Flock camera audits fail: Victims catch abuse first!

Our Take

Mumford Law lays out a pattern that should terrify anyone who's been told Flock cameras are just for finding stolen cars and wanted felons: officers in Ottawa, Sedgwick County, and Joplin used plate readers and law enforcement databases to track women they were personally interested in — one plate run 228 times without the woman ever handing over her number. These weren't hacked systems. These were the tools working exactly as designed, just pointed at the wrong target.

The 'audit' process that's supposed to catch this kind of abuse is a joke because it's reactive by design. Nobody reviews a search until a victim notices the pattern, files a complaint, or a reporter starts asking questions. By then the stalking has gone on for months, sometimes years. Flock's own marketing leans hard on 'audit trails' and 'accountability logs' as if logging a crime after the fact is the same as preventing it. It isn't. A searchable database of every plate, every driver, every regular route is a stalker's dream, and it doesn't matter if the stalker has a badge.

Credit to Mumford Law for pulling these cases together in one place — this is exactly the kind of documentation that makes the abstract threat of ALPR networks concrete. If you want to see how dense this surveillance grid already is where you live, check the map, and if you think your city council needs to hear about cases like these before approving more cameras, our take-action page has the tools to make that happen.