DC Police Union: Flock Cameras Abused to Spy on Their Own Cops
The short version: A DC police union leader alleges MPD managers misused Flock ALPR access to track their own officers, proving these systems abuse whoever controls them.
Our Take
Credit to The Angry Otter for surfacing this one, because it's the quiet part said out loud. When Flock Safety sells a city on 'public safety,' the pitch is always about catching the bad guys out there. Nobody mentions that the same database can just as easily be turned inward, on the cops themselves, on union organizers, on anyone a manager with login credentials decides to look up. If DC police union president Gregg Pemberton is right, that's exactly what happened inside MPD.
This is the core problem with ALPR networks: the technology doesn't discriminate between a stalker ex, a nosy manager, or a legitimate investigation. It only logs who looked, and only if someone bothers to audit it. Flock's own audit trails depend entirely on agencies actually reviewing them and being honest about what they find, and history keeps showing us that's a weak link. Cops spying on cops isn't an aberration of the system, it's the system working exactly as designed, minus the discretion anyone assumed would be there.
If police unions are now sounding alarms about being surveilled by their own departments, that should tell every resident exactly how much protection they have. Check our camera map to see what's tracking your own block, and hit up our take-action page if you want to push back on unchecked access in your city.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Angry Otter, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.