FOP president on officer Flock misuse: 'They need to be removed from police department'

Our Take

When the head of Ohio's Fraternal Order of Police says cops caught misusing Flock cameras "need to be removed from police department," that's not a civil liberties group talking — it's law enforcement's own labor representative. Credit to Local 12 for getting that admission on camera alongside Attorney General Andy Wilson's push to criminalize ALPR misuse. Pair those two voices together and you get a quiet confession: the guardrails Flock and its police customers promise the public — "we only use this for active investigations," "audit logs catch bad actors" — aren't stopping people from running plates on ex-partners, neighbors, or political rivals.

That's the pattern that keeps surfacing in agency after agency once someone finally pulls the audit trail: officers searching databases for personal reasons, with little consequence until a reporter or a union president forces the issue into daylight. A new state misdemeanor or felony statute might deter the most blatant abuse, but it does nothing to fix the underlying problem — thousands of networked cameras logging every car that passes, available to anyone with a login and a weak excuse. Punishing misuse after the fact is not the same as preventing a surveillance net that was never debated or consented to by the communities living under it.

If you want to know how far that net reaches in your own area, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back than wait for the next misuse scandal, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting these systems in front of your city council.