National Reporting Points to Widespread Abuse of Flock Technology by Law Enforcement

While Flock is at the forefront of local concerns, with more and more residents sending us photos of automated license plate readers popping up, recent national reporting indicates at least 50 law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of misusing the technology for stalking purposes.

In several dozen cases, investigators and prosecutors say officers used the technology to specifically spy on women they were interested in.

This includes Marci Bakely whose ex admitted to her in a text he was using Flock to track her movements.

The former Bradenton Georgia Police Chief Michael Steffman then retired after his arrest in November for multiple counts of misuse of automated license plate readers, stalking and harassing communications before being found dead at his home before any trial took place in April.

The website Have I Been Flocked allows users to search their own license plate here haveibeenflocked.com, with featured reports on how Flock searches can be used against journalists and political organizing.

The Institute for Justice has a database of ALPR abuse, cataloguing more than 100 incident of abuse, “including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.”

As part of the most egregious examples, in Wisconsin a police officer is accused of allegedly using Flock to check if his ex had gone to an abortion clinic, according to a police affidavit, while in Kansas a police chief resigned after having been found to have accosted his ex outside of town. It was reported he had searched for her car 164 times and for her boyfriend’s vehicle 64 times.