San Francisco Audited Flock. It Found 299 Improper Searches Across 500+ Networks.

Our Take

Give credit to tipunchtv for actually sitting through a Police Commission meeting so the rest of us don't have to. Chief Derrick Lew stood up and confirmed what critics have said for years: once a city plugs into Flock's network, it's not just sharing data with its own cops — it's opening the door to 500-plus other agencies, and predictably, some of them walked through it improperly. Nearly 300 improper searches isn't a rounding error, it's a pattern.

This is the core problem with Flock's business model. Cities are sold on "local control" and "community safety," but the moment a camera goes live, the search logs show the data sprawls far beyond the city limits that approved it. San Francisco at least ran an audit and made the numbers public — most cities running these systems never bother to check, or don't disclose it if they do. That transparency should be the floor, not something to praise as exceptional.

The bigger question this raises for every city council currently weighing a Flock contract: if San Francisco, with real oversight and an actual audit process, still found hundreds of misuses, what's happening in the towns that never look? Check our camera map to see what's tracking your plate, and if your city hasn't run an audit like this, that's exactly the kind of question to put to your local officials — start with our take-action page.