Golden Police See Success With Flock Safety

Our Take

This one comes straight from the source: it's a Flock Safety production that found its way onto a Denver newscast, which tells you almost everything about how these 'success story' segments get made. Local police department sees a feel-good win, Flock packages it into a tidy clip, and a TV station runs it like independent reporting. Credit to the channel for at least labeling it as a company upload — the real problem is how often this kind of content airs without that disclosure.

These vendor-produced testimonials never mention the parts that matter to the rest of us: how long Golden PD retains the plate scans, who else can query that data, whether it's shared with federal agencies or other departments across state lines, and what happens when the system flags an innocent driver's plate as a false match. 'Success' for a department's clearance rate isn't the same as success for a community's privacy, and a 90-second puff piece isn't going to walk you through the trade-off.

If Golden, Colorado has Flock cameras running, they're very likely feeding a network that extends well beyond city limits. Check our camera map to see what's logging plates near you, and if you want to push back on blanket ALPR deployment in your own town, our take-action page has a starting point.