2 members of Joliet Police Department on leave for alleged misuse of Flock camera technology

Our Take

ABC 7 Chicago is reporting that two Joliet Police Department employees have been placed on paid leave amid allegations they misused Flock Safety ALPR technology. The station hasn't laid out every detail yet, but that's almost beside the point — this is the same story that keeps surfacing in department after department. Give officers a searchable database of everyone's travel patterns and sooner or later someone looks up an ex, a neighbor, or a rival for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety.

Flock and its police partners love to frame these cameras as a narrow tool for solving crimes, audited and locked down tight. But audits only catch misuse after it's happened, and "paid leave" isn't exactly a deterrent — it's a paid vacation while the department figures out how much of this it wants the public to see. Every one of these incidents chips away at the argument that blanket plate surveillance is some neutral, harmless infrastructure upgrade. It isn't. It's a power that gets abused precisely because it's so easy to query and so hard to oversee.

Credit to ABC 7 Chicago for digging this up and holding Joliet PD's feet to the fire. If you want to know whether these cameras are watching your own street, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not install this kind of system in the first place, our take-action page has the tools to push back before the next 'alleged misuse' story has your town's name on it.