# 2025-07 Axon Terminates Flock API Partnership In early 2025 the interoperability partnership between [[Axon Enterprise, Inc.]] and [[Flock Safety, Inc.]] ruptured. Both companies emailed their law-enforcement customers — including recipients at the [[Little Rock Police Department]] / [[City of Little Rock]] — to give competing accounts of why Axon was ending API access between the two platforms. The two messages in this production are dated January 31 and February 3, 2025, and announce a termination keyed to a future effective date of July 24, 2025. This page uses that effective date; the originating correspondence predates it. The dispute matters for LRPD specifically because the department operates both vendors' stacks at once: a [[Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC)]] built on Axon's [[Fusus]] platform alongside [[Flock Safety, Inc.]] ALPR cameras. A break in cross-vendor API access bears directly on whether LRPD can search its own Flock camera data inside Fusus. See [[Vendor Platform Lock-In and the Flock-Axon API Dispute]] and the source page [[Flock-Axon API Dispute and the Dual RTCC Stack]]. ## What the record states ### Flock's account (Garrett Langley, Jan 31, 2025) [[Flock Safety, Inc.]] CEO [[Garrett Langley]] emailed an LRPD recipient framing the break as Axon's unilateral decision. He wrote that "Axon made a surprise decision to end our partnership and cut off the API access that law enforcement depends upon," attributing to Axon the position that openness was "'no longer in Axon's best interests,' and no additional reason was given to us" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 795, "Axon made a surprise decision to end our partnership and cut off the API access that law enforcement depends upon"). Langley's email supplies the effective date used on this page: "Axon will no longer support new mutual customers starting July 24, 2025. They may continue to support existing customers, but it's unclear to what degree" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 795, "Axon will no longer support new mutual customers starting July 24, 2025"). The same email recounts the partnership history. Langley states that "Axon was actually an early investor in Flock Safety," that Axon's "patented Vehicle Fingerprint technology was integrated into their Fleet 3 devices upon launch 4 years ago," and that the broadened integration across Fusus and Flock devices was agreed "on August 28, 2024" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 795, "We agreed to it on August 28, 2024, and we have not spoken to Axon about it since signing that new partnership agreement"). ### Axon's account (Rick Smith, Feb 3, 2025) [[Axon Enterprise, Inc.]] founder and CEO [[Rick Smith]] replied to the LRPD audience three days later, characterizing the Flock communication as "a misleading letter" and casting the termination as a response to Flock's conduct. Smith alleges that "Flock began by charging excessive fees for API integrations between Flock and Axon systems ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per year" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 789, "charging excessive fees for API integrations between Flock and Axon systems ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per year"). To support the allegation, Smith quotes what he describes as a customer's exchange with a Flock sales representative: "I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't let you know up front that there will be a $10,000 yearly charge to integrate our cameras into Fusus. However, with FlockOS, there is no cost for this as they are our products" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 789, "there will be a $10,000 yearly charge to integrate our cameras into Fusus"). The quotation continues onto the next page: Smith presents Flock as offering free integration of Axon products into FlockOS while charging to send Flock data the other direction (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 790, "AND we can integrate the Axon products you currently have at no cost"). Smith then alleges escalation: "Flock has now escalated the situation by flat out refusing to allow Axon Fusus customers to have ALPR Search integrations from their own Flock cameras in an effort to strong-arm customers to switch to its platform" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 790, "flat out refusing to allow Axon Fusus customers to have ALPR Search integrations from their own Flock cameras"). He states that after "consistent customer frustrations" Axon "chose to terminate our partnership agreement with Flock," invoking Axon's "Win Right" value (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 790, "we have chosen to terminate our partnership agreement with Flock"). Smith corroborates the early-investor history that Langley also describes: "Axon was an early investor in Flock because we believed our systems would be complementary," adding that he had "personally introduced Flock to dozens of agencies" (Emails 36-63.pdf p. 791, "Axon was an early investor in Flock because we believed our systems would be complementary"). ## Attribution and significance The two accounts agree on a small set of facts: Axon was an early Flock investor; Axon's Vehicle Fingerprint technology was integrated into Flock's Fleet 3 line; the broadened partnership was signed August 28, 2024; and the relationship has now been terminated. They diverge sharply on cause. The fee figures ($10,000-$50,000/yr), the quoted sales-rep exchange, and the claim that Flock blocked Fusus customers from running ALPR Search on their own Flock cameras are all allegations made by [[Rick Smith]] of [[Axon Enterprise, Inc.]]; this production does not contain Flock's response to those specific figures, nor independent confirmation of them. Langley's characterization of the move as a "surprise decision" with "no additional reason" is likewise Flock's framing. For the investigation, the dispute is significant because it pits the two vendors whose products jointly compose LRPD's surveillance stack against each other, with the contested question being a department's ability to use its own collected ALPR data across platforms. The underlying lock-in dynamic is developed at [[Vendor Platform Lock-In and the Flock-Axon API Dispute]].