Indiana sheriff’s deputy allegedly used Flock cameras to track wife, ex-girlfriend

Our Take

CBS4 Indy's report, credit to their newsroom for digging into the arrest records, lays out exactly what critics of ALPR networks have been warning about for years: these systems aren't just tracking criminals, they're tracking anyone an officer with login credentials decides to look up. Six thousand-plus queries isn't a slip-up or a misunderstanding of policy — that's a pattern, and it took this long only because the behavior apparently escalated to where someone noticed.

Flock Safety loves to tout its audit logs as the safeguard that makes misuse "catchable." Fine — it caught this one, eventually. But audit trails are forensic tools, not prevention. They tell you who got stalked after the fact, not who's being watched right now by a deputy, a dispatcher, or a contractor with access to a camera network that was sold to the public as a tool for solving carjackings, not a tool for policing spouses and exes. Every department running Flock is one bored or vindictive badge away from the same headline.

This is why local fights over whether to install these cameras in the first place matter more than city councils tend to admit. Check our map to see if Flock or similar ALPR systems are already logging plates in your community, and if you want to push back on a proposed contract or demand real audit transparency where cameras already exist, our take-action page has the tools to get started.