Flock Safety PRECRIME Fishing tool

Our Take

Credit to RTP Tech Tips for digging into a feature Flock Safety would rather you not think too hard about: the ability to run broad, speculative queries across a nationwide network of license plate cameras, hunting for patterns rather than chasing a specific lead tied to a specific crime. Call it what you want, 'PRECRIME' or 'pattern analysis,' the effect is the same. It inverts the basic logic of policing, from 'we have a suspect, let's find them' to 'let's see who shows up if we go looking.'

This matters because ALPR systems were sold to city councils as tools to solve hit-and-runs and recover stolen cars, not as a searchable archive of everyone's movements that can be mined on a hunch. Once a network spans thousands of jurisdictions and keeps months of records, the temptation to use it for dragnet-style fishing expeditions is baked in. There's no warrant requirement stopping an officer from typing in a time window and a radius and seeing who was nearby, over and over, building a profile of ordinary people who've never been charged with anything.

If a feature like this exists in your town's Flock deployment, your neighbors deserve to know it's there and how it's being used. Check our map to see what's already watching your streets, and head to take-action for ways to push back before 'fishing' becomes standard procedure.