The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 60 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Langley: Flock lost a Mexican deal to Hikvision after pricing 10x higher
“So we pursued one really big deal last year in Mexico. We had support from one of our investors, like we should go after cigar and great. And they had connections to the Mexican government. And so we got all the way to the finish line, and it was us versus Hik…”
Langley: Unsolved crimes mean there were not enough cameras deployed
“For every crime that occurs that doesn't get solved means we didn't have enough cameras.”
Langley: The Whole Concept of Prison Will Never Work
“And the whole concept of prison will never work.
Like, and there are some incredibly well-run prisons with really well-intentioned wardens doing the best of their ability, but the concept of putting a bunch of violent people together is, like, by default flawe…”
Langley: Flock Safety cleared over one million US crimes last year
“So we're, last year, we helped clear just north of a million crimes in America.”
Langley: Cartels fly night-vision drones to case Virginia homes
“In one of the counties we work with, it's an affluent-ish county in the Virginia area South American cartels fly illegal drones through these neighborhoods. They'll flip on night vision, look through houses to see if anyone's home, then go break in.”
Flock Safety avoids facial recognition due to controversy
“We don't do facial recognition for that reason, because it's too controversial, but that's, it's counterintuitive to me when the technology gets better every day.”
Langley: Body cameras exonerate officers in majority of foul play cases
“In the majority of cases that I see, where foul play is called, it is almost always the inverse. Where a law enforcement officer was just trying to do their job, and on the other side, there was other mental health issue, there was something gone wrong, and it…”
Langley: Cobb County solves 100% of violent crimes
“Cobb County would be one which is like the second largest county... If you commit violence in Cobb County, you will get arrested.”
Langley: VC-backed public safety tech startups will fail or be consolidated
“I see a new VC backed company every day, and I'm like, there's just a, all these things are going out of business, so there's just going to be consolidation.”
Flock Built AI Agent to Flag Vehicles Following Armored Cars
“So we built an agent that tracks armored cars. And so, at all times, it is literally saying, okay, here's our truck. If we ever see other vehicles tracking this car, flag them automatically.”
Langley: Majority of 911 calls do not require a human officer response
“Majority of the calls actually never need a human to show up.”
Langley: Unlike software, every major decision in hardware is an irreversible one-way door
“Every decision you make in hardware is millions of dollars at a minimal, and often tens of millions of dollars. And so when you grow up in this Silicon Valley mindset of, like, everything's a two-way door. Bullshit. Hardware, everything's a one-way door.”
Langley: Flock Safety's drone camera can read license plates nearly a mile away
“Like, we can zoom, we can read a license plate almost a mile away. Like, crazy specs. Great thermal.”
Langley: Legal privacy precedents collapse when surveillance tech becomes cheap
“The other analogy that would be the butterfly effect, which is like when things are much, much cheaper and much, much easier, a historical precedent gets thrown away.”
Langley: Major City Police Deprioritize Crimes Where No One Is Hurt
“So for most major cities, if a human is not physically hurt, the crime goes just to the bottom of the list.”
Langley: Flock Scaled First $20M–$40M ARR Solely Through Local TV News
“We might be the only company that for the first, let's call it, 20 or 30, forty million of ARR, strictly driven off of five o'clock news. That was our only growth channel.”
Langley: Flock covers over 6,000 cities and 50% of US population
“Yeah, so it's just over 6000 cities. So it's like well north of 50% of America that's covered by Flock.”
Langley: Flock is deployed in every major US city except Manhattan
“So there's about 17,000 cities in the U.S., and we have all the big ones outside of Manhattan at this point.”
Langley: Flock Safety reached $500M in ARR in seven years
“And then, you know, the business has gone from zero to, you know, about five hundred million in ARR in the last seven years, building cameras, drones, and selling it to the government, which is like three strikes are out.”
Langley: Stolen vehicles take 24 hours to reach the FBI database
“They will immediately put it in the Bay Area Flock hotlist immediately. It will take 24 hours to make it to the FBI hotlist. And that's a, you know, CSV file that gets sent around on FTP servers across the US.”
Langley: Physical surveillance faces unfairly higher privacy standards than digital tracking
“Because we operate in the physical world, we are held to a higher standard, which I think is a shame because personal opinion, what I do online is way more interesting and telling about my personality and my life than what I do in the real world.”
Langley: Federal law prevents police from shooting down criminal drones
“And then legally, even to today, law enforcement is not allowed to engage that drone. They can't take it down. It's FAA airspace. It's not law enforcement airspace.”
Langley: Tech sophistication for policing should scale with crime severity
“The framework that we use is, I don't know how you land this, is that the severity of a crime should be commiserate with the sophistication of technology.”
Langley: US crime rate is down and will continue falling
“It is down. I think it'll continue to go down.”
Langley: Oakland crime rose when San Francisco started adopting Flock Safety
“It's like when San Francisco started adopting Flock, Oakland crime went up. So then Oakland needed to adopt Flock.”
Langley: Lowe's retail shrink dropped an order of magnitude with Flock
“But like, you look at some of our partners like a Lowe's, you know, their shrink has gone down order of magnitude. It's not exactly, it's not really a problem anymore.”
Langley: Flock Safety has a $5B-$15B domestic US revenue opportunity
“When I look at the domestic opportunity, you know, we should be able to get to five, 10, fifteen billion of revenue. In America”
Langley: Most towns using Flock drones eliminate vehicular police pursuits
“So for most of our towns that have adopted our drone program, they end pursuits. They don't pursue anymore. Send the drone.”
Langley: Flock Safety will generate hundreds of millions in operating cashflow this year
“Like we'll generate free cashflow, hundreds of millions of dollars of operating cashflow this year.”
Langley: Communities should deploy abundant cameras alongside strictly restrictive usage controls
“For me at least, we should have an abundance of cameras and have an incredibly restrictive controls of how and when they're used.”
Langley: Law enforcement customers do not regularly audit surveillance usage without mandates
“Not enough of our customers audit themselves on a regular basis. We can build software to make that easier, but we need to be pushed to do that. It was like, customers don't want it. They need to be told to do it.”
Langley: Surveillance laws banning specific use cases like marijuana are unenforceable bad policy
“To me, the worst bill is an unenforceable bill. So you can imagine a bill that's like, this product cannot be used for vile possession of marijuana. Like, how, who's gonna enforce it? How, how, and it's like, you might believe that, and that's great, but someo…”
Langley: Government RFPs are almost always tailored to a single vendor
“Everything goes to RFP, but the RFP is written for one vendor, so all it does is wind up taking an extra year, six months. That's like, that's, I get why RFPs exist, but they're not actually RFPs. I've never seen an RFP that's not written for one vendor. I'm s…”
Langley: Selling to local government has more negatives than positives
“Like it's, I would not wish upon anyone Selling to local government. It's more negatives than positives, always.”
Flock Drones Cross a 30-Square-Mile Radius in Under One Minute
“Our average drone can cover a 30 square mile radius and get there within under a minute.”
Langley: Traditional home security alerts crimes but fails to solve them
“They do two things that actually are not helpful. They tell you a crime has happened. They don't actually help you solve it. And then what about your neighbor? And so what we'd realize is that every single security system was focused on the individual.”
Langley: Flock Safety stores all system audit logs forever and publicly
“Every single action in our system, the audit is stored in perpetuity, and it's publicly available.”
Langley: Year-old location data is largely irrelevant to criminal investigations
“There's a really fast drop-off of where have you been in the last couple days versus, like, where were you a year ago? It's very irrelevant in a criminal investigation.”
Langley: Flock's 'Safe City' package costs around $20 per citizen yearly
“We have this new concept that we've developed called, like, safe city, and we'll go into a town and say, look, this is the platform you need to solve all the crime in your city. It's your choice. It tends to be like, what, 20 bucks a citizen a year?”
Langley: Flock Safety drone system costs less than one police officer
“Like in the incremental cost is less than the cost of one single officer.”
Langley: Police helicopters increasingly disable ADS-B to evade criminal tracking
“We're seeing more and more police helicopters have to turn off ADS-B as well. Because like criminals have the same data that you have. And so most of the police officers actually fly without ADS, you know, which is like a whole challenge.”
Langley: Hardware companies fail primarily due to poor 12-to-18-month demand forecasting
“The first would be, I don't know how you guys think about forecasting demand. It's a full-time profession at Flock. And it typically needs to be 12 to 18 months out. And if you look at the, like, hardware companies that don't make it, that's actually where the…”
Langley: Flock stores live video for seven days and LPR data for 30 days
“There's a, there's data retention where we protect, you know, how long something is stored. So for live video, it's typically seven days. For LPR data, it's typically 30 days. You can go longer or shorter if a democratically elected body votes on it.”
Langley: Flock lobbies for legislation enforcing civil liberty guardrails on surveillance
“We have a really good government affairs team that is lobbying for that kind of legislation to say, like, there's a way for us to both be safe and maintain civil liberties, and it needs to be legislated, though.”
Langley: Most Crimes Solved by Flock Safety Are Non-Violent
“The majority of the crime we solve is not violent.
It's non-violent.”
Langley: There are 400,000 legally organized neighborhood organizations in the US
“There's 400,000 neighborhoods in America, and there's no consolidation of, Providing safety for those communities. And when I say neighborhood, that is a, you know, legally binding organization that can sign a contract.”