u/-lastnameschaffer-

While I would love nothing more than to include a selfie with a date/time, I am not in a position (currently) to do so. I am not under any investigation, I am not being monitored or otherwise surveilled (lol), but I do have a precipitous set of circumstances that would make too much identification a rather bad thing, for me.
I will list my background, provide some context, and then I will answer any questions you ask (ASAP).

To begin, I am no longer working in law enforcement. I was employed, full-time, with a medium sized department in my area. It was located almost smack-dab in the middle of two much larger cities, creating a sort-of gutter effect. We dealt with a very high call volume, a higher than average per capita crime rate, and a community who believed (somehow) that we were just "small town living." Which I could empathize with to a point - we weren't a big city by any means. However, we were not overflowing with members of the upper moral echelons either. The polarization between the upper-low income/lower middle class (which is really how I categorized our "rich people") and the mid-low income class was astounding. I'm sure the population contained the natural scattered wealthy, and there was plenty of generational wealth in certain bloodlines (lol). However, the vast majority of the "nice" area was mostly compiled of people living well beyond their means, and horrified to drive past a certain equator they had mentally drawn in the city.
This dynamic presented fun challenges, in my opinion. Our city was gerrymandered into districts, like most, and there were two types of officers: those who preferred the north side of the "equator", and those who preferred the south. South of the equator (my area) was trial by fire. I was cut loose in a low-income housing district, known for its frequent shootings, gang activity, ever-growing homeless population, and broad (useless) attempts at gentrification.
There was plenty of crime north of the equator - it just wasn't as visible to the public, for obvious reasons. To besmirch the "safe zone" of the city by raising awareness of narcotics activity, assaults (domestic and otherwise), weapons laws violations, rampant abuse of vulnerable adults/children - that would simply not be tolerated. Crime was reported throughout the city (as usual), but there did appear to be a magnifying glass on certain areas that never shifted its focus.

For all the reasons listed above, my agency employed the use of Flock Safety ALPRs, ShotSpotter, FususOne, and there were numerous pole cameras throughout the city. There may have been others, but those are the primary apps I remember.

Flock was introduced before my time - the cameras were installed in 2021. After filtering through quite a big of dense city hall data in the online archives, I couldn't find a city hall meeting specifically introducing the idea of or mentioning Flock Safety or ALPRs until 2023. To conduct the search, I went to the "search" bar located at the top of the website's homepage, typed in "flock" (no quotations) and filtered the data to only display internal documents/data. I then refreshed the search without the "internal only" filter, which would include any website data (such as posts made on the city homepage) and found the only difference to be the inclusion of a praise article for some bullshit award granted to the department in 2024.

There was a local news article (which seems to have been pulled from their archives because when I click the link attached to the FB post, I am redirected to a "page does not exist" screen). Since I have read the article multiple times prior to making this post, this could be simple user error because it definitely existed. However since I cannot refer to it to ensure 100% clarity, I will simply say: to the best of my recollection, the article was not an "Intro to Flock" guide - it was a "success story." The chief of police (at that time) was boasting about how Flock had helped solve a case in record time. The technology was described as "license plate readers" installed throughout the city (or something equally vague) on a trial basis (maybe the time frame of 6 months, if I remember correctly). There was a comment about an assessment of the data collected during the trial period before agreeing to a long-term contract.
As of right now, when I look at the city website, there is a tab for technology. It lists a brief description of technologies employed by the city to "reduce, deter, and protect" the community - none of them by name - and a point of contact for vendors.

Per social media, there have been discussions of the system, posted by the department's official account, as well as inquiring minds in the public. However, most city posts are just "success stories," and most public posts are people repeating those success stories to naysayers and throwing rocks at their tin foil hats. There may be information on the police-to-citizen app that is offered, or under a stone I just haven't turned over yet.

But, my point is - prior to the 2021 success story essentially "outing" their existence within the city, there doesn't seem to be much, if any, public information to suggest citizens knew they were coming. I didn't see them listed (specifically, as Flock or ALPR) in the budget meetings or city hall minutes (using the public archive search of committee meetings, minutes, transcripts, contracts, grants, etc.) until 2023 and they were installed in July 2021. Even in the 2023 mention, it was simply a budget amendment, presumably to add new cameras.

I personally had no idea they existed until I began working for the department, and I lived less than 30 min. outside of the city, if not in the city, most of my adult life.

** I will introduce a caveat here - I am not an internet sleuth. There may be something I missed. And, I am not a social butterfly. There may have been talks in the city that simply weren't documented on an official "budget committee" or "city hall meeting" record. I don't know. I'm just presenting what I can see right now, in 2026. **

My career with the department began in 2022. So, we were close, but Flock was definitely first. I was given access to the system on maybe my 3rd day of training - there was a lot of hazing the first week, and I think the 3rd day was our "break." It was mostly computer lab stuff, including an intro the tech and apps used by the department.
My Flock training was simple - it's a solar-powered camera mounted on a pole that takes pictures all day long, indiscriminately, because it is motion activated. These pictures are placed into a database. Due to the platform's interface, the pictures could be filtered using a license plate number, or make/model/color - which was the entire point of the app. To filter the thousands and thousands of vehicles passing through the city, through one specific pipeline, to get information about one, specific vehicle. There was a powerpoint that explained something about it being an AI algorithm, but AI didn't mean anything to me at the time so I glossed through that page. There were a lot of slides that were stillshots of the user interface, and explanations of each line in the search inquiry box. And most of that was skipped through to get to the end of the powerpoint, so the trainer, a Sgt. somewhere in the department, could just jump right in and show us, real time.
We were all asked to download the app, on the spot (on our personal phones), and we said our city emails aloud when called upon. This was him, clicking through the list of officers employed with the department, and checking the box for "access to" the system.

From there, he showed us how to login and set up our password, and then directed our attention to his Flock portal, which was projected onto the blank screen in front of us. Step by step, he showed us how to type in a vehicle's license plate, fill in your reason code (he said he always used something broad like "pc" or "inv" or "stolen" to ensure it was as vague as possible in case it was attacked in court), add any necessary filters, and conduct the search. Then, he showed us the search results, how to read them (such as determining which direction the vehicle was traveling based on the camera and small nuances like that), he showed us how to "expand our results," which really only showed the adjacent county sheriff's office's cameras because they had given our department access. And, finally, he showed us the way the system could fuck up. He inserted a vehicle tag with a "WM" combination. There were 6 results. He changed one letter of the combination to "?M" with all the other numbers/letters in the same place - now there were 13 results. Bc the camera/algorithm couldn't distinguish the letters perfectly, yet. So odd combinations like that were always given a second or third run, using the ? or * in place of a letter or number.
In fact, we were encouraged to always double run the search with some sort of "wildcard" addition (the ? or * were wildcard filters) because you just never knew what it might have missed. He said, "Play with it. Go out to the parking lot and run your own tag and see how modifying it changes the results."
He also showed us how to receive alerts via text. He explained that this was particularly useful when on the street patrolling, because you unless you were logged in on the in-car computer and had the screen pulled up, you would have to wait for dispatch to put out the alert, which always had a lag for whatever reason. You could go into the app, choose receive alerts via text/email (we all chose text), and then filter the alerts you wanted to receive. There was a set list - sex offenders, stolen vehicles, warrants, etc. He said most people kept it narrowed to "department alerts," "stolen vehicles," and "wanted persons." It would have been "annoying" to be alerted every time a registered sex offender drove around the city, after all.

This training was concluded with a very law enforcement friendly disclaimer (one used often) - "Don't do dumb shit. Be an adult. Have a night day."

There was no dedicated "Flock Use" policy, by the way. The most I ever found was an LPR policy from the olden-days, when the LPRs were mounted in patrol cars and sent alerts for registered owners with warrants. There was a technology policy, mainly geared towards the importance of cyber security and avoiding password sharing.

From that day forward, we had access to the system. And our phones would go off, day and night, alerting us to every stolen vehicle, stolen license plate, wanted/missing persons local and nationwide, and department issued BOLOs. Until we all got really tired of that because we weren't actually patrolling and turned it off, or muted the thread altogether.

When I began actually riding in a patrol car during FTO, I rode with "old heads." They didn't log into their own Flock accounts and had likely long since forgotten the password anyway. It wasn't a part of the daily log-ins before going "in service," and it seemed to be discretionary at best. Sometimes other district partners, the more "proactive" bunch, would pull up and tell us about an approaching vehicle with a driver who had warrants. When I asked how he/she knew this, they casually said, "Oh the car is in my Flock. It's registered to so-so. And if it passes and I see the person I'm looking for in the car, I'm getting that stop, if you want to join." None of these conversations meant much to me, as a brand new, no prior LE/military experience, still waiting to go to the academy, rookie.

Eventually, I was certified and given permission to go solo, and I was cut loose in the area south of the equator. I had very little experience or interaction with any of the department technology systems, and I had to learn on the fly. My real education came from my fellow patrol officers, most of them with 1-3 more years of experience than me, who used Flock for just about everything. There seemed to be a very relaxed environment around its existence - I was repeatedly told it wasn't CJIS regulated (like NCIC, where every search is logged and audited by the state on a yearly basis) and therefore it was the Wild West of databases in the police world.
Further, as the system continued to evolve and new updates were installed, there was never any warning or statement or email. Maybe there was a box I was supposed to check regarding "receive updates regarding new releases, version updates, etc." and I never did.

Maybe it had been checked at one point and I turned it off because my city email was always flooded with city hall news, powerDMS updates, court reminders, and general "unimportant" shit that had usually been relayed during roll call or some other announcement. (I'm also not an email person - my personal account has 100,000 unread emails).

The Flock platform I was given access to in 2022 looked completely different in 2025. There were new search features, more fill-in-the-blank options rather than specific boxes to check, and advanced filtering. I could lower the confidence probability of the search to show more results that weren't automatically displayed because they weren't 100% correct, I could show "similar" vehicles, and I could show "images without plates," (which seemed weird for a license plate reader).

Due to a lot of very real, very personal circumstances, both professionally and personally, I ultimately resigned from my department in 2025. I was under internal investigation due to a citizen complaint (unrelated), and there were allegations of Flock misuse found during the investigation process. I chose to resign for a variety of reasons, and the next 8 months of my life were spent dedicated to learning as much as possible about the "solar powered cameras that take pictures" in my city.

I came to many of the same conclusions as the general population - these cameras were not okay. They were invasive, they were misleading, and they needed to be thoroughly examined through the lens of 4th amendment rights, as well as data collection and sales.

I have accepted accountability professionally and personally for any mistakes, and I am choosing to leave the law enforcement field altogether. However, since it would appear that most LE curry the favor of the public by praising this system as "the solution to crime," I wanted to give a platform to allow people an opportunity to ask real questions about the system, it's use, and any other information I can provide.

So, ama.