Former Savannah police employees appeal firings over alleged Flock camera misuse

Our Take

WJCL News is reporting that former Savannah police employees who were fired over alleged misuse of Flock Safety camera data are now fighting to get their jobs back. We don't know the granular details of what they allegedly did, and we're not going to speculate — but the broader pattern here is exactly what critics of ALPR networks have been warning about since day one: these systems run on trust, and trust breaks.

Flock and its police customers love to tout audit logs and 'search justification' fields as proof the technology polices itself. But an audit log only matters if someone actually reviews it, and firings only happen after the damage — to a person's privacy, to public confidence, to due process — is already done. An appeal process that could put the same personnel back behind the same database doesn't exactly inspire confidence that access controls are being taken seriously.

Cases like this are why we keep pushing for real transparency: public audit reporting, independent oversight, and hard limits on who can query a statewide surveillance dragnet in the first place. Credit to WJCL for staying on this story. If you want to see what's watching your own community, check the map, and if you think your city needs guardrails before — not after — misuse happens, our take-action page has a place to start.