# Flock Talking Points to Mayor's Office — April 2026 On April 20, 2026, a single workday after the Jacquiline Dickens / Landri April 17 citizen statement reached Mayor Castleberry's inbox and three days before the Brick Harvey reconsideration submission, Lt. Andrew Burningham of Conway PD emailed Flock Safety Customer Success asking for *"talking points about the program. They are wanting to know specifically about information security and if Flock has ever had any data breaches."* Within ~5 hours of the request, **Flock-supplied talking points reached Mayor Castleberry's inbox** via Burningham → Chris Harris → Castleberry. This is the Mayor's-Office-side capture of the same vendor-talking-points exchange documented from the CPD side in [[Flock Cameras Apr 2026 City Council QA Thread]]. ## What's inside The `City Council.msg` file is Chief Harris's April 20, 2026 12:47 PM forwarding of Burningham's email plus Flock's reply, sent to Mayor Castleberry with the single message body: *"See below."* The forwarded chain captures four points along the talking-points-procurement chain: | Time (CT) | From | To | Substance | |---|---|---|---| | 9:30 AM | Lt. Andrew Burningham | `[email protected]` (Flock Customer Success Management Team) | *"Our city council is wanting some information about Flock. Can you send me some talking points about the program. They are wanting to know specifically about information security and if Flock has ever had any data breaches. That along with any other points would be very helpful."* | | 10:55 AM | Melissa Lee (Flock Regional Customer Success Manager) | Burningham | *"In early January, changes occurred on the Success side at Flock. You now have a pool of CSMs as a resource (The Flock Advisory Network) for all things that your agency would normally contact me for in the past. With that being said, I am no longer your CSM, and I hope you have a positive experience with The FAN. I have looped them in ([email protected]) to assist you."* | | 11:09 AM | Emmie Tajik (Flock Customer Success Manager, FAN) | Burningham | Vendor talking-points reply (transcribed below) | | 11:31 AM | Burningham | Chris Harris | Forwards Tajik's reply with no message body | | 12:47 PM | Chris Harris | Bart Castleberry | Forwards the entire chain: *"See below."* | ### Tajik's vendor talking points (verbatim excerpt) > *Information Security & Certifications* > *Flock operates on modern cloud infrastructure with strong security controls, including encryption of data in transit and at rest, along with strict administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect customer data. We maintain SOC 2 compliance and make security and compliance documentation available through our Security Trust Center (including SOC reports and related attestations). For law enforcement customers, Flock supports CJIS requirements. Our Trust Center also documents additional certifications and authorizations, such as FedRAMP and TexasRAMP, where applicable.* > > *Has Flock ever had a data breach?* > *There has not been a breach or compromise of Flock's production systems. Our security and external affairs teams have consistently communicated that "Flock has not been breached or compromised." Recent headlines and third-party websites (such as those aggregating search logs) are based on audit data that individual agencies released in response to public records / FOIA requests—not from any unauthorized access to Flock's systems. **Flock does not publish or distribute agency search logs, nor do we provide search histories or lookup activity directly to public websites or third parties. All data is owned and controlled by the agency that collected it.*** > > *How Flock Protects Data* > *Customer video and ALPR data are encrypted using strong industry standards (e.g., AES-256 for stored data), and we implement layered access controls, password requirements, and multi-factor authentication options to reduce the risk of unauthorized access. Every search and key user action is logged in detailed audit logs (including searching agency, time, and context). We've also added features like required offense type categories to strengthen accountability and help agencies respond precisely to public records requests while protecting sensitive investigative details.* > > *Privacy and Civil Liberties* > *Flock does not use facial recognition, and the system does not provide personal identifying information such as race, registered owner information, or sexual orientation within the investigative interface. Agencies retain ownership of their data and control both retention and sharing settings. For example, many law enforcement partners use a 30-day retention period and configure sharing (e.g., statewide vs. nationwide) to align with state law and local policy.* The reply includes pointers to four Flock-published resources: the Flock Trust Hub (`flocksafety.com/trust`), the Flock Security Trust Center (`security.flocksafety.com`, gated), the "How We Protect Customer & Community Data" blog post, and the Flock Privacy Policy. Tajik offered to *"connect you with a member of our External Affairs team as well. They can help address any specific questions or join a city council meeting to speak directly to these topics."* ## Key takeaways - **The Mayor's-Office-side talking-points chain confirms that Flock-supplied material reached the executive within hours of the request.** Castleberry received the chain at 12:47 PM on April 20 — ~3 hours after Flock's Tajik replied and 39 minutes after Harris received Burningham's forward. The chain spans first-line CPD investigator (Burningham) → CPD Chief (Harris) → City Mayor (Castleberry). - **Flock's customer-relationship-management structure changed in January 2026.** Melissa Lee, the prior Flock CSM for Conway, was replaced by a pool — "The Flock Advisory Network" / FAN. Emmie Tajik is one of the pool's CSMs. The shift from a named-account CSM to a pool is a Flock organizational decision visible only here in the FOIA-2026-127 production. For the wiki, this means [[Melissa Lee]]'s page should reflect that she was the named Conway CSM only through ~January 2026. - **The vendor's response pattern is consistent across instances.** Tajik's April 20 reply is a paraphrase of the same talking points Gena Hatch sent later the same evening (the version captured in [[Flock Cameras Apr 2026 City Council QA Thread]] from PD-2026-354): the "no data breach" assertion, the framing that public records / FOIA releases are the channel by which Flock audit data reaches the public, the *"All data is owned and controlled by the agency"* contractual-positioning statement, and the offer to send Flock External Affairs to a Council meeting. Flock's response is templatized. - **The vendor framing — *"All data is owned and controlled by the agency that collected it"* — is operationally significant.** As [[Flock Cameras Apr 2026 City Council QA Thread]] notes, this attributes responsibility for the data-sharing topology to Conway PD's decisions, not to Flock's product defaults. The wiki documents elsewhere (notably the [[SharedNetworks 2025-12-17 Snapshot]] and the [[Default-On Surveillance Data Sharing as Operational Model]] synthesis) that the operative default-on behaviors are configurable — but as configured, Conway's network reaches 1,384 organizations. - **The talking-points request preceded the Mayor's-Office formal April 27 decline by exactly one week.** The Council Agenda response declining Harvey's reconsideration request leans on the original January 14 2025 vote ("the City Council heard this item on January 14, 2025"); the substantive defense of the underlying program — *"is it safe? has Flock been breached?"* — was being assembled by Flock during this same window, packaged for Mayor Castleberry. ## People and orgs mentioned - [[Lt. Andrew Burningham]] — Conway PD Narcotics Division; initiator of the talking-points request. - [[Chris Harris]] — CPD Chief; forwards to Mayor. - [[Bart Castleberry]] — Mayor; final recipient. - [[Melissa Lee]] — Flock prior CSM for Conway; her January 2026 replacement is documented here. - "Emmie Tajik" — Flock Customer Success Manager (FAN); author of the talking-points reply. - [[Flock Safety, Inc.]] — vendor. ## Concepts invoked - [[Surveillance Vendor Capture - Roadmap Influence]] — vendor provides reactive material to the agency to defend a procurement to local elected officials. - [[Vendor Information Security Posture]] - [[Flock Audit Logs and Retention]] — Tajik's framing of FOIA-released audit logs as the channel-of-record for "Flock data" in the press. ## Cross-references - [[Flock Cameras Apr 2026 City Council QA Thread]] (`PD-2026-354`) — same April 20 thread; this Mayor's-Office-side capture adds Castleberry to the recipient list and confirms the chain reached the executive level. - [[2026-04 Council Questions Flock Information Security]] — the event this thread anchors; this Mayor's-Office record corroborates and extends the documented chain. - [[Spring 2026 Citizen FOIA and Reconsideration Wave]] — the citizen-pressure context that produced Burningham's request and the April 27 Mayor's-Office decline. ## Surveillance-PII handling The record contains no plate numbers, no audit-log content, and no operational data. Officer cell phone numbers and Flock staff direct-line contact information appearing in the email signatures are not reproduced. ## Open questions / follow-ups 1. **Whether Flock External Affairs was scheduled to attend a Council meeting.** Tajik's offer in the April 20 reply is open-ended; the production does not document any Castleberry / Harris reply accepting (or declining) the offer. 2. **Substantive accuracy of Flock's "no data breach" claim.** Same as the open question on [[Flock Cameras Apr 2026 City Council QA Thread]]: verification against CVE databases, EFF / 404 Media reporting, and any published academic research on Flock-specific security incidents through external research. 3. **The January 2026 Flock CSM reorganization.** Melissa Lee's *"changes occurred on the Success side at Flock"* is a brief reference to a Flock organizational change. Whether this affected substantive customer-account behavior at Conway, or whether it is a routine staffing change, is not visible here.