Inside Commerce City’s Real-Time Crime Center
The short version: Flock's own promo video dresses up Commerce City's real-time crime center as a public-safety win, but it's vendor marketing for a surveillance dragnet, not independent reporting.
Our Take
Notice who's telling this story: Flock Safety's own channel, featuring a police commander praising Flock's own product. That's not journalism, it's a sales reel. When the company that profits from selling ALPR networks and drone programs also produces the glowing case study about how well those tools work, you're not getting an accounting of tradeoffs — you're getting an ad. No mention of retention periods, audit logs, false-positive rates, or who outside the department gets to review how this "real-time crime center" is actually used.
Real-time crime centers are the next step in normalizing always-on tracking: license plate cameras feeding a central hub, cross-referenced with drone footage, built to flag "incidents" as they unfold. That architecture doesn't stay confined to the worst crimes. Once the fusion center exists, the temptation to widen its aperture — immigration status, protest activity, reproductive health travel — is baked in, and Commerce City residents have no meaningful say in where that line gets drawn.
If you want to know whether your own city already has this infrastructure, check our camera map before you take a company's promo video at its word. And if you'd rather your town not become the subject of the next glossy Flock case study, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at the city council level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.