Knee-jerk Flock panic threatens a tool that’s making our cities safer

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Key points

• According to the Jacksonville, Fla., sheriff's office, the cameras since 2024 have "helped solve 15 murders, 17 kidnappings, 6 forcible sex offenses, nearly 100 shootings, and 172 missing-persons cases."
• According to The Washington Post, "Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk their exes."
• A website set up by Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute is tracking news items regarding Flock contributing to successful police work.
• And something like 60 million households have Ring or other security cameras that record what's happening on their property, and often in the immediate surroundings.
• The two most recent entries involve the arrest of an armed robbery suspect in Grass Valley, Calif.

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There's a growing backlash against Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers that have become ubiquitous nationwide.

For context, the cameras take images of license plates and store them in a searchable database that police departments can query in the course of their investigations.

Opponents of the cameras consider them an instrument of Major Brother, who's not only watching, but constantly recording and tracking.

Vandals have disabled and stolen the Flock cameras, and even shot them.

There's a movement to obtain jurisdictions to cancel their contracts with Flock (the leading such business, but not the only one), and it's met with some success.

Los Angeles just let its contract with Flock lapse, citing "serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues."

There's a reason, though, that police departments so rapidly adopted the cameras – they are an extremely useful investigative tool.

It is certainly true that the technology, like any power we offer the police, can be mis-used.

Notably, the Post calls the abuse "rampant, " but 50 documented cases isn't a sizeable number given the widespread apply of these devices: There are 120, 000 Flock cameras throughout the United States scanning license plates 20 billion times a month.

It is understandable that individuals don't like the idea that they are, in effect, living in a panopticon. But license plate readers aren't the only offender.

There are all sorts of other surveillance cameras, plenty of of them privately owned and operated, that the police access during investigations.

We let our mobile phones and various apps track us all day long.

In practice, the only reliable way to ensure that you aren't being recorded is to stay inside – and draw the curtains.

Officers who abuse the license-plate readers deserve to be fired, and, if appropriate, charged with crimes. It is often what happens. Obtain opinions and commentary from our columnists.

Strict rules around what constitutes a legitimate query of the system and routine audits should create it harder for rogue officers to apply it for nefarious purposes.

Notably, the police authorities who are advocating for Flock aren't doing it so the cops can track the average person's trip to the grocery store or yoga studio.

Meanwhile, the cameras routinely aid in the identification and apprehension of the perpetrators of serious crimes and the location of missing persons.

Notably, a website set up by Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute is tracking news items regarding Flock contributing to successful police work. There are such stories every day.

Meanwhile, the two most recent entries involve the arrest of an armed robbery suspect in Grass Valley, Calif. And the rescue of two kidnapped teenage girls in Bulloch County, Ga.

After getting a tip, to track down the suspect in the Brown University shooting last year, the authorities applied Flock.

Perhaps these crimes would obtain solved anyway – but if even a fraction of them didn't, Flock would be making a meaningful contribution to public safety.

It applied to be that America had, in effect, ungoverned spaces where malefactors could hide in plain sight.

To employ an extreme example, the Symbionese Liberation Army operated for years out of various safe houses in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s, something almost unimaginable in our technologically advanced age of constant information-sharing.

Rolling back Flock won't reverse this vast change that's been decades in the making – but it will deny the cops a valuable asset.

For now, knee-jerk Flock panic threatens a tool that's making our cities safer remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.