Police officer charged after allegedly tracking ex with Flock cameras

Our Take

Flock Safety's entire sales pitch rests on one word: trust. Trust that officers will only run searches for legitimate investigations. Trust that audit logs will catch abuse after the fact. ABC10's report on a Kentucky officer allegedly querying Flock cameras over 2,000 times to stalk an ex-partner blows a hole in that pitch. Credit to ABC10 for digging into a case that Flock and its police partners would rather you never hear about.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: audit trails are a deterrent for people who care about getting caught, not a lock on the door. By the time anyone noticed a pattern, this officer had allegedly already run thousands of unauthorized lookups. That's not a bug in the system working as intended — a badge becomes a skeleton key to a database tracking where you live, work, worship, and sleep at night. When the person misusing it wears a uniform, the usual promises about 'policy' and 'oversight' mean nothing.

This isn't an isolated glitch — it's the predictable result of installing blanket surveillance infrastructure and asking the people who can abuse it to also police themselves. Every camera added to a network is another tool available for exactly this kind of misuse, by exactly the kind of person a victim is least likely to be protected from. Check our camera map to see what's watching your neighborhood, and hit up our take-action page if you want to push back on these systems before they're turned on someone you love.