-impact studies. The 2025 review and studies it cites are not independent confirmations of the same experiment.
Funding is identified where the inspected source supplies it. A disclosure alone does not settle a study’s quality or neutrality. Abstract-only reviews are labeled; we do not report effect sizes or cost-benefit estimates that require the unread full text.
Needles / FlockNeedles, California · September 20, 2026
Flock cameras in Needles
An automated license plate reader (ALPR) saves a vehicle’s plate, time and location for later searches. A car does not have to match a police alert to be recorded.[1]
What the Needles record says
Needles City Council approved the Flock proposal on October 22, 2024. [2]
Cameras in the quote
4
Storage in the quote
365 days
Paid over two years
$29,000
Four is the proposal count. City check registers show $15,800 paid to Flock in February 2025 and $13,200 in February 2026. [7][8] The operating inventory and current retention remain unverified. [3]
Who is responsible?
The quote names the City of Needles as customer, and the City paid from its state COPS fund, which state law reserves for police services. [9]San Bernardino County Sheriff provides Needles’ policing. The signed agreement and its terms remain unverified. [2][3][4]
Useful leads. Privacy risks.
Mountain View, California, reported stolen-vehicle recovery and a missing family found safe with Flock’s help. Its audit also found outside access contrary to its intended setup. [5]
Savannah, Georgia, police reported firing six employees after finding misuse, including searches involving acquaintances and family. [6] These are agency reports about other cities; they do not establish Needles’ outcomes or misuse.
What residents can ask
Who can search our records, how long are they kept, and what results justify the cost?
Ask Needles City Council about funding and upcoming decisions; ask San Bernardino County Sheriff about access, audits and operating rules.