It's not bad apples, it's a broken system
The short version: Mumford Law's video shows that officers abusing Flock and law enforcement databases to stalk women isn't rare misconduct — it's the predictable result of unaudited surveillance access.
Our Take
Mumford Law lays out something we've been saying for a while: give an officer a badge, a login, and a nationwide network of license plate cameras, and some of them will use it to stalk women instead of fight crime. 228 lookups on one plate. No warrant, no case number, no oversight — just a man with access and a woman who never agreed to be tracked. The cases in Ottawa, Sedgwick County, and Joplin aren't glitches in the system. They are the system working exactly as designed, minus the accountability.
Flock and similar ALPR networks were sold to city councils as crime-fighting tools, but the audit trail is an afterthought almost everywhere they're deployed. Most agencies rely on the honor system — officers are trusted to only query plates for 'legitimate' reasons, and nobody checks until a victim or a journalist forces the issue. That's not a safeguard, that's a liability waiting to surface, and these women are the ones paying for it with their safety and peace of mind.
This is exactly why we track where these cameras live and who's running them. If your town has Flock infrastructure, check our camera map to see what's nearby, and if you want to push back on unchecked surveillance in your community, our take action page has concrete steps to start with.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of MUMFORD LAW, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.