Flock’s Five Best Arguments — and Why They Don’t Hold Up in Wilmington

Flock Safety is good at making its case. The company says its cameras solve crime, prevent crime, recover stolen cars, find missing children, and rescue understaffed police departments — and it puts a big number next to each claim. Those arguments deserve a fair hearing, not a strawman. So we took the five Flock leads with (the same arguments you’ll hear from police chiefs and other vendors), stated each at its strongest, and checked it against independent evidence. Here is what we found — including where the company has a point.

One thread runs through all five: nearly every headline number Flock promotes comes from Flock’s own surveys of its own paying customers, not from independent research. The company itself calls them “directional estimates … not audited totals.” Keep that in mind as we go.

1. “Flock solves a huge share of crime”

The claim, fairly stated: Flock says that where it’s deployed, roughly 20% of cleared cases in 2025 were assisted by its technology — about 1 million investigations — up from its earlier “helps solve 10% of crime” figure. The IACP makes a softer version: ALPRs give investigators searchable evidence they otherwise wouldn’t have. (Flock.)

What the evidence says: Those numbers come from Flock’s own customer survey, not independent study. When Flock publicized its “10% of crime” research, criminal-justice scholars rejected the methodology — one called it near “ludicrous,” another said “I doubt this would survive peer review” — and reporting found Flock had steered researchers toward small, low-crime towns where a few cases make a giant percentage. (Techdirt.) A Forbes analysis found crime actually rose in a town where Flock advertised a drop. Independent “hit” rates are tiny — an ACLU review across ~300 agencies found 0.01–0.08% — and a Colorado audit of one officer’s ~10,000 searches found just 29 tied to a case number. (EFF · 9News.)

For Wilmington: to be fair, our records request asked for the search audit, not a results report — and that audit shows 2,980,082 searches of the county’s network. The point isn’t that the Sheriff hid a benefit; it’s that no one has shown one publicly. The Sheriff’s Office has published no outcome data — no measure that these searches reduced or solved crime here — while running a system that records every driver. When public money buys mass surveillance, the burden is on the agency to prove it works, not on residents to prove it doesn’t. (The audit.)

2. “Flock reduces crime by 30–50%”

The claim: Flock’s site advertises a “30–50% crime reduction rate” and city testimonials (“56% overall crime reduction,” “62% in Cobb County”). The underlying theory is real criminology: the certainty of getting caught deters more than harsh punishment.

What the evidence says: The deterrence theory is sound; the product claim isn’t. Those percentage-reduction figures sit on Flock’s marketing pages with no methodology and no citation. The independent camera literature is genuinely mixed: the best-designed studies often find fixed cameras displace crime to nearby unmonitored streets rather than prevent it, and a rigorous evaluation of a fixed-ALPR system covering every entrance and exit of Atlantic City found no reduction in violent crime overall. (Justice Evaluation Journal.) We’ll be honest: a few local studies do show reductions. What no one has shown is that a mass ALPR network makes a community measurably safer.

For Wilmington: there is no public local before-and-after data showing the cameras cut crime here. “Trust us, it works” is not evidence — least of all for a tool that records everyone.

3. “Flock recovers stolen vehicles”

The claim: This is Flock’s strongest argument, and we won’t pretend otherwise. ALPRs are genuinely good at catching stolen plates — even independent research credits them here — and the national clearance rate for auto theft is dismal (about 9%). Recoveries are real.

What the evidence says: Recoveries happen — but they’re a vanishingly small fraction of what the system does. With hit rates well under one-tenth of one percent, the “stolen car” justification means keeping a searchable record of the 99.9%+ of drivers suspected of nothing to catch the rare one. And you don’t need a permanent, nationwide, private database of everyone’s movements to flag a stolen plate the moment it passes a camera. The stolen-car story is the foot in the door — the sympathetic use invoked to justify the whole dragnet, which then gets searched three million times for everything else.

For Wilmington: if recovering vehicles were the real scope, the Sheriff could run a hot-list match without retaining and sharing the data — and without redacting who searched it.

4. “Flock finds missing children and seniors”

The claim: Flock says its network located more than 10,000 missing people last year, integrates AMBER and Silver alerts, and turns a frantic search into minutes. This is the most emotionally powerful argument, and the humane goal is real.

What the evidence says: Two problems. First, like recoveries, these are a tiny share of total scans — a rare, sympathetic use invoked to justify mass retention. Second, and more troubling: the “missing person” label is documented cover for abuse. When a Texas sheriff’s officer searched 83,000 cameras nationwide to hunt a woman his office suspected of having an abortion, the search was logged as a “missing person” case. (EFF.) The sympathetic category isn’t only the selling point — it’s the alibi.

For Wilmington: finding a missing child runs through NCIC, which every department already uses. That humane goal does not require a private company’s nationwide tracking net with the searchers’ names blacked out.

5. “Flock is a force multiplier for short-staffed police”

The claim: Departments are understaffed; Flock lets a small force “do more with less,” scanning thousands of plates an hour without fatigue and freeing officers for other work.

What the evidence says: “Efficient” only if it works — and the cost-effectiveness is contested, not established; peer-reviewed work treats it as an open question that hinges on those sub-0.1% hit rates. (Cambridge J. of Evidence-Based Policing.) Worse, the “efficiency” manufactures false leads that cost real money and harm real people: a misread plate put Brittney Gilliam and four children face-down at gunpoint in Aurora (the city paid $1.9 million); Denise Green was held at gunpoint in San Francisco over one misread digit ($495,000); a Detroit mother, Isoke Robinson, was cuffed and her toddler put in a patrol car after police swept every car of one model near a shooting. (EFF.) The real “multiplier” is what gets removed: the judge who signs a warrant and the public who votes on the budget.

For Wilmington: the county pays roughly $219,000 for a system with no published local results — and every false hit is a lawsuit the taxpayers cover. (The cost.)

“But it’s safe — short retention, audit logs, strict policies”

This is the reassurance meant to make the rest acceptable, and it has already failed in practice. Audit logs document abuse; they don’t prevent it — the Institute for Justice counted at least 20 cases of officers using ALPRs to stalk partners or exes, nearly all caught by victims, not by the vendor. Federal immigration agents got “side-door” access through local police — 4,000+ immigration lookups — despite policies barring it. (404 Media.) Researchers found 60+ Flock cameras wide open on the internet with no password, and others rooted in under a minute. By mid-2026, 53 cities had canceled their contracts over unauthorized federal access. The safeguards aren’t a guarantee. They’re a press release.

The question isn’t whether a camera ever helps. It’s whether a permanent, warrantless tracking net — run by a private company, searched millions of times, with the searchers’ names hidden — is a price Wilmington should pay for benefits no one will measure.

None of this is about being soft on crime, and it isn’t about one company — swap Flock for any ALPR vendor and the analysis is the same. It’s about proportionality and accountability. If the cameras work, prove it with local data. If they’re going to record everyone, put a warrant, an audit, and a public vote in front of them — or take them down. New Hanover County has done none of that. (The full talking points.)

Sources

• Flock Safety — How effective is Flock? (2025 Impact Census) (the company’s own benefit claims and self-reported figures).
• Techdirt — Scholars’ critique of Flock’s crime-reduction study · Forbes — Flock cameras may not reduce crime.
• EFF — Low ALPR hit rates · The human toll of ALPR errors · A ‘missing person’ search that wasn’t.
• Justice Evaluation Journal — Fixed-ALPR evaluation, Atlantic City · Cambridge J. of Evidence-Based Policing — ALPR cost-effectiveness.
• 9News — Thornton search audit · Institute for Justice — Officers stalking with ALPRs · 404 Media — ICE side-door access.
• DeFlockILM — Three Million Searches, Zero Names · What New Hanover County pays · ALPR wrongful arrests.

General information for public discussion, not legal advice. Flock’s claims are quoted from its own website; rebutting figures are drawn from the independent reporting, audits, and peer-reviewed studies linked above. “Flock” here means Flock or any comparable ALPR network — the concern is the system, not a single vendor. Last updated June 30, 2026.