Flock LPRs Help Shorewood, IL Police Resolve Case
The short version: Flock's own promotional video touts a Shorewood, IL case closure, but a company-produced success story isn't the same as independent evidence that mass ALPR surveillance is worth the tradeoff.
Our Take
This clip comes straight from Flock Safety's corporate YouTube channel, not an independent news outlet, and that matters. A company selling a product has every incentive to showcase its best moments and none to mention the thousands of scans collected on law-abiding drivers who had nothing to do with any crime. A scary incident involving a state senator's family is real and we're glad the case was resolved, but one cherry-picked success story is marketing, not proof that a nationwide network of plate-reading cameras is the right trade for everyone's location history.
Police departments love quoting "our cameras solved it" because it's a tidy soundbite. What rarely makes the highlight reel is how long that data sat in a database, who else had access to it, whether it was shared with other agencies or federal databases, and what happens to the scans of every other car that drove past that day. Shorewood is one small town; Flock's footprint stretches into thousands of communities, often installed with little public debate about retention periods, audit logs, or oversight.
If you want to see how far this network has spread near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your town not rubber-stamp a surveillance system on the strength of a single feel-good video, visit our take-action page for ways to push your local council for real transparency.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.