Officers arrested for illegal flock camer use
The short version: A local NewsTown report says five officers face charges for allegedly misusing Flock ALPR data, proving the 'trust us' promise around these cameras keeps failing.
Our Take
NewsTwon's report on five officers reportedly charged over misuse of license plate reader access is exactly the kind of story we warn about every time a city council votes to bolt more Flock cameras onto their streets. Vendors and police brass love to promise that these networks come with audit trails and strict access rules. But rules on paper mean nothing if the people holding the keys decide to use them for personal reasons, favors, or harassment instead of actual investigations.
We don't have the full charging documents, and we're not going to pretend we do — but the broad strokes here track a pattern we've seen pop up again and again across the country: officers querying plate databases for non-law-enforcement purposes, then only getting caught because someone complained or an audit flagged it. That's not a system working as intended. That's a system that got lucky this one time.
Every camera added to a city's network is another pile of location data that can be abused by whoever has login credentials, badge or not. If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your own neighborhood, check our map, and if you're ready to push back on your local department's surveillance budget, our take-action page has concrete steps to start with.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NewsTwon, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.