Flock cameras help solve crimes. But who’s watching the watchers?

Our Take

Credit to InvestigateTV and reporter Brendan Keefe for doing what too few outlets bother with: sitting Flock Safety's own chief communications officer down and asking hard questions on camera. The headline case is a Colorado driver caught up in Flock data, but the real story is the same one we keep hammering — these networks don't just watch suspects, they log every plate that passes, suspect or not, and that data trail sticks around far longer than most drivers realize.

The segment's back half is the part that matters most: who audits the audit logs, who decides what counts as a legitimate search, and what happens when a local department shares access with agencies in states with very different laws. Flock will tell you the system has guardrails. Critics, and plenty of public records requests around the country, tell a messier story of loose policies, informal data-sharing, and little independent oversight. That gap between marketing and practice is exactly why watchdog reporting like this exists.

If you want to see how dense this coverage already is where you live, check our camera map, and if your city council hasn't had a public debate about its Flock contract yet, that's the meeting to show up to — our take-action page has a starting playbook.