How Police Are Abusing AI Systems
The short version: Mental Outlaw's rundown of police misuse of AI tools like facial recognition and ShotSpotter is a reminder that automated 'evidence' is only as trustworthy as the humans and code behind it.
Our Take
Mental Outlaw's latest video walks through a pattern we see constantly at DeFlock: police departments treat algorithmic outputs as gospel, even when the underlying tech is known to misfire. Facial recognition has already put innocent people in handcuffs. ShotSpotter has been accused of feeding officers bad locations and even adjusted 'gunshot' classifications after the fact. Automated license plate readers fit right into this pattern — a computer flags a plate, and a cop treats it as probable cause without asking whether the system actually got it right.
The common thread isn't just buggy software, it's the total absence of accountability when that software is wrong. There's rarely a public audit trail showing how often these tools misfire, and departments have every incentive to keep it that way. Flock Safety's ALPR network operates on the same logic: trust the machine, skip the scrutiny, and let local police quietly share your driving history with hundreds of agencies you've never heard of.
Videos like this matter because they chip away at the assumption that 'the algorithm said so' is an acceptable substitute for actual evidence and oversight. Credit to Mental Outlaw for laying out the pattern. If you want to see how far this infrastructure has spread in your own area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back, our take-action page has concrete steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Mental Outlaw, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.