Police Misconduct: Using Plate Readers on Romantic Interests #shorts

Our Take

Credit to Eliza Orlins for surfacing numbers that should alarm anyone who still thinks license plate readers are only used to catch car thieves and Amber Alert suspects. Thirty confirmed incidents of officers running plates on people they were dating or interested in — with one guy checking a single date's movements 180 times in two months — isn't an edge case. It's a preview of what happens when you hand every cop in a department a tool that can silently track anyone's comings and goings, with audit logs that only get checked after the fact, if ever.

This is the part Flock Safety and police PR departments conveniently leave out of their 'public safety' pitches: the system doesn't know the difference between a legitimate investigation and a jealous ex with a badge. Access gets revoked after the abuse is discovered, not before, which means the deterrent is a strongly worded policy, not an actual technical limit. Multiply this pattern across the thousands of ALPR cameras now blanketing neighborhoods nationwide and you get a surveillance network built on the assumption that everyone with login credentials will behave. History says otherwise.

If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your street, check our camera map, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions before approving more of them, our take-action page has tools to help you push back.