Kentucky officer arrested after tracking ex on Flock cameras

Our Take

WQAD News 8 is reporting on exactly the nightmare scenario critics of Flock Safety have been warning about for years: a badge and a login turning a surveillance network into a personal stalking tool. Two thousand-plus queries isn't a slip-up or a one-time lapse in judgment — that's a pattern, sustained over time, against someone the officer had a personal relationship with. It took that volume of abuse before anyone apparently noticed.

That's the real story here. Flock's entire sales pitch rests on "audit trails" and "accountability," but audit logs only matter if someone is actually watching them in real time, not reviewing them after the fact once a victim comes forward. Departments across the country have handed access to hundreds of officers with little independent oversight, trusting the honor system to prevent exactly this kind of misuse. When the people with access to a mass surveillance network are also the ones capable of abusing it with zero friction, the system isn't broken — it's working as designed, just not for the public's benefit.

Credit to WQAD for pushing this story into the open; these cases rarely get covered with this much specificity. If there's a Flock camera network running in your town, you deserve to know it exists and who can access it. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and visit our take-action page if you want to push your local council for real oversight before your town becomes the next headline.