Ohio professor specialized in policing nails why Flock cameras are a threat to everyone

Our Take

More Perfect Union sat down with Dr. Viet Trinh, an Ohio professor who studies policing, and got a soundbite that deserves to outlive the news cycle: under Flock, we are all under investigation, at all times, for all crimes. That's not hyperbole from an activist — it's the sober conclusion of someone who studies how police power actually works. When a system is built to log every passing car, whether or not anyone is suspected of anything, the presumption of innocence stops being the default and starts being something you have to hope nobody bothers to override.

What makes this framing useful is that it cuts through Flock's own marketing, which leans hard on solved-crime anecdotes and community-safety branding. Trinh's point is structural, not anecdotal: it doesn't matter how many good outcomes you can point to if the architecture itself treats the entire public as perpetual suspects. That's the same logic that built stop-and-frisk and mass wiretapping — cast the net over everyone, sort out the innocent later, and call it efficiency. Once that infrastructure exists, it doesn't stay contained to the sales pitch. It gets subpoenaed, hacked, misused by employees, and repurposed for whatever the political winds demand next.

Credit to More Perfect Union for putting an academic voice behind what a lot of communities already feel in their gut when a Flock camera goes up on their street. If you want to see how far this has spread, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back where you live, our take-action guide has concrete steps.