---
title: "AI Startup Says It Will End Crime by Blanketing the Entire United States in Ever-Watching Spy Cameras"
description: "The CEO of AI startup Flock Safety, Garrett Langley, believes his billion-dollar startup is the key to solving crime in the US forever."
date: "2025-09-04"
modified: "2025-09-04"
authors:
  - name: "Joe Wilkins"
    job_title: "Correspondent"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins"
url: "https://futurism.com/startup-crime-spy-cameras"
categories:
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
tags:
  - "drones"
  - "dystopia"
  - "Startups"
  - "surveillance"
---

# AI Startup Says It Will End Crime by Blanketing the Entire United States in Ever-Watching Spy Cameras

![The CEO of AI startup Flock Safety, Garrett Langley, believes his billion-dollar startup is the key to solving crime in the US forever.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/startup-crime-spy-cameras.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Getty / Futurism\</em\>*

Crime rates in the United States, as a matter of statistical fact, have [fallen drastically](<https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/multi-year-trends/crimeType>) over the past 30 years — but at the same time, due to a mix of [sensational news reporting](<https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2023/journalists-if-it-bleeds-it-leads-accountability-reporting/>) and [irresponsible political rhetoric](<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/us/politics/crime-republican-states.html>), the average American [mistakenly believes they're increasing](<https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/>).

And now, barreling into that reality is a 38-year-old tech bro who says his spying startup can solve it all for good.

Garrett Langley is the CEO and cofounder of a surveillance startup called Flock Safety. Valued at $7.5 billion, [according to *Forbes*](<https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-startup-flock-thinks-it-can-eliminate-all-crime-in-america/>), Flock has amassed a matrix of over 80,000 "AI-powered" cameras throughout the US since its founding in 2017.

As *Forbes* adds, that intelligence web is now getting a boost in the form of "made in America" surveillance drones, which began rolling out to police departments in August.

Langley's billion-dollar elevator pitch goes a little something like this: whether you're a police department, private business, or individual homeowner, if you let Flock into your life — through a [never ending subscription](<https://www.flocksafety.com/pricing>), of course — we can solve crime by 2035.

It's a tall task, to put it gently, but evidently one that Langley really believes in. "I’ve talked to plenty of activists who think crime is just the cost of modern society. I disagree," Langley told *Forbes*. "I think we can have a crime-free city and civil liberties... We can have it all."

Part of Flock's draw, compared to the many other surveillance companies on offer, is its ever-expanding network. Flock's partner companies like FedEx and Lowe's, along with schools and property management groups, can agree to grant local law enforcement the use of their surveillance webs.

In doing so on a mass scale, Flock effectively solves one of US law enforcement's more irksome contradictions: the fact that, even though CCTV cameras are everywhere, the [private and fragmented web](<https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/video-surveillance-public-places-2nd-edition-page-5>) of camera owners makes it [really annoying](<https://www.wired.com/story/private-security-cameras-police-surveillance-tools/>) to gather and comb through footage. Not so anymore.

The company currently boasts partnerships with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies and 1,000 private businesses. On its website, Flock talks up a variety of applications, from [well-to-do HOAs](<https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/pacific-ridge-hoa-from-four-break-ins-a-year-to-zero-with-flock-safety>) to [sleepy one-light towns](<https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/empowering-small-city-policing-in-martinsville-va>) to million dollar companies struggling with [organized crime](<https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/how-a-logistics-company-stopped-8-figures-losses-from-organized-crime-protected-millions-in-freight-with-flock-lpr-cameras-56tgx>), it seems there's no social ill that can't be solved with a Flock contract — at least on the surface.

While centralized surveillance schemes have had a [positive effect](<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304387825001087>) on crime rates in China — efforts which coincided with arguably the largest [poverty alleviation effort](<https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience>) in history — critics maintain that, in the US at least, mass surveillance and the moral panic it encompasses mostly serves to target [minority and immigrant](<https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/laying-groundwork-to-contain-people-of-color-and-immigrants/>) communities.

Those groups, it should be noted, already make up the bulk of the [American prison population](<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/09/27/updated_race_data/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22899385178&gbraid=0AAAAADuNMRkVOsTnMjBp7V74rjOBLPlKV&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8eTFBhCXARIsAIkiuOziGZalO5ktqqwtmMvoGEU3iQHk9A17XkxmDz1BvSQDSopFPG0a2t4aAqRJEALw_wcB>), thanks in no small part to budding [police technologies](<https://www.brookings.edu/articles/police-surveillance-and-facial-recognition-why-data-privacy-is-an-imperative-for-communities-of-color/>) like Flock.

That said, Langley isn't worried about a few bleeding heart critics.

"The consequence of building a product that actually changes people’s lives is that there will be a lot of people we piss off along the way," the CEO told *Forbes*, "because what we’re doing actually matters."

**More on surveillance:** [*Alarming New System Can Identify People Through Walls Using Wi-Fi Signal*](<https://futurism.com/system-identify-wifi-surveillance>)

## Author
At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/joeonhere.bsky.social>)