Around three hundred people gathered in the snow outside Bloomington City Hall Friday, holding anti-ICE posters and calling for the city to end its contract with a company that provides vehicle-identifying cameras to law enforcement agencies.
The company, Flock, also gives law enforcement access to camera records from other departments.
Erin Aquino, director of Exodus Refugee in Bloomington, told the crowd the agreement signaled a “potential” cooperation with ICE.
“The city betrays our constitutional right to privacy and betrays the safety of our immigrant neighbors, friends and family,” she said. “There is zero excuse for cooperating or contracting with Flock, knowing how this data can be weaponized to hurt our community.”
The crowd erupted into jeers, using an alliterative curse and the word Flock.
Bloomington and Flock say they do not work with ICE and the service is a powerful crime-solving tool.
There are at least 25 Flock cameras in Bloomington belonging to several agencies, according to DeFlock, a platform where volunteers track automated license plate readers. They can also identify cars by detail as granular as color or a dog in the bed of a pickup truck. The Bloomington Police Department also has two mobile security trailers with panoramic cameras.
City spokesperson Desiree DeMolina said in an email Flock has helped the BPD solve homicides and missing children’s cases.
“Given its role in these situations, it is important to acknowledge that terminating the contract would remove a public-safety tool that is difficult to replace through other currently available means,” she wrote.
She added that Mayor Kerry Thomson will be meeting with Flock representatives in February and is collecting questions from residents.
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Thomson addressed protesters in a selfie video shared to social media Thursday night, saying she appreciates their advocacy.
“We currently have the strictest Information policy in our contract, but I share your concerns that we must ensure this information is not released by the Flock company or anyone else to those who do not share our values of safety for our residents and care for our community,” she said. “The use of information must only be for criminal activity, such as the child abductions and murders.”
The city’s ability to enforce that may be limited.
The company declined an interview request, but spokesperson Paris Lewbel said in a statement that it doesn’t share customer data with third parties and doesn’t have contracts with ICE or any sub-agency of DHS.
But it’s not difficult for ICE to access Flock indirectly through friendly agencies, as happened last year in Boulder, Colo., despite the agency agreeing to only share data with in-state agencies. The Indiana State Police, another Flock customer, has an agreement with ICE allowing it to interrogate and arrest people based on their immigration status.
Any agency that is a customer of Flock can request data from the nationwide network by providing an offense code and a reason.
According to Bloomington’s agreement, “Customer grants Flock a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, license to use the Customer Generated Data for the purpose of providing Flock Services.”
Agencies can block searches from other departments with prohibited queries, such as “immigration” or “abortion.”
But searchers have a lot of leeway with how they phrase their queries. Of almost 1,500 BPD searches found from public records requests between May 2024 and Oct. 2025, many included reasons like “theft” and “drug investigation,” but more than a third just said “suspect” or “sus”.
It’s clear from records requests of other departments that data from Bloomington has been accessible nationwide. Flock network audits retrieved from departments in other states show searches made by the BPD.
The city is not the only local department contracting with Flock. The IU Police Department and Monroe County Sheriff’s Office maintain Flock contracts. The IUPD declined an interview request and the Sheriff’s Office did not respond.
