@WREGNewsChannel3 about @FlockSafety license plate recognition cameras in Memphis Tennessee
The short version: A reposted WREG Memphis news segment on Flock ALPRs, shared by YouTuber Yoji the Car guy, repeats the police talking points without asking who else gets access to the data.
Our Take
Credit to Yoji the Car guy for surfacing this WREG News Channel 3 segment on Memphis's Flock Safety rollout, but local TV hits on ALPRs tend to follow the same script: a police spokesperson touts a few solved cases, a reporter nods along, and the segment ends before anyone asks the harder questions. What's the retention window for these plate scans? Which outside agencies, state or federal, can query Memphis's camera network? Is there an audit log the public can actually see? Those details rarely make the six o'clock news, but they're the whole ballgame.
Memphis has been an aggressive adopter of Flock cameras, which means residents there are accumulating a detailed, searchable record of their daily movements, who they visit, where they worship, what protests they attend, whether they noticed or not. That data doesn't stay local by default; Flock's network design makes plate lookups shareable across jurisdictions, and history shows these systems get repurposed well beyond the narrow 'solve crime' pitch used to sell them to city councils.
If you live in or around Memphis, check our camera map to see what's already been documented near you, and if you want to push back on unchecked expansion, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising these questions at your next city council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Yoji the Car guy, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.