IMPD chief says stronger protections in place for Flock cameras

Our Take

Here we go again: another police department caught with its hand in the ALPR cookie jar, another chief standing at a podium promising things will be different now. WRTV Indianapolis reports that IMPD Chief Tanya Terry is touting "stronger protections" for Flock camera data after allegations that multiple officers misused the system. Notice what's missing from that sentence — specifics. What exactly did these officers do? Who did they look up, and why? Departments love to announce reform in the abstract while keeping the details locked away, and that vagueness is itself a form of damage control.

This is the pattern we track over and over at DeFlock: a network of cameras gets installed to catch stolen cars or Amber Alert suspects, and within months it becomes a tool officers use to run plates for personal reasons, track exes, or settle scores. "Misuse" is a clinical word for what's really a privacy violation against ordinary people who never consented to having their movements logged. A chief saying "we fixed it" after the fact doesn't undo the searches that already happened, and it does nothing to stop the next officer who decides the audit logs won't catch them either.

Indianapolis residents deserve more than a press conference — they deserve public audit data, independent oversight, and a real accounting of who was looked up and why. If you want to see whether Flock cameras are already watching your neighborhood, check our map, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions than WRTV got answered here, visit our take-action page for tools to push back.