Flock cameras misused

Our Take

12 News dropped a short but pointed segment on something we've been saying for a while: Flock Safety's network of license plate readers isn't just a neutral tool sitting quietly on a pole. It's a surveillance system, and like any surveillance system, it's only as trustworthy as the people with access to it. When a local newsroom starts asking questions about misuse, that's a signal the guardrails aren't as solid as police departments like to claim.

The pattern here is familiar. Departments roll these cameras out promising narrow use cases — stolen cars, Amber Alerts, violent crime — and then the access logs tell a messier story. Once a database can track where your car has been over time, the temptation to peek for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety doesn't go away just because a policy memo says it should. Audits are reactive, logging isn't always transparent, and the burden of catching abuse falls on journalists and watchdogs rather than the agencies themselves.

This is exactly why it matters to know where these cameras actually are in your community, not just what the vendor's marketing says. Check our camera map to see what's nearby, and if you want to push back on unchecked deployment, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this with local officials. Credit to 12 News for putting a spotlight on misuse — the more local coverage like this exists, the harder it gets for agencies to dodge accountability.