Caught making nearly 1,000 personal Flock searches, former police now say they weren't trained

Our Take

Courier Georgia's reporting, sourced from WJCL 22, lays out exactly the scenario we keep warning about: a department hands officers a database that can track anyone's movements by license plate, and the only real safeguard is an honor system. Nearly a thousand searches later, the excuse on the table isn't 'we followed policy' — it's 'nobody told us the rules.' That's not a training gap, that's a design flaw. When a tool this powerful requires no meaningful audit trail, no supervisor sign-off, and no consequence until a reporter starts asking questions, the abuse isn't an if, it's a when.

The city calling this a breach of public trust is the right instinct, but trust was never the mechanism that was supposed to stop this. Flock's own marketing leans hard on the idea that access logs and audits keep misuse in check. Three officers apparently ran personal searches at scale before anyone noticed or cared enough to act. That's the pattern we see market to market: robust-sounding policy on paper, and functionally zero enforcement until local media does the department's job for it.

If your town has one of these camera networks, don't wait for a scandal to find out how it's being used near you. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and if you want to push back on unchecked access, our take-action resources walk you through how to demand real audits and public accountability before your city becomes the next headline.