Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime

https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2026/06/07/a-flock-license-plate-reader-linked-a-san-diego-man-to-a-violent-crime-he-was-five-miles-away/

by loteck • 2 months ago

88 38 2 months ago

timesofsandiego.com

variety8675• 2 months ago

I'm no fan of flock, but I dislike how these articles are blaming the technology when the real issue is the police not bothering to check the information they're given

SoftTalker• 2 months ago

Yeah this reads like the cops simply didn't properly identify the vehicle. If anything, the Flock camera photo proves he was miles away.

garyfirestorm2• 2 months ago

But flock hit is the entire reason for the cops to go arrest them. And you’re right if they did careful assessment of other flock camera data, even the data of this particular flock camera they would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later. The whole point being misusing/abusing flock data to wrongly jail people and that is precisely what happened here. Flock is the center of this story.

loteck2• 2 months ago

They simply didn't properly identify the vehicle because Flock's ALPR gave them the pass. The innocent person would not have needed "photo proof" of his distant location if the ALPR didn't exist in the first place. Then he would not have been forced to spend a month of his life in jail.

OutOfHere4• 2 months ago

It is Flock's responsibility to grant access only to trained professionals who undergo routine training and testing in how to and how not to use the system.

pixl973• 2 months ago

So they can't show it to the police in the US?

aaomidi• 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

turtlesdown115• 2 months ago

A tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem

dlcarrier• 2 months ago

Ironically, they're showing a situation where more tracking makes innocence clear. There's countless examples of innocent people being caught in a dragnet, based on data that correlates with but does not prove guilt, where more data collection leads to more innocent people suffering. That's what they should be focusing on.

FireBeyond• 2 months ago

There is absolutely that, but the CEO of Flock has said he believes a false-positive is better than a false-negative, so everything around the stack pushes police that way, too.

I love these elites who say "Yeah, it's no big deal, the police will arrest you but they'll figure it out and you can go on your way, and if you have to spend a couple of nights in jail first, or hire an attorney at considerable expense, or you lose your job or become less hirable because your state reports arrest records, not just charge or conviction records, well, that's a small price to pay for Zero Crime State, presented by Flock(TM)!"

loteck2• 2 months ago

We blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.

helterskelter• 2 months ago

ACLU needs to take his case and sue everything in sight.

Why would they not have a human look at the hit? Flock, San Diego and the SDPD are all liable.

tptacek4• 2 months ago

This doesn't seem like a Flock story so much as SDPD making an arrest purely on a nexus to "red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows". From what I understand of the story, the Flock camera did in fact tag a red Alfa Romeo (there's a still frame in the article). It wasn't the right one, but ALPR cameras aren't psychic; they tell you features, make/model, and plate, not "criminal culpability".

turtlesdown115• 2 months ago

right, its the cops who decide "criminal culpability" all Flock did was lead them to the wrong person...poor innocent Flock

tptacek4• 2 months ago

It didn't lead SDPD to any person at all. It led them to a red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows.

Flock doesn't do facial recognition. It's a real-time search engine for cars on video feeds.

bryan0• 2 months ago

Their tort claim notes that the path the men took to the cigar lounge passed by several other Flock cameras, which could have corroborated their story, as well as the location data on their cell phones.

It seems like if the police actually looked at the Flock data it would have exonerated them?

pixl973• 2 months ago

Quite often the cops job is to find someone close enough and then toss them into the jaws of the criminal justice system. We like to say "innocent until proven guilty", but you goddammed better be ready to prove yourself innocent unless you want to find yourself imprisoned.

cwmoore2• 2 months ago

Our justification systems are already overburdened with people lacking plausible alibis.

rasz• 1 month ago

Cue recent video of a cop giving armless woman ticket for holding a cellphone.

amazingamazing• 2 months ago

Ironically flock is what proves innocence. What would happen here without it?

dehrmann• 2 months ago

There's a well-known story about a man who escaped a murder conviction because he was at a Dodgers game when the murder happened, and there just happened to be a TV show filming at the stadium that just happened to record him there.

https://innocenceproject.org/news/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-s...

I'd like to think motive and a police sketch wouldn't be enough evidence for a conviction, but that's optimistic.

himata4113• 2 months ago

I saw a video recently that flock camera installations don't follow local or city laws. All poles that hold roadsigns generally need to safely handle impact and get certified / inspected. However, flock cameras have none of it.

Not the same video, but best I could find: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_zmZLJY5Ev4

Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime

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