How ALPRs (flock cameras) could have caught the killer

Our Take

The channel One More & I'm Outta Here dives into a familiar pitch: if only ALPRs had been watching, a killer might've been caught sooner. It's a compelling hook, and we get why true-crime framing pulls people in — nobody wants to defend a murderer. But this is exactly the emotional lever Flock Safety and local police departments use to wave through blanket camera networks without public debate or sunset clauses.

Here's the problem with the 'it could've caught the killer' argument: it's always true, for literally any surveillance tool. More cameras, more facial recognition, more data retention — all of it 'could' help solve some future crime. That logic never stops, and it never asks what happens to the 99.9% of plates scanned that have nothing to do with any crime. Those reads get stored, shared across agencies, and sometimes leaked or misused, often with zero transparency to the people driving past.

We're not anti-public-safety. We're anti-blank-check surveillance sold on best-case scenarios while worst-case abuses — stalking, wrongful stops, data breaches — get buried in the fine print. If you want to see how dense this network already is in your area, check our camera map, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions before renewing a Flock contract, head to our take-action page.