Cops Are Using Taxpayer-Funded Flock Cameras to Stalk Their Exes — This Is Insane

Our Take

Credit to Derrick Evans for putting numbers on something we've been saying for years: the "only trained officers can search this" line is not a safeguard, it's a talking point. The Institute for Justice report he cites — an officer running his girlfriend's plate 179 times, a police chief hitting his ex and her new boyfriend over 200 times — isn't a handful of rogue bad apples. It's what happens by design when you hand a government employee a searchable, frictionless database of everyone's movements and tell him to self-police.

Flock and its peers sell these systems on the promise of audit logs and policy guardrails. But an audit log only matters if someone is actually reading it before the 179th search, not after a victim files a complaint. Most agencies don't proactively review access patterns at all — they react once it's already a scandal. That means every camera on every corner near you is a potential tool for exactly this kind of abuse, and you'd likely never know unless the target happened to notice and complain.

This is why we push transparency over trust-us assurances. Check our map to see what's watching your own neighborhood, and head to take action for ways to push your city council and police department for real audit policies — not just press-release promises.