The Henry County Sheriff’s Office may be ending its use of Flock Safety cameras, but automatic license plate readers operated separately in the Geneseo area are not necessarily going away.
The Sheriff’s Office announced that its eight-camera Flock system will be discontinued Aug. 31. That decision applies specifically to the Sheriff’s Office system and does not automatically affect cameras operated by other law enforcement agencies or governmental entities.
Records obtained regarding the Geneseo Police Department provide a closer look at how the technology is being used locally, how frequently officers search the system and what safeguards govern access.
Geneseo Has Its Own Flock System
A Flock deployment report dated Aug. 21 lists four Geneseo Police Department LPR cameras as installed and another camera planned near Illinois Route 82 and Roos Hill Road as awaiting a permit.
The installed cameras listed in the report are at Route 82 near Beck’s, Route 82 near Walmart, Route 6 at East 1500th Street and Route 6 at Hanford Street.
The proposed Route 82/Roos Hill Road southbound camera was listed as “Pending — Awaiting Permit” as of the date of the report.
That aligns with recent Geneseo City Council discussions in which Police Chief Casey Disterhoft said the department was working through the Illinois Department of Transportation process for another Route 82 installation.
The records therefore show that Geneseo's system is separate from the eight-camera Henry County Sheriff's Office system being discontinued.
More Than 7,400 Searches Since 2023
Records supplied to The Current show Geneseo Police Department users conducted 7,405 Flock searches from May 2023 through August 2026.
The number of searches increased substantially after the system's first partial year:
2023, May through December: 466
2024: 2,617
2025: 2,769
2026, January through August: 1,553
Monthly activity varied considerably. The highest month shown in the records was December 2024, with 578 searches. April 2026 recorded 519 searches.
Those figures represent searches conducted by users, not the number of license plates photographed or vehicles passing the cameras. A single investigation could potentially involve multiple searches, so the numbers should not be interpreted as a count of cases or individual people investigated.
What Geneseo's Policy Allows
The Geneseo Police Department's written ALPR policy says the technology may be used for official law enforcement purposes including identifying stolen or wanted vehicles, stolen license plates and missing persons. The policy also identifies uses involving active warrants, suspect interdiction and stolen-property recovery.
Department personnel are prohibited from accessing the system for unauthorized purposes and must complete department-approved training before operating ALPR equipment or accessing the data. The policy states that use must be for “official and legitimate law enforcement business.”
Geneseo's policy also requires access to downloaded ALPR information to occur through a password-protected system capable of recording who accessed the information and the date and time of the access. Approved users are limited to legitimate law-enforcement purposes, and the policy calls for regular audits of the system.
The policy permits ALPR data to be released to other authorized and verified law-enforcement agencies for legitimate law-enforcement purposes.
Images Are Retained for 30 Days
Geneseo's agreements with Flock specify a 30-day retention period for the system. One of the city's agreements says Flock deletes footage on a rolling 30-day basis, while the department is responsible for downloading and preserving material separately when it needs to retain it for evidentiary or administrative purposes.
The technology also captures more than the characters on a license plate.
Contract documents describe Flock's “Vehicle Fingerprint” technology as capable of identifying vehicle characteristics including type, make, color, state registration, missing or covered plates, bumper stickers, decals, roof racks and bike racks.
Geneseo Was Warned About Out-of-State Misuse
Records provided to The Current also show Geneseo police were notified of a broader privacy issue involving Illinois Flock data.
In May 2025, Flock Safety informed Geneseo officials that a public-records request in Danville had revealed that a small number of out-of-state agencies appeared to have accessed Illinois license-plate-reader information through Flock's National Lookup feature using a search reason that may have included the term “immigration.”
Illinois restrictions require out-of-state agencies receiving the data to agree not to use it for prohibited purposes, including certain immigration, reproductive-health and other health-care-related enforcement.
According to Flock's message, the agencies involved had agreed to those restrictions before obtaining access, but their searches appeared to violate the agreement.
Flock told Geneseo officials that it revoked the agencies' access to Illinois LPR information and was evaluating additional monitoring and enforcement safeguards.
The email does not indicate that Geneseo Police Department personnel participated in those searches or improperly used the system.
What Geneseo Pays
The records also provide a clearer picture of the cost of Geneseo's system.
The city's original 2023 agreement covered two Falcon cameras at an annual recurring cost of $5,000, plus $1,500 in implementation costs. The 24-month agreement carried a total contract amount of $11,500.
A January 2025 agreement added two cameras. That agreement lists a $6,000 annual recurring cost, $1,500 in implementation charges and a $13,500 total contract value over its 24-month term.
A July 2026 agreement covers another LPR camera under a 36-month term. It lists an annual recurring cost of $3,000 and a total contract value of $9,000.
That latest agreement appears to correspond with the additional camera awaiting installation near Route 82 and Roos Hill Road.
Sheriff’s Decision Does Not End Local Use
The Henry County Sheriff's Office has operated eight Flock cameras throughout the county since 2024. Sheriff Josh Verscheure said those cameras were funded through drug-seizure proceeds rather than county taxpayer dollars.
The department said the cameras provided legitimate investigative value and that it found no indication Sheriff's Office personnel had misused the system. Verscheure nevertheless cited concerns surrounding automatic license plate readers, privacy and public confidence in announcing the decision to discontinue the program.
The Sheriff's Office partnership with Flock Safety will officially end Aug. 31.
Geneseo's system is separate.
And the newly obtained records provide additional context to that distinction: Geneseo Police have used Flock since 2023, have conducted more than 7,400 searches, operate under a written ALPR policy and have continued expanding the system.
The records also illustrate the issue now at the center of the broader debate over the technology.
Flock cameras can provide investigators with a searchable tool for identifying vehicles connected to crimes, missing persons and other investigations. At the same time, the information can potentially be searched and shared beyond the agency whose cameras originally collected it — making access controls, auditing, retention policies and restrictions on outside agencies an important part of how the technology is governed.
For Geneseo-area residents, the Sheriff's announcement therefore does not mark the end of automatic license plate readers locally.
It instead highlights that multiple law-enforcement systems can operate independently — with separate contracts, policies and decisions about whether to continue using the technology.