A cop ran the same car 600 times. A newspaper caught it, not the department.
The short version: A USA Today investigation found an officer ran one plate 600 times, exposing how police departments aren't auditing their own Flock searches — reporters are doing the oversight work that should be automatic.
Our Take
Credit to Kenny Jacoby, Austin Fast, and Jack Lenus at USA Today, and to Magnetic Norse for putting this story in front of more eyes. The headline detail says everything you need to know about the state of ALPR "oversight" in this country: an officer ran the same plate 600 times, and it took journalists combing through public records to catch it — not the department that owns the system, not an internal auditor, not Flock Safety itself.
This is the pattern we keep seeing. Departments roll out these camera networks promising robust logging and accountability, then treat the audit trail as a box to check rather than a tool to actually use. If it takes 120+ public records requests and a newsroom's data team to surface one wildly anomalous search pattern, how many quieter abuses never get noticed at all? Stalking, personal grudges, political targeting — the technical capability for all of it sits inside these logs, and apparently nobody's watching unless a reporter forces the issue.
Audit logs are only worth something if someone is actually reading them, and right now that someone is the press, not the police. If you want to see how dense this surveillance net is in your own area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push your local council or department for real transparency, our take-action page has a place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Magnetic Norse, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.