Columbus Pulled A Second Officer In Its Flock Camera Probe

Our Take

One rogue cop pulling plate-reader data without cause is a scandal. Two is a pattern. According to reporting highlighted by OhDangReally, Columbus investigators have now pulled a second officer into their internal probe of Flock Safety camera misuse, which suggests this isn't a one-off bad actor but a possible culture of lax oversight around who can query a city's entire driving history on a whim.

This is the exact failure mode critics of ALPR networks have been warning about for years: the technology gets sold to city councils as a tool for catching violent offenders and recovering stolen cars, but the guardrails on internal access are often an afterthought. Once a database holds months of everyone's movements, the temptation for stalking, favor-trading, or just plain curiosity doesn't stay theoretical — it shows up in audit logs, and apparently in Columbus it showed up twice.

We'll be watching to see whether this department-level discipline turns into real transparency about how many searches were run, on whom, and why. Until cities publish that kind of accounting as a matter of course rather than after a leak, the public has no way to know if their own plate is sitting in some officer's search history. Check our camera map to see what's watching your streets, and head to take-action if you want to push your city for real audit transparency.