Urban Combat Veteran Announced as Flock Forward Keynote Speaker

Flock Forward is Flock’s annual conference for “public safety leaders, security professionals, Flock experts, and invited partners.” For its keynote address, Flock hired urban combat veteran Matt Eversmann — a U.S. Army Ranger who was a Staff Sergeant during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (“Black Hawk Down”) and retired as a First Sergeant. It is a telling choice for a company whose CEO has sent out mass emails to say “Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack.”

Flock Forward tickets are $350 per attendee. The event is not publicly livestreamed. As its “LPR” product receives mounting criticism, the conference is expected to focus on products like the “Perimeter Pro” security trailer, Flock911,^[1] and, undoubtedly, drones.^[2]

Flock has been under increased pressure from civil rights groups, and the company has not shied away from using increasingly aggressive language in response. Its CEO Garrett Langley has called DeFlock a “terroristic organization” that is “closer to Antifa than anything else” in an interview with Forbes. In a December email to police customers, he said Flock and police are “under coordinated attack … from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness,” and that those groups are “trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.”

As for haveibeenflocked.com: Flock told 404Media the site “is doxxing cops during active investigations” and implied it is run by “activists trying to let murderers go free.” Flock has also tried to deplatform the site, claiming it “poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger” and hosts “searchable databases that expose critical operational intelligence.”^[3]

This kind of language, where critics are painted as terrorists and watchdog sites as cop-doxxers, is especially concerning given the federal government’s actions in the past year. The recent 30-year sentence for transporting “terrorist” zines, and terrorism and RICO charges for activists opposing the construction of “Cop City” in Georgia, suggest Flock’s language goes beyond mere hyperbole.^[4]

Matt Eversmann, for his part, does not appear to have a public stance on mass surveillance (yet). In 2023, he and James Patterson did publish the pro-police book Walk the Blue Line: They Walk the Line between Life and Death. Eversmann’s booking page says he “shares lessons on leadership, courage, and responsibility, drawing from his extensive experiences to inspire and educate audiences.”^[5]

The keynote itself will show whether Flock hired him to pitch a particular product, or whether they are putting him on stage in a more general attempt at “hero washing” — to project apparent authority from a company undergoing a legitimacy crisis.

Flock is no longer just talking like it’s at war; it is putting an urban-combat veteran on the stage. While the federal government wins terrorism convictions against protesters and frames its enforcers as warriors under attack, Flock casts its own critics as an enemy force and its police customers as under siege.

Against this backdrop, a keynote from the man who led soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu pins a Bronze Star on that narrative.

If that concerns you, support haveibeenflocked.com^[6] and organize in your own city: DeFlock’s National Week of Action against ALPRs runs August 16–22, wrapped around Flock’s own Flock Forward 2026 (August 18–20, Atlanta), wherever people like you are organizing for civil liberties.