WECT INVESTIGATES: Who Is Watching? The Truth About The Controversial "Flock" Camera System
The short version: WECT News 6 reveals New Hanover County deputies ran roughly 6,000 Flock camera searches since June 1, raising hard questions about oversight and scale.
Our Take
Credit to WECT News 6 for doing what local sheriffs' offices rarely do on their own: pulling the actual search logs. Six thousand queries in a matter of months isn't a tool being used sparingly for violent crime — it's a department that has built routine, daily reliance on a dragnet of license plate data, with no warrant and often little public accounting for why each search happened.
This is the pattern we track across the country: agencies tell the public Flock is for finding stolen cars and Amber Alerts, then the numbers show a system queried constantly, by many hands, for reasons that rarely get explained after the fact. Volume alone should worry anyone who cares about due process, because every one of those searches touches the travel history of ordinary residents who've never been charged with anything.
New Hanover County isn't unique — it's just the one with a reporter who asked for the records. Check our camera map to see what's logging your own plate, and if your county hasn't released its search data yet, our take-action page has the tools to start asking.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WECT News 6, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.