🚨 Sheriff, Hear Me Out: Why “They Only Track Cars” Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story on Flock Cameras
I have a lot of respect for the Polk County Sheriff. He’s earned it. So when he recently offered his take on Flock cameras, essentially arguing that critics are overreacting because “they only track cars”…I paid attention. I always do when someone I respect weighs in on an issue I care about.But respectfully, Sheriff: you’re wrong on this one. And I think the details matter enough that it’s worth walking through exactly why. Perhaps you should get some coffee….
“They Only Track Cars”—Then Why Are They in the Park?
Here’s my first problem with that argument: if these cameras only track cars, why are they pointed at parks where cars don’t go? Why are they positioned along walking paths where the only thing passing by is a person on foot, a stroller, or a dog on a leash?That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s a factual inconsistency in the “just cars” defense. If the technology were strictly limited to vehicle tracking, we wouldn’t see it deployed in pedestrian-only spaces. The placement alone tells you the scope of what’s being captured is broader than the official talking point suggests.And that’s before we even get to what these cameras are capable of, versus what they’re currently doing.
AI Is Already There. The Microphones Just Aren’t Turned On. Yet, well maybe not turned on. They are called Raven.
This is the part that should give everyone pause, regardless of where you stand politically: these are AI-driven systems, and not all of the features have been activated—yet.The microphone capability, for example, exists in the hardware. It’s just not turned on right now.That “right now” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Because here’s the thing about surveillance infrastructure: once it’s built, once it’s installed, once it’s normalized in your community, the switch from “capability that exists but isn’t used” to “capability that is now active” is a policy decision—not a technical one. And policy decisions are made by people. People we elect.Which brings me to the real heart of my disagreement.
Elections Have Consequences. Look at New York.
Sheriff, I know you’re a good actor operating this technology responsibly right now. I believe that. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the safeguards on this technology aren’t really safeguards—they’re the personal restraint of whoever currently holds power.Today, we have semi-reliable guardrails around traffic light cameras and police body cameras. Not perfect, but functional enough that most people trust the system isn’t being weaponized against them personally. Those guardrails didn’t happen by accident—they were built over years of legal battles, public pressure, and hard-won policy fights.Flock cameras don’t have that history. They don’t have that infrastructure of accountability. What they have is enormous, largely untested capability—deployed before the legal and regulatory framework caught up to it.And that’s where elections come in. Look at New York. Look at how quickly the tenor of law enforcement priorities can shift when a different administration takes office, when a different DA is elected, when a different set of political incentives suddenly control the levers of power.Now ask yourself: what happens when a technology that was previously “neutered” by a responsible operator—someone like you, Sheriff—gets handed to someone who isn’t? What happens when a candidate wins office specifically because they promised to use every tool available, with no restraint, against people they’ve decided are enemies?This isn’t hypothetical paranoia. It’s the entire history of surveillance technology in America. Every tool built with good intentions has, at some point, been used by someone with bad ones. The question was never whether Flock cameras could be misused—it’s when, and by whom.That’s the slippery slope. And once you’re on it, there’s no walking it back. You can’t un-invent the microphone in the camera. You can’t un-train the AI model. You can only hope the person controlling it stays reasonable forever. That’s not a safeguard. That’s a gamble.
I’ll Give You This Much: The Tech Is Outpacing the Law
I want to be fair here, Sheriff, because I think you raise a real point even if I disagree with your conclusion: the technology absolutely is outpacing the laws meant to govern it.That’s not a defense of Flock cameras—it’s actually the core of my argument against rushing to deploy them without guardrails first. The right sequence isn’t “deploy now, regulate later.” It’s “regulate first, then deploy.” Once these systems are active, embedded, and normalized across thousands of communities, the political will to roll back capabilities—or to legislate meaningful restrictions—evaporates. It’s far easier to prevent a surveillance state from being built than to dismantle one after the fact.Before these systems go fully active—before every bell and whistle gets switched on—the guardrails need to be in place. Not after. Not “we’ll figure it out once problems arise.” Before.
And Let’s Not Forget: This Is a Private Company Making Bank
Here’s another wrinkle worth sitting with: Flock Safety is a private company, and it’s profiting handsomely from this expansion.We’ve seen this movie before. Remember Ring? A private company selling home security cameras that quietly built partnerships with police departments, shared footage without clear consent, and created a sprawling, decentralized surveillance network—all while marketing itself as a neighborhood safety tool.Flock is following a similar playbook, just with far more centralized power and far more data. When a private company’s business model depends on expanding surveillance infrastructure and selling access to that data to as many law enforcement agencies as possible, their incentives are not the same as the public’s incentives. Profit motive and civil liberties don’t naturally align, and we shouldn’t pretend they do just because the marketing materials use words like “safety” and “community.”
Why This Isn’t Just About Cars
I’ve written before about how Flock cameras fundamentally differ from something like a traffic light camera, and the differences aren’t small. Let me remind you of a few key facts, Sheriff, that I think undercut the “it’s just cars” framing:
| Danger/Feature | Flock Cameras (ALPRs) | Traffic Light Cameras |
|---|---|---|
| Surveillance Scope | All vehicles, all times, all locations | Only violations, specific locations |
| Data Retention | 7–30 days default, indefinite for investigations | Short, violation-focused |
| Data Sharing | Nationwide, multi-agency, private & federal access | Local, limited, not networked |
| Oversight | Often lacking, weak audits, no warrants | Regulated, limited access |
| Documented Misuse | Stalking, personal disputes, unauthorized searches | Rare |
| Civil Liberties Risks | Mass surveillance, chilling effects, hacking risk | Minimal, targeted enforcement |
Traffic light cameras are triggered by a specific violation, capture a specific moment, and typically purge non-violation data within days. Flock cameras run continuously, retain data indefinitely once flagged, and feed into networks that span thousands of agencies, law enforcement and private entities alike, often without a warrant.There have already been documented cases of officers misusing license-plate-reader systems to track people they personally knew. That’s not a “just cars” problem. That’s a power problem. And power, unchecked, tends to find new and creative ways to be misused.
Documented Cases Where Flock Cameras Were Used to Track People (Not Just Cars)
What These Cases Reveal
- People‑centric searches: Officers are entering descriptive, non‑vehicle queries (e.g., “person wearing orange vest”), proving that the system can be used to locate individuals based on appearance, not just a license plate.
- Real‑time routing feature: The “START REAL‑TIME ROUTING” button (seen in multiple investigations) lets users watch a vehicle’s live path, effectively turning the camera into a live‑tracking tool for the person inside.
- Personal stalker cases: Several documented incidents involve officers using the system to monitor ex‑girlfriends, coworkers, or acquaintances—clear evidence of misuse beyond legitimate public‑safety purposes.
- Broad deployment: These examples span multiple states (Wisconsin, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and national investigations), indicating that the issue isn’t isolated to a single department.
While Flock cameras are marketed as “license‑plate‑only” tools, the documented cases above demonstrate that law‑enforcement agencies have repeatedly leveraged the technology to track people—often for personal, non‑criminal reasons. This reveals a gap between the company’s public statements and the reality of how the system is being employed on the ground.
Here is where the “white noise”comes from… Why the Confusion Exists
Misinformation online – Reddit threads and social‑media posts sometimes claim “Flock cameras are already tracking Bluetooth/Wi‑Fi,” but experts and the company’s own documentation refute those claims, pointing out that the only Bluetooth present is for maintenance, not data capture .
Third‑party add‑ons – Vendors like Leonardo DRS are actively marketing SignalTrace to police departments that already have ALPRs (including some that use Flock). When a department buys both, it can look like a single “Flock‑plus‑SignalTrace” system, even though the underlying camera itself remains unchanged.
And here are more facts: Multiple independent reports confirm that the Raven audio‑detection module has already been installed and is actively paired with Flock Safety’s Falcon ALPR cameras in several jurisdictions.
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| Reddit – r/FlockSurveillance | Users report that “some cities are adding the Raven microphone to their flock cams” and describe it as an upgrade from a pure shot‑detection system to a broader “distress‑sound” detector |
| OFFICER Magazine | Describes the Raven as an “audio detection device that detects gunshots, locates the source, and works in tandem with the Flock Safety Falcon™ ALPR camera” |
| WANE‑15 (Fort Wayne, IN) | Announces a pilot where the Raven “integrates directly with Flock Safety’s broader investigative platform … allowing officers to compare audio alerts with license‑plate‑reader information” . |
| GovTech | Explains that “Raven can trigger cameras to begin recording, but it relies on cameras to do the actual processing … Flock Safety plans to rely solely on its AI algorithms to identify a sound” . |
| City of El Mirany blog | Notes that “when gunfire is detected, any existing FLOCK Safety Falcon license‑plate‑recognition camera nearby is automatically activated to capture additional visual evidence”. |
| Wikipedia (June 2026 entry) | Cites a WSLS‑TV report that a “Flock device, identified as a Flock Raven …” was deployed in the field . |
These pieces come from different media types (industry magazines, local news, a city‑government blog, a community‑run forum, and a reputable encyclopedia entry) and all converge on the same fact: the Raven audio sensor is being mounted on, and actively used with, existing Flock cameras.
What “active” looks like in practice
- Audio‑triggered recording – When the Raven’s AI recognises a qualifying sound (e.g., a gunshot or a scream), it sends an approximate location to the Falcon camera, which then starts recording video of the scene .
- Data fusion in FlockOS – The audio alert is logged alongside the license‑plate reads, letting investigators correlate sound events with vehicle movements .
- Pilot deployments – Fort Wayne’s police department is testing this integration, and other agencies such as Morgan Hill PD and Albany PD have publicly announced full‑scale use.
Why the evidence matters
Transparency & oversight – Knowing that the audio component is already live underscores the urgency of establishing clear policies (data retention, civilian oversight, audible‑recording consent) before further roll‑outs.
Surveillance scope widens – The original ALPR only captured static vehicle data; Raven adds a real‑time acoustic layer that can pick up events even when no car is present (e.g., a shooting in a park).
Potential for mission creep – Because the audio feeds are automatically linked to video, the system can be used for situational awareness far beyond the original “license‑plate only” premise.
And lets not forget about Flock Alpha…Drones.
Sheriff, I don’t doubt your intentions. I don’t doubt that, under your watch, this technology is being used responsibly. But my objection has never really been about you. It’s about the next person. And the person after that. And whether the guardrails we build now will hold when someone with very different intentions eventually takes the reins.”They only track cars” isn’t a safeguard, it’s a description of current, voluntary restraint. And voluntary restraint is not a substitute for enforceable law. Before we flip on every feature this AI is capable of before the microphones go live, before the data-sharing networks expand further, before we hand this much power to a private company with a profit motive, we need real guardrails in place. Not because I think you’ll misuse this technology, Sheriff. But because I guarantee you, someone eventually will. And by then, it’ll be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Have a Good day!
Below is a link to his side of the debate… https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1HHNQu4fVT/
Suggested reading on the subject is Orwell’s 1984, perhaps you heard of it?
If that is not enough, try my latest novel…The Corrected City its a page turner.
Nobody remembers the first camera.
Twenty years after the Year of Fires, the city is safe. Assault is down eighty percent. Nobody has been murdered in eleven years. The screens say good morning by name, the clinics answer in minutes, and the past is kept tidy by people like Mara Venn, who has spent eleven years at the Ministry of Public Memory correcting the record so that no citizen ever has to live inside a contradiction.
Then a corrupted file comes across her desk, and she is very good at her job, and she restores it.
What surfaces is four minutes of footage the official history cannot survive, a wind reading nobody bothered to falsify, twenty-seven names missing from a memorial roll, and a photographer in a government coat who tipped his head to the right exactly the way her sister does.
She can prove it. She cannot prove it to anybody who would still be alive afterward, starting with her sister, who reads the names of the dead on air to four hundred thousand people and believes every word.
A near-future thriller about surveillance that arrives as kindness, history that is corrected rather than censored, and the quiet, decades-long work of putting the truth somewhere it can be found.
