Don’t Flock me Friday, fake Flock edition!

Our Take

According to Daytona Beach Lawyer, the Oviedo Police Department didn't just deploy real ALPRs — they allegedly planted fake, 3D-printed Flock decoys specifically to bait people into messing with them, then hit at least one person with three felony charges. If accurate, that's not traffic safety, that's a sting operation built around a camera that doesn't even do the thing it's pretending to do. Worth watching the video yourself and drawing your own conclusions, but the setup alone tells you something about priorities.

What makes this especially galling is the part where the mayor reportedly had no idea this was happening when asked about it directly. That's the pattern we keep seeing nationwide with Flock-style programs: police departments quietly expanding surveillance infrastructure and enforcement tactics while the elected officials who are supposed to be accountable to the public get left out of the loop. When even the mayor doesn't know decoy cameras are being used to manufacture felony cases, the question isn't just "is this legal" — it's "who actually approved this, and why."

Fake cameras built to criminalize public skepticism of real cameras is a pretty blunt signal about how much these departments value transparency. If you want to know what's actually watching your street — real or otherwise — check our map, and if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployments in your own city, start with our action guide.