Flock LPR Helps Catch a Predator Who Targeted a 79-Year-Old Woman
The short version: Flock's own promotional video touts a predator-stalking case solved with ALPR data, but one feel-good story doesn't answer how this surveillance net is governed.
Our Take
This clip comes straight from Flock Safety's corporate channel, not an independent newsroom, so treat it as the marketing it is. Nobody disputes that catching a man who stalked a 79-year-old woman from a parking lot to her home is a good outcome, and credit goes to the Warren County Sheriff's Office for closing the case. But a single success story is exactly the kind of anecdote these companies lean on to sell city councils on blanket camera networks — it's never paired with data on how many searches, how many people scanned, or how many false leads it took to get there.
That's the part Flock's highlight reel always skips: the thousands of other drivers who had no connection to any crime but still had their plates, location, and travel patterns logged that day. A predator being caught doesn't retroactively justify a system that defaults to tracking everyone, with little public audit of who accesses the data, for what reason, or how long it's kept. Good outcomes in rare cases don't erase the routine, permanent surveillance that makes those outcomes possible.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood is wired into this network, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back on unchecked ALPR expansion in your city, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting answers from local officials.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.