Garrett Langley of Flock Safety on building technology to solve crime
TL;DR
Garrett Langley explains how Flock Safety grew from a neighborhood project solving car break-ins to a $500M ARR company serving 6,000+ cities by building solar-powered license plate cameras, AI search tools, and drones that help law enforcement clear over one million crimes annually through real-time data coordination.
🚀 From Neighborhood Project to National Scale 3 insights
Local news drove first $40M in revenue
Flock acquired its first $20-40 million in annual recurring revenue solely through appearances on local 5 o'clock news segments covering solved crimes, with zero traditional marketing spend.
Origin in Atlanta firearm theft
Langley built the first camera in 2017 after Atlanta Police declined to investigate a neighborhood car break-in involving a stolen firearm, creating a solar-powered license plate reader to identify non-resident vehicles.
$500M ARR across 6,000 cities
The company reached approximately $500 million in ARR within seven years by expanding from neighborhood associations to over 6,000 cities covering more than 50% of the U.S. population.
📹 Real-Time Crime Solving Technology 3 insights
AI-powered 911 call integration
Flock taps into 911 calls in real-time, allowing operators to immediately query camera networks using natural language searches like 'white converse sneakers' to identify suspects within minutes rather than weeks.
Solar-powered edge computing
Cameras operate on solar power with 5G backhaul, enabling deployment at intersections without fiber or electrical connections while capturing clear images of vehicles traveling 100 mph.
Autonomous drone deployment
Police drones automatically fly to crime scenes at 400 feet to track suspects using visual descriptions, enabling safe tactical apprehensions without high-speed chases.
🏛️ Fixing Fragmented Law Enforcement Data 3 insights
The 17,000 department problem
Unlike centralized national police forces in Ireland or Australia, the U.S. has 17,000 local agencies that historically could not share data, requiring phone calls and faxed files for coordination.
Recent cloud legalization
Many states only legalized cloud storage for law enforcement recently (Florida in 2022, Maryland in 2023), previously preventing real-time data sharing between agencies.
FBI database latency gap
While Flock maintains real-time local stolen vehicle hot lists, the FBI's NCIC database operates on 24-hour CSV file transfers via FTP servers, creating dangerous delays for tracking stolen cars across state lines.
📊 Impact Metrics and Results 3 insights
One million crimes cleared annually
Flock technology contributed to the clearance or arrest in over one million crimes last year, ranging from petty theft to multi-state human trafficking operations involving 76 arrests across four states.
1,000+ Amber and Silver Alerts cleared
The system helped clear over 1,000 missing children and senior alerts in the past year through integration with FBI warrant lists and local hot lists.
17-minute arrest versus cold case
In one recent attempted homicide case, Flock's system moved from 911 call to arrest in 17 minutes by identifying the suspect via clothing description, compared to traditional investigations that would have taken weeks or become cold cases.
Bottom Line
Solving crime at scale requires building real-time, cloud-native coordination layers that overcome the inherent fragmentation of America's 17,000 local police departments, rather than relying on outdated CSV transfers and faxed files.
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