Former AJPD officer uses flock cameras to locate wife, according to police records
The short version: An Apache Junction officer allegedly used Flock ALPR cameras to track down his own wife, then resigned — a textbook case of surveillance tool misuse.
Our Take
This is the story we keep warning you about. Give law enforcement a network of license plate readers justified as a tool for finding stolen cars and violent fugitives, and sooner or later someone inside the department will quietly repurpose it to track a spouse, an ex, or anyone else they have a personal stake in finding. Credit to 12 News for pulling the records on this one — because without them, this almost certainly never sees daylight. The officer resigned, but resignations are not accountability. They're an off-ramp that lets departments avoid admitting their 'public safety' infrastructure doubles as a stalking tool when the wrong person has the login.
Flock Safety and its police partners love to talk about audit logs and 'reasonable suspicion' search requirements, but logs only matter if someone is actually reviewing them for abuse — not just pulling them after a reporter files a records request. This case shows the real failure mode of ALPR networks isn't some hypothetical dystopia down the road; it's the everyday reality that any officer with access can look up anyone's movements for any reason, and the only thing standing between that and your personal safety is an honor system with weak enforcement.
If you want to know how many of these cameras are already watching the roads in your town, check our camera map, and if you think your city shouldn't be writing blank checks to systems like this, see what you can do on our take-action page.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 12 News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.