NEWS ARTICLE FALSELY CREDITS FLOCK CAMERAS FOR SOLVING A KIDNAPPING CASE

Our Take

Credit to Devin for doing the unglamorous work of actually checking a feel-good headline against the facts. This is a pattern we see constantly: a local news outlet runs a story crediting Flock Safety cameras with cracking a big case, the quote gets repeated by police PR and by Flock's own marketing, and nobody goes back to check whether the hardware actually did what the headline says. When a closer look shows old-fashioned police work, a tip, or a different piece of evidence did the heavy lifting, the correction rarely gets the same coverage as the original claim.

This matters because these anecdotes are the currency Flock and local PDs use to justify expanding networks of plate readers into more towns, more intersections, and more of your daily movements. A single feel-good story about a solved kidnapping does a lot of political work — it short-circuits debate about cost, data retention, and who else gets access to the database, including federal agencies and out-of-state police. If the underlying claim is shaky, the whole case for 'look what the cameras did' gets shakier too.

We'd rather see departments show their actual work: the case file, the timeline, what role the ALPR hit played versus everything else. Until that happens, treat these feel-good stories skeptically. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your community, and visit take action if you want to push back on unchecked expansion.