Shakopee Has 5 Flock Cameras Here's Exactly What They Do & Don't Do.

TLDR

• Shakopee owns five license plate cameras. Four more are in various stages of being moved, replaced, or installed.
• The program costs $18,000 a year. Replacing a damaged camera runs $3,000.
• Officers need a search warrant from a judge to search the database — unless someone's life is in danger.
• Shakopee deletes the data after 30 days. State law would let them keep it for 60.

Back in August, Shakopee put data centers and Flock cameras on its future agenda. On Tuesday, September 1, the cameras came up for real.

The City Council spent about an hour in a workshop on automated license plate readers — the cameras most people just call Flock cameras. City Administrator Bill Reynolds and Police Chief Jamie Pearson tag-teamed the presentation.

No vote was taken. This was a "here are the facts" session. But it was the most detailed public accounting Shakopee has given of a program that's become a fight in cities all over the country.

Here's what the city said.

What the Cameras Actually Capture

Reynolds started by narrowing what these things are. A license plate reader takes a snapshot. It captures a plate and some details about the vehicle at one moment in time.

It does not record continuously. It does not follow a car around. It does not identify who's inside. It doesn't collect personal information about the people in the vehicle, and it doesn't record what's happening around the camera.

Reynolds said he learned that last part the hard way. When some of the city's cameras got destroyed, his first reaction was to ask why they didn't have video of it. "That's what started my odyssey in the Flock world," he said, "when I realized that's not what these do."

He told another story too. When the camera at Jackson Park first went up, a resident emailed to ask if the city was watching him walk his son around the park. Reynolds' answer: "Not with that camera. No, we are not."

The city does have separate recording cameras in its parks — two more at Jackson Park and three at Quarry Lake. Those record people. Reynolds called them "more intrusive than the Flock camera." They're there because of repeated vandalism.

How a Camera Becomes an Alert

This part confused the council at first. If the camera only reads plates, how does it help find a missing child?

Pearson explained the chain. When someone is reported missing, police enter them into NCIC — a national law enforcement database — and attach their license plate to their name. That plate is now flagged. The Flock system pulls updates from that database a couple of times a day. If the flagged plate passes a camera, an officer gets an alert with the time, date, and a photo.

Same thing works for stolen cars. If Minneapolis enters a stolen vehicle and it drives past a Shakopee camera, Shakopee gets pinged.

But Pearson was quick to manage expectations. "We are how many square miles? 36, 38 square miles. There's 50,000 people in this town. We're a very busy police department. Not every single alert is attended to."

And because the camera doesn't track anything, an alert only tells you where a car was. "By the time we get there, it's gone," Reynolds said. "Now you're back to old school looking for a red Dodge, blah, blah, blah."

Who Can Search, and What It Takes

This is where Shakopee says it goes further than the law requires.

Minnesota's license plate reader statute already restricts how this data can be used and how long it can be kept. Shakopee layers more on top:

• A search warrant is required before an officer can search the database for a plate. The only exception is an exigent circumstance — an immediate threat to life or public safety. Pearson said this was worked out with the county attorney and has become routine. "We've written many, many search warrants for this."
• Not everyone gets access. Only sergeants and above, investigators, captains, and the chief can search. Regular patrol officers can't. "It's not a free-for-all," Pearson said.
• Every action leaves a trail. Searches get a case number, and the warrant attaches to it, labeled "Flock Search."
• Outside agencies need a warrant too. If another city wants to know whether a vehicle showed up in Shakopee's system and there's no emergency, they have to bring a judge-signed warrant.

Even when a valid alert comes in, an officer can't just flip the lights on. Pearson described a human verification step: run the plate through the state system and NCIC to confirm it really is entered as stolen, then check whether the driver even matches the registered owner. "If the registered owner is revoked and a female, but there's a male driving the car, we're not stopping that car. Why would we?"

Alerts are not used for speeding or minor traffic stuff.

What It Costs and Where They Are

The whole program runs $18,000 a year. Replacing a damaged camera costs $3,000. When Mayor Matt Lehman heard that number, he pointed at the cameras in the council chambers and noted those cost more.

Right now five cameras are installed and working. Four more are in flux — two need to be relocated, one needs replacing, and one hasn't gone up yet. One of the five sits in Jackson Park.

Data Sharing: Just Prior Lake

Shakopee shares its plate reader data with exactly one other agency: Prior Lake. Pearson's reasoning was geographic. The cities border each other, investigations overlap constantly, and Prior Lake runs its program the same way — sergeant-level access only, search warrants required, same county attorney.

Lehman put it plainly: "We've got the pipeline corridor on 83 from 169 right to Mystic Lake and back."

Prior Lake signed a formal data access authorization form. And a council member's follow-up question got a clear answer: if Prior Lake later shares with some other city, that city does not get Shakopee's data. "There's no backdoor roundabout access."

Everybody else has been told no. "We've gotten requests and I've said no," Pearson said. "We don't share with federal agencies, DHS, ICE, Immigration."

The Cases They Say It Solved

Pearson put five felony cases on the screen: an attempted murder, a shooting, a felony flee, a drug possession case, stolen vehicles, and a homicide investigation.

"These are five significant felony level crimes, one of which an individual was killed, where we maybe wouldn't have been able to solve the crime without this technology as quickly as we did."

None of them involved data from private cameras. Home Depot, Lowe's, and FedEx all have their own Flock cameras in Shakopee. The city doesn't share with them and doesn't control them.

Why the Cameras Are in the Parks

The park cameras got their own moment. Reynolds put up photos of the damage — bathrooms destroyed, fixtures burned. "That used to be a urinal," he said of one.

Lehman was blunt about the reasoning: "When we put $2 million into these parks, and these thugs, criminals destroy it, it's pretty frustrating when we turn around and foot the bill for $200,000 to fix it. I'd like to catch them, prosecute them, and make them pay for it instead of the taxpayers paying for it twice."

He added that he likes the cameras being obvious. "Maybe that will stop the issue to begin with."

Retention: 30 Days, Maybe Seven

State law allows 60 days of retention. Shakopee keeps data for 30. Flock recently approached the city about dropping to seven.

Pearson said she's considering it but isn't ready. "I need to have some conversations with our investigators because it could impact some of our criminal investigations." Lehman asked whether the city could dump the routine reads while keeping data tied to an active case. Pearson didn't know and said she'd find out.

The Bottom Line

Shakopee's program is real, it's small, and the rules around it are tighter than the state minimum. The city also gets audited by an independent auditor every two years — the most recent one was completed in April 2026 and found the department in full compliance. It's posted on the city's public portal.

Whether that's enough is a separate question, and residents had a lot to say about it that same night.

But if you were trying to figure out what the city actually does with your plate, this is it: reads it, checks it against a flagged list, and deletes it in 30 days unless a judge says otherwise.

Council Member Jay Whiting asked to bring the topic back on a properly advertised agenda so more residents can weigh in. Watch the city agendas.

More on how south metro cities spend and decide: Burnsville's cannabis store vote, Lakeville's budget rewrite, and why Hastings water bills are going up.

Sources: Flock Safety's license plate reader policy and FOX 9's coverage ahead of the meeting.