Flock Safety Helps Solve Smash-and-Grab Crimes in Melrose, LA

Our Take

This one comes straight from Flock Safety's own YouTube channel, repackaging a Spectrum News 1 segment about smash-and-grab arrests in Melrose, LA. It's a tidy made-for-TV narrative: cameras catch bad guys, community feels safer, case closed. What it isn't is independent journalism — it's a vendor amplifying a local news hit that happened to feature its product, with no mention of how many plates were scanned, how long that data sat in a database, or who else had access to it.

We're not saying ALPR data can't help close a case here or there. We're saying one flattering clip doesn't tell you what the system costs the rest of us — every driver who passes through Melrose gets logged, timestamped, and stored, whether or not they're smash-and-grab suspects. That's the trade Flock wants you to accept on faith: trust the highlight reel, skip the audit. No breakdown of retention policy, no discussion of data sharing with other agencies or ICE, no acknowledgment of wrongful stops tied to bad reads elsewhere in the country.

Before any city council takes a PR video as proof of ROI, they should ask for actual numbers — hit rates, audit logs, who's pulling records and why. Check our map to see if these cameras are already watching your block, and visit take-action for tools to push your local government toward real transparency instead of a vendor's highlight reel.