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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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I don’t know if this incident involved Flock or a competing product, but John Oliver recently described an incident on his show that demonstrates one of the major issues with this technology.
Apparently an ALPR reported a “hit” on the license plate of an SUV in a shopping center parking lot. The vehicle was reported stolen. So a half dozen or so police performed a felony arrest of the woman in the car along with a number of family members, including small children.
The problem was that while the letters & numbers on the license plate matched, the actual stolen vehicle was a motorcycle from a completely different state. So if any of those half-dozen cops had bothered to confirm even one additional detail about the stolen vehicle then this wouldn’t have happened.
How will Flock improve their technology so that police actually do more than the bare minimum when being told of an ALPR “hit”?
This isn't the first time police have followed up on a license plate without confirming the make and model to assure it's the same vehicle.
It's a preventable problem.
The real problem is that law enforcement don't care, any more than they do when they SWAT the wrong house.
False positives are a feature, not a bug.
The police will always take any excuse to justify their love for unlawful searches and seizures.
That is the reason why they don't take any extra steps to confirm the information is correct, because they view it as the perfect alibi for their many crimes and constitutional violations - the AI made me do it.