Flock Cameras; what are they, and how law enforcement is watching suspects to prevent mass violence

Our Take

WXII 12 News in Winston-Salem walks viewers through the basics of automated license plate readers and how local police are leaning on Flock Safety's AI-powered database to flag "suspects" before violence happens. Credit to the station for giving the technology more airtime than most local news does — but the segment reads like it was scripted from a police department press release, not an investigation. "Preventing mass violence" is a powerful hook, and it's exactly the kind of framing departments use to get City Councils to sign off on these systems with little pushback.

What's missing is the other side of the ledger: that every plate scanned by one of these cameras — not just the ones belonging to actual suspects — gets logged, time-stamped, and often shared across a nationwide network of agencies with few guardrails on how long that data sits around or who can query it. "Mass violence prevention" sounds noble until you remember these systems track everyone's movements by default, suspect or not, and that mission creep from violent crime to immigration status, abortion-related travel, or political protest attendance has already happened in other jurisdictions.

If your town hasn't had this conversation yet, it will. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and head to our take-action page if you want to push back before the next "public safety" segment becomes the only side of the story your neighbors hear.