Flock Safety Opens Employee Buyouts Amid Customer Contract Losses

Flock Safety has opened a voluntary employee separation program that it expects to approve for most applicants, creating an exit route for workers as the license-plate-reader company loses customers and confronts a widening backlash over its surveillance technology.

Applications opened September 18 and close October 2. Employees should learn whether their applications were accepted on October 9. Most accepted workers would leave by October 29, although Flock may ask some to stay another one to three months.

A voluntary exit, or a substitute for cuts?

Flock’s internal message frames the program as a way to give employees “greater agency” and says it treats them with transparency, respect and choice. The package is described as the company’s most generous yet, roughly twice its previous severance offers.

But the same plan can also be read as a way to lower headcount without compulsory layoffs. People familiar with Flock told WIRED that many of the company’s roughly 1,500 employees may seek the offer; one person said layoffs would be almost certain without buyouts. Those are assessments from people familiar with the program, not an announced layoff plan.

A richer package against a tougher backdrop

• Several months of health care coverage after separation.
• Two years to exercise stock options, longer than Flock typically gives employees who resign.
• An expectation that the majority of applicants will receive buyouts, according to the internal email reported by WIRED.

The offer arrives as Flock has had many contracts dropped or not renewed during 2026, according to people familiar with the company. Those people also said vandalism directed at Flock cameras has increased expenses. An advocacy group counted 93 city and county governments that ended ties with Flock in August alone.

The business strain follows a broader surveillance fight

Flock’s core business is a network of license-plate readers, but WIRED has also reported that it developed AI-powered investigative software designed to identify drivers, identify potential associates from movement patterns, and search police and other data. That expanding capability is part of the setting for disputes over the company’s data collection, sharing and potential misuse.

Chief executive Garrett Langley said last month that the backlash had inflicted its biggest damage on internal morale. The new program does not settle whether Flock’s customer losses will continue, but it gives the company a defined way to shrink while giving some employees a better-than-usual route out.