The Problem With Flock Safety Cameras

Our Take

Flock Safety loves to tout its "audit trail" as proof the system polices itself. The Texas Civil Rights Project just put that claim to the test, and HPD failed it spectacularly: nearly 300,000 searches with no justification entered at all, and plenty more with vague, meaningless reasons typed in just to satisfy the dropdown menu. A reason field that nobody has to actually fill out honestly isn't oversight — it's theater.

This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide. Departments promise the logs will catch misuse, but there's no auditor checking the logs in real time, no penalty for leaving them blank, and no mechanism for the public to know an officer ran your plate out of curiosity, jealousy, or worse. Self-reporting without consequences is not accountability, it's an honor system for a tool that was sold to city councils as rigorously controlled.

Credit to the Texas Civil Rights Project for digging into HPD's own data to expose this. If you're in Texas or anywhere else living near one of these cameras, check our map to see what's watching your neighborhood, and head to take action to push your local council for real audits, real penalties, and real limits before this tech runs any further unchecked.