Apex license plate readers helped police nab 3, officers say
The short version: CBS 17 reports Apex police crediting license plate readers for three arrests, but the segment skips the bigger question of what's collected on everyone else.
Our Take
CBS 17's report out of Apex gives us the familiar law enforcement highlight reel: three arrests, credited to a network of automated license plate readers. What it doesn't give us is any accounting of how many thousands of innocent drivers got scanned, logged, and stored to produce those three cases. That's the trade-off local newsrooms rarely interrogate, and it's exactly the kind of story we exist to push back on.
Every Flock Safety camera installed doesn't just watch for wanted plates — it builds a permanent, searchable record of where everyday residents drive, when, and how often. Three arrests sound good on the evening news, but they say nothing about retention policies, who else can query that data, or whether Apex residents ever had a real say before these cameras went up on their streets.
If you live in or around Apex, check our camera map to see what's already watching your commute, and visit our take-action page for tools to push your local council for transparency and limits before the network grows any further.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS 17, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.