Flock camera debate hits close to home

BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
THE LAFAYETTE SUN

CHAMBERS COUNTY — After a gunman killed two students at Brown University last December, the break that ended a six-day manhunt came not from a witness or a confession, but from pole-mounted cameras.
A tipster had described the suspect’s car, and investigators discovered a Flock Safety license plate reader in Providence, Rhode Island, had photographed the suspect’s gray Nissan 14 times in the weeks and hours leading up to the shooting.
Investigators eventually tracked the car to the home of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro, who was gunned down at his apartment, and then to New Hampshire, where the suspect was found dead.
Prosecutors said the same technology tied together both killings and closed both cases. Eight months later, however, a very different Flock story was unfolding in Georgia.
State investigators arrested a former 911 director accused of tapping into the same camera network, not to chase a suspect, but, for reasons unrelated to any crime. Authorities allege she accessed the license plate readers more than 1,000 times in ways unconnected to official law enforcement actions.
Those two episodes capture the uneasy situation America has found itself balancing with one of the fastest-spreading surveillance tools in the country.

A national dragnet
Founded in Atlanta in 2017, Flock has grown into what is effectively a private surveillance company serving thousands of American police agencies, which typically pay for Flock’s database subscriptions using taxpayer dollars.
Publicly available records requests show annual subscriptions cost anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000, although specialized equipment, including mobile camera trailers and audio detection sensors, can increase the cost by $25,000 or more per year.
Flock cameras log cars’ details, capture images of people and feed data into one searchable system across 49 states. The readers record a passing vehicle’s plate, make, model and color, letting police reconstruct where a car has been and when.
The company’s automated license plate readers now blanket roads in virtually every state, and law enforcement officials describe it as one of the most valuable investigative tools they have. 
In Ohio last month, a Lucas County Sheriff’s deputy located a missing girl in under half an hour by entering a suspect’s plate and spotting a pattern in where the vehicle kept appearing. That deputy ultimately intercepted the car and found the child inside, along with an armed 18-year-old suspect.
In Texas, the Sabine County Sheriff’s Office credited a Flock camera with helping recover an abducted child across state lines in Louisiana. And in El Paso County, Colorado, a system alert led deputies to find a stolen truck and make four arrests.
In total, Flock claims its cameras helped locate more than 10,000 missing persons in 2025 — more than 27 per day — and a company-funded study conducted in 2023 estimated the technology touches roughly 10% of all reported crimes in the United States.
Yet the same tools that can help officers find abducted children and murder suspects have repeatedly been turned into a tool for stalking, snooping and warrantless tracking.

An emerging pattern of abuse
While the crime-fighting record appears to be real, the pattern of abuse also is, and it’s not limited to a handful of isolated bad actors. 
A Washington Post investigation published in August found at least 50 law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of misusing their access to Flock cameras and other related systems, with more than half of those cases involving officers surveilling romantic partners.
The Institute for Justice also launched a public database last month documenting more than 100 incidents of license plate reader abuse.
In one of the most disturbing accounts, Marci Bakely told the Post that her ex-boyfriend, Michael Steffman, the police chief of Braselton, Georgia, tracked her and her teenage daughter for months, and she couldn’t understand how he always knew their whereabouts.
Allegations of law enforcement officers misusing Flock cameras have also hit close to home in East Alabama last week. On Sept. 1, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying it had dismissed a deputy for misusing the technology.
That statement said an internal audit conducted by the agency revealed multiple violations of policies and procedures regarding the use of information obtained from the Flock camera system.
According to the statement,  the LCSO developed and implemented specific guidelines restricting the use of any automated license plate reader information to legitimate law enforcement purposes only, which includes Flock camera systems several years ago.  
“The deputy’s dismissal is an example of our commitment and previously stated public position to hold personnel accountable for violations of policies in place to protect the public,” the statement read.
However, civil liberties groups point to institutional misuse that goes beyond individual law enforcement officers’ actions.
The American Civil Liberties Union cited a case in which police in Lexena, Kansas, allegedly used the readers to pursue a man who had written an op-ed critical of the department, and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas used the network to locate a woman connected to a self-managed abortion.
Law enforcement agencies in Chambers County have access to those same tools.
The Sun will publish a follow-up article in next week’s edition that includes interviews with local law enforcement leaders and elected officials about how they plan to eliminate potential abuse.