How new Wyoming license plate scanners resulted in 19 arrests
The short version: 13 On Your Side reports Wyoming's six new Flock cameras led to 19 arrests in four months, but the real story is what else those cameras are quietly logging.
Our Take
Nineteen arrests in four months sounds like a win, and local news outlet 13 ON YOUR SIDE frames it that way. But arrest counts are the easy headline — nobody's reporting how many thousands of innocent drivers got their plates, locations, and travel patterns logged and stored in the process. Six cameras watching every car that passes means a permanent record of everyone's movements, not just the small fraction who turn out to be suspects.
This is the pitch Flock Safety makes to every city council: a handful of cameras, a short pilot period, a few feel-good arrest numbers, and suddenly mass license plate tracking becomes permanent infrastructure with almost no public debate about retention, data sharing, or who else gets access to that database down the road. Departments rarely volunteer how often these systems misfire, get shared with outside agencies, or outlive the problem they were sold to solve.
If you live near Wyoming — or anywhere else — check our map to see what's already watching your neighborhood, and visit our take-action page to push back before six cameras becomes sixty.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 13 ON YOUR SIDE, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.