Flock Cameras Assist Monona Police in Catching a Burglary Suspect

Our Take

This clip comes straight from Flock Safety's own channel, so take the framing with a grain of salt. Of course a single solved burglary makes for a great ad — it's much harder to show the thousands of scans of innocent drivers' plates that get logged every day in the same town, with no crime attached at all. "Accountable technology, auditable data" are nice buzzwords, but accountability means independent audits, public retention policies, and real oversight — not a company press release citing one happy ending.

Flock cameras don't just watch for stolen cars or wanted suspects; they build a searchable record of everywhere every car goes, available to police departments, and sometimes shared well beyond the town that installed them. One success story doesn't tell us who else queried that data, for what reason, or how long it sat in a database. That's the whole debate mass surveillance critics keep raising, and it rarely makes it into the highlight reel.

If you want to know whether Monona — or your own neighborhood — is wired up with this kind of tracking network, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not trade blanket surveillance for the occasional arrest, see what you can do at take action.