Lorain police use Flock cameras to track 16-year-old suspect in his grandfather's killing
The short version: WKYC's report on Lorain police using Flock cameras to track a teen suspect is being sold as a win, but it's also a case study in how normalized this surveillance has become.
Our Take
WKYC Channel 3's report on Lorain police cracking a homicide case with Flock Safety cameras is exactly the kind of story Flock Safety wants you to see. A tragic crime, a quick resolution, cameras as the hero. What gets left out is everything else those same cameras are doing every single day to the thousands of people driving through Lorain who have nothing to do with any crime at all.
That's the trade-off nobody puts in the press release: a network built to log every plate, every trip, every pattern of movement for anyone who drives through town, justified retroactively by the cases where it happens to help. One solved case doesn't tell you how many people are having their daily movements archived, cross-referenced, and shared between agencies with little to no public oversight. Coordination between departments sounds efficient right up until you ask who's watching the watchers.
We're not saying crimes shouldn't get solved. We're saying the public deserves to know the actual scope of these systems before departments trot out the highlight reel. If there's a Flock camera near you, check our map to see it, and if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment in your own city, our take-action page has what you need. Credit to WKYC Channel 3 for the reporting — we just think the full picture is a lot bigger than one solved case.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WKYC Channel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.