Ohio AG recommends criminalizing misuse of Flock camera technology
The short version: Ohio's AG wants to criminalize Flock misuse while defending the cameras themselves, even as multiple officers face investigation and towns start dropping the program.
Our Take
Notice the shape of this response: officers in Reynoldsburg, Columbus, and Franklin County get caught allegedly abusing Flock's network, and the state's fix is... a new criminal statute for misuse, plus a full-throated defense of the technology itself. That's not accountability, that's damage control. The problem was never just a few bad actors peeking at plates they shouldn't have — it's that a statewide network of cameras logging every car's movement makes that kind of abuse inevitable and nearly effortless.
Credit to WKYC Channel 3 for tracking how fast this story is moving in Ohio, with communities already walking away from Flock contracts amid the backlash. That's the real signal here, not a proposed penalty enhancement. When local governments start canceling ALPR deals faster than the legislature can write safeguards, it tells you the public trust in these systems is already gone — and no misdemeanor-to-felony bump is going to rebuild it.
Laws punishing misuse only work if misuse gets caught, and these systems are built with almost no meaningful audit trail for the public. If you want to see how far this has spread beyond Ohio, check our camera map, and if your town is still debating a Flock contract, our take-action guide has what you need to push back before the cameras go up, not after.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WKYC Channel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.