Flock Cameras Help Catch a Burglary Suspect in Wisconsin
The short version: Flock's own promotional video about a Wisconsin burglary arrest is corporate marketing, not proof that mass ALPR surveillance is worth the privacy tradeoff for everyone else scanned.
Our Take
Notice who made this video: Flock Safety itself, not Monona TV, not an independent outlet. That matters. When the company selling the cameras is also the one producing the success story, you're watching an ad, not evidence. A single solved burglary makes for a great sales reel, but it tells you nothing about the thousands of innocent drivers whose plates, travel patterns, and locations get logged every day in that same database so one case could be closed in a week.
'Objective, plain-view evidence' is the industry's favorite phrase, and it's doing a lot of work here. Yes, a camera on a pole sees what's in public view. But stitching together every car's movements across a city, retained and searchable, is not the same thing as a cop glancing at a plate once. That's a permanent, networked tracking system, and framing it as just 'plain view' is how departments get buy-in without public debate about retention windows, access logs, or who else can query the data.
We're not denying ALPRs can help solve specific crimes. The question is whether every town needs a dragnet that logs all of us to catch a few of them, and whether residents even got a real say before their city signed the contract. Check our map to see if Flock has quietly set up shop near you, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back before the next company press release becomes your city's talking points.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.