Inside Scoop: License Plate Recognition and Catching the Bad Guys with Flock Safety
The short version: A Loss Prevention Magazine interview lets two Flock Safety staffers pitch ALPR to retailers as a case-closing miracle, glossing over the surveillance tradeoffs.
Our Take
This one's worth watching less as journalism and more as a sales call. Loss Prevention Magazine hands the mic to Mike Combs and Rich McElwain — both ex-law enforcement, both now on Flock Safety's payroll — to tell retail security teams how great it is to bolt ALPR cameras onto strip malls and parking lots. It's the classic revolving-door pitch: former cops selling the tech they used to use, now aimed at expanding Flock's footprint into private commercial property.
What gets glossed over is the bigger picture. Every retail lot that signs up becomes another node feeding plate data into networks that police departments can tap into, often with far less oversight than a public agency camera would get. "Closing cases faster" sounds great until you ask who else gets access to that data, how long it's kept, and whether the shopper who ran an errand at 2pm ever agreed to have their movements logged for a corporate security contract. Loss prevention has real problems — retail theft is real — but turning every strip mall into a surveillance checkpoint isn't a neutral tool, it's an expansion of the dragnet.
Credit to LP Magazine for getting Flock's own people on record about how they're courting the private sector, even if the segment reads more like a product demo than scrutiny. If you want to see how far this network already reaches near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back than just watch it grow, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Loss Prevention Magazine, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.