San Jose police officer fired for allegedly sharing Flock camera data with domestic violence suspect

Our Take

ABC30 Action News is reporting that San Jose PD fired an officer accused of digging through Flock Safety's license plate reader system and handing what he found to a domestic violence suspect. If true, this is the nightmare scenario critics of ALPR networks have been warning about for years: it's not hackers or foreign spies who pose the biggest risk to this data, it's the people who already have the keys.

Flock and its police partners love to say the system is 'audited' and 'access is logged,' as if that alone prevents misuse. But audits catch abuse after the fact — after someone's location history has already been weaponized against them, potentially putting a domestic violence victim in real danger. A database that tracks every car that passes a camera is only as trustworthy as the weakest link with a password, and departments keep proving that link exists.

This case should be a wake-up call for any city council currently rubber-stamping a new Flock contract on the promise of 'strict safeguards.' Safeguards on paper don't stop an officer from misusing a search bar. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and hit up our take-action page if you want to push back before your local PD has its own version of this story.