FLOCK of Drone Gulls: LEOs Love Surveillance Tech Until it Eliminates Their Jobs, Rights
The short version: DCFPress digs into the irony of police embracing ALPR dragnets while bristling at the idea of being watched themselves — a double standard worth calling out.
Our Take
DCFPress lands on a point we hammer on constantly: surveillance is only popular with law enforcement when it points outward, never inward. Flock Safety's pitch has always been that these cameras are neutral tools for "solving crime," but the moment that same logic gets turned around — drones, reader networks, or any tech that could track an officer's own movements or accountability — suddenly the enthusiasm evaporates. That selective comfort with being watched is the tell. It's not about safety, it's about control.
The video's framing of "forward-facing only" claims is worth sitting with too. Flock and police departments love to reassure the public that these systems are narrowly scoped, yet the backend data-sharing, retention periods, and multi-agency access tell a different story. Once a plate hits the cloud, the original promise about limited scope rarely survives contact with how the network actually gets used in practice.
Credit to DCFPress for pulling that thread. If you want to see how dense this infrastructure already is in your own town, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up at city council and demanding real oversight.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DCFPress, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.