How former St. Charles police employee was caught misusing Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to KSDK News for tracking this one to an actual charge sheet. Melissa Renee Smith, a former St. Charles police employee, is facing two counts of misuse of official information after allegedly poking around in Flock's ALPR system for reasons that had nothing to do with public safety. This is the scenario every Flock sales pitch conveniently glosses over: the cameras don't just watch the road, they watch everyone on it, and the people with login credentials are not immune to curiosity, grudges, or worse.

Flock and police departments love to talk about "audit trails" and "access controls" like they're an ironclad fix. But an audit trail only catches misuse after the fact, once someone's plate, movements, or personal life have already been pulled up by someone who had no business looking. St. Charles isn't an outlier here — it's part of a growing pattern of ALPR access being abused by the very insiders who are supposed to be trusted with it, from stalking exes to running plates for personal favors. Every new camera installed is another node in a network that runs on that same trust.

If there's a Flock camera near you, you deserve to know it's there and who can pull your data. Check our map to see what's tracking your neighborhood, and head to take action if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment where you live.