I Asked How Many Cases These Cameras Solved. No Answer. The Flock Files Ep. 4

Our Take

Credit to Divine Alliance Media for doing the unglamorous work: asking a public agency a simple, specific question and documenting what happens when the answer doesn't come. JSO loves to invoke murderers, child predators, and missing persons when justifying its Flock Safety network, but when asked to actually show the receipts — real case numbers, real outcomes — the response was nothing. That's not an accident. It's the standard playbook: lead with the scariest hypothetical, skip the data.

This matters because these systems aren't cheap, aren't invisible, and aren't neutral. Every Flock camera logs the location of every passing vehicle, cataloging the movements of people who've done nothing wrong, on the promise that it's all in service of catching the worst offenders. If law enforcement can't or won't quantify that trade-off, the public has no way to judge whether the surveillance is actually worth the privacy it costs. Vague appeals to child safety aren't a substitute for an audit trail.

Jacksonville isn't unique — agencies across the country make the same pitch and dodge the same follow-up. If you want to see how dense this network has gotten in your own backyard, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on unaccountable ALPR deployment, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up at your next city council meeting.