Flock cameras abuse, guardrails, and a murder solved TWISC

Our Take

This is exactly the kind of conversation we want to see more of: a statewide candidate for Attorney General being asked, on the record, about both sides of the ALPR ledger. Credit to Gavin Jackson and SCETV News for pushing David Stumbo past the usual "it helped solve a case" talking point and into the harder territory of abuse and guardrails. One solved murder makes for a great press release, but it doesn't tell you how many searches happened that week with no court order, no public log, and no accountability.

That's the core problem with Flock's rollout nationwide: the success stories get press conferences, while the misuse — the officers running plates on exes, the departments sharing data across state lines with no oversight, the agencies that can't or won't say who accessed what and why — gets buried in audit logs nobody requests. "Guardrails" is doing a lot of work in that segment title, and candidates for AG are exactly the people who should be forced to say what those guardrails actually look like in practice, not just promise they exist.

South Carolina residents should be asking their own local departments the same questions this interview raises — not at election season, but now. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and use our take-action resources to push your city council and legislators for real transparency requirements before the next headline is about the misuse, not the murder.