A police department in Florida used “decoy” Flock cameras that an officer 3D-printed at home to “bait” would-be vandals. Police officers monitored the fake cameras for days, then charged a man with three felonies after he cut down and destroyed one of the plastic devices. The police department in question refuses to release any information about how the decoy operation was devised or carried out and claims there is zero paper trail whatsoever about the operation.
There's a bunch of funny bullshit going on in this operation. The man could be charged with destroying a public art piece, I doubt they could nail him with the full cost of an actual flock camera like they want to. But here's the real reason the police aren't giving up the paper trail:
"My 2 cents: there are 2 completely separate issues in play here, and they're tangled up in an unfortunate way. ISSUE 1: VANDALISM IS WRONG. I don't care if it's a Flock camera, a piece of art, or graffiti in a public space, it's not right. The police caught a person who engaged in destroying public property, and that's what we hired them to do. They did their job,” she wrote. “ISSUE 2: on Monday, just days before this incident, a majority of COUNCIL AGREED TO CONSIDER ENDING FLOCK. There is a timeline of events related to installing decoy cameras, and somewhere in that timeline, City Council instructed staff to prepare a resolution to end the use of Flock in Oviedo. While it is irrelevant to the issue of vandalism, when the fake cameras were fabricated and installed relative to a very public discussion about their potential discontinuation is something I would like to know.”