Flock Camera Data Used to Falsely Accuse Innocent Woman

Our Take

Business Reform's video captures something we hear about constantly but rarely see on camera: an officer treating a Flock Safety license plate read as a confession machine. Sergeant Milliman didn't say a Flock camera placed this woman's car in the neighborhood — he said it proved she stole a package, full stop. That's the core danger of ALPR networks. A camera clocking your plate tells you a car passed a point at a given time. It says nothing about who was driving, where they stopped, or what they did. Treating that data as airtight guilt, especially while berating someone caught on their own Ring doorbell, is exactly the kind of overreach we've warned about since Flock cameras started blanketing neighborhoods coast to coast.

This isn't a one-off bad cop story. It's a preview of what happens when departments lean on blanket surveillance instead of actual investigative work. Flock's pitch to cities is that these cameras solve crime faster; incidents like this show the flip side — officers skipping corroboration because the tech feels so certain. When plate reads get treated as verdicts, innocent people become suspects simply for living in, or driving through, a camera's range.

Credit to Business Reform for putting this footage in front of more people. If you want to see how saturated your own neighborhood is with these cameras, check our map, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions about Flock contracts, our take-action page has steps to push back.