404 Media crowdsources public records requests into Axon police license plate readers

Flock backlash is pushing cities toward Axon

404 Media has opened a crowdsourced investigation into Axon's automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), asking readers across the US to file public records requests that could show how local police use the cameras and who the resulting data is shared with.

The campaign responds to a shift in police procurement. According to 404 Media, cities around the country are dropping Flock's ALPR cameras in favour of equivalent hardware from Axon, one of the largest contractors in American law enforcement. Much of that movement is a reaction to 404 Media's earlier coverage of Flock, which showed local officers running plate lookups for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and, in one case, a Texas officer searching Flock cameras nationwide for a woman who had self-administered an abortion.

Those stories turned Flock's audit logs into a national controversy. They also appear to have made Axon a beneficiary, which raises the same accountability questions about a different vendor.

What Axon's audit logs contain

Over the past few weeks, 404 Media has filed records requests with a range of cities and police departments seeking Axon "activity reports" and "sharing reports". As the outlet describes them, these documents record in granular detail every search an officer made of the ALPR system: the officer's name, badge number, the plate queried and the stated reason for the lookup.

They are, in effect, Axon's counterpart to Flock's "network audits" — the documents that anchored 404 Media's Flock reporting and were later used by other local and national newsrooms.

So far the outlet has obtained activity reports from six agencies: the Benton County Sheriff's Office in Washington, the Falmouth Police Department in Maine, the Johns Creek Police Department in Georgia, the Ocean Shores Police Department in Washington, the Pleasanton Police Department in Texas and the Red Wing Police Department in Minnesota.

A template request anyone can file

To extend the picture nationwide, 404 Media published a ready-to-use public records request. Readers can copy the language, adapt it to their own state's records law, and submit it to the relevant agency by email or through Muckrock, the records-request platform the outlet itself uses.

The template asks for four report types, each covering the period from January 1, 2025 to the date the request is processed. According to Axon's documentation, all four are accessible through the LPR > ALPR Search > LPR Audit menu in the company's software:

• Internal ALPR Activity report: a log of the agency's own searches of the plate reader system.
• Network ALPR Activity report: shows which other agencies a department shares its data with.
• ALPR Data Sharing report: a history of when outside agencies were invited to, or removed from, receiving the data.
• ALPR Hotlist Management Audit report: records changes made to the alert lists an agency monitors.

Anyone who receives documents back is invited to email them to 404 Media at [email protected], where reporters say the material will inform further coverage.

Why it matters

Audit logs turned Flock from a relatively obscure vendor into a subject of national scrutiny, because they convert a sprawling surveillance network into something checkable: named officers, specific plates and stated justifications. That is what surfaced ICE-related lookups performed by local police and the Texas abortion-related search — findings that reshaped the debate over plate readers and, by 404 Media's account, pushed cities to change vendors.

But switching vendors does not resolve the underlying issue; it relocates it. Unless the same questions are asked of Axon, mass plate surveillance continues with less scrutiny than before. 404 Media argues that its Flock coverage demonstrated how much individual residents can reveal about the technology operating in their own communities, and public records laws are the mechanism that makes such oversight possible. Whether Axon's logs show routine policing or something broader remains an open question — one the outlet is betting readers can help answer.