By: Diane Benjamin
Thursday a reckless driver hit a Bloomington fireman directing traffic at an accident scene. Gratefully, he wasn’t seriously injured.
The driver was identified because of Flock Cameras. https://www.25newsnow.com/2026/09/03/bloomington-man-arrested-after-allegedly-hitting-firefighter-with-vehicle/
No, we don’t want to live under constant surveillance. Yes, we want crimes like this solved.
There has to be someway of regulating use that accomplishes both. Start with NEVER allowing data sharing with anyone. If Flock is sharing information they are violating the original terms presented by the police.
Could this have been solved without Flock? Responders on the scene had a partial license plate. They more than likely had a vehicle description. It would have been harder, but it sure sounds like an arrest was possible without them. Of course Flock made the case air-tight.
“NO Flock” is not a strategy. Keep talking, but inject common sense while doing it.
Much of the push, I’ve read, and financial backing against Flock cameras is from the same people that enable left wing movements like pro Palestinian, green new deal, and anti data center demonstrations. This makes sense when you consider they use violence. Just like why they wear masks, they don’t want exposed.
Local cops have essentially unlimited access to FLOCK cameras in their squad car laptops, and only require reasonable suspicion to run a plate or search their local flock database (including the 30 day look back) in real time.
A solution for privacy concerns with FLOCK to balance the liberty and criminal justice concerns would be to require a judge to issue a warrant to use the flock system to run a search. It’s obviously slower, but it would eliminate a lot of the abuse from improper flock searches, retain the helpful investigatory tool of the system, while addressing the personal privacy issues. There is basically always a local judge on call available for warrant reviews, so they could simply notify him, present the probable cause statement, and the judge could login and approve the search or something as part of a judicial warrant. Maybe it could be an administrative warrant instead of criminal search warrant, a lesser standard but still has a higher review and accountability baked into the process.
I donno just trying to ideate here to come up with solutions to real world problems.
Flock cameras have been in use since 2017. Other public CCTV cameras have been in use since 1960.
Only in the last 2 years have Flock cameras been characterized as “the surveillance state”.
What changed?
Documented abuse
There is a decade of documented abuse too. And the abuse has been delt with but nobody heard about it until now. Now you hear about it every single day.
Just my opinion but there seems to be a unifying thread that the leftist media and others are magnifying. As a seasoned conspiracy theorist, I’d say the thread runs through China.
Generate fear
1. No More Kings
2. No Data Centers/AI
3. No Flock Cameras
4. Vote for Democrats, even socialists.
Documented abuse…. that’s not good BUT do you shut down the whole thing because of a few abuses? I think not. We’ve crazy Marxist elements that are very prone to violence, we’ve got crazy states issuing CDLs to people that can’t read English, and we’ve go Islamist terrorists to stop. Flock helps a lot. I don’t like the idea of a surveillance state at all but we’re dealing with a lot different problems than we did in the last century.
For the first 4 years (so 2017 thru 2021), the vast majority of flock’s customers were homeowners associations (voluntary communities of wealthier people who pay to prioritize neighborhood safety) and high crime urban areas (where it makes sense to have these with the drug and gang problems there). Then, starting in 2022, using the post COVID national crime spike as an excuse(thanks BLM and blue states for refusing to enforce basic laws) the flock cameras rapidly expanded into suburban and rural areas, such that now, 80% of jurisdictions use them. Add in the explosion of AI vision, and we find ourselves in the scenario we have today. But keep in mind, crime rates have plummeted since 2022, at much larger rates than statistical analysis suggests Flock could have effected.
Just look at this link to see an image of the 2 year growth of Flock camera usage since August of 2024 to last month. This is literally what changed: their usage went up by 1000 percent and suburban/rural communities suddenly started to notice these new black poles with cameras on them, and begin asking questions. Most people don’t follow city council agenda items, and the media mostly ignored the votes on these contracts when they first got approved.
People woke up. I can’t not see them now when I drive on Hershey, Towanda, etc.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1504821588350713
“The effectiveness of the tool doesn’t outweigh the citizens’ right to privacy, to constitutional protections,” Oconee County Council Chair Matthew Durham told The Charleston Post and Courier.
Oconee County Sheriff Mike Crenshaw opposed the ordinance, but he acknowledged his office disciplined an employee earlier this year for making searches — 166 of them between March and July — that were incorrectly recorded as warrant checks, traffic stops and welfare checks, according to FITSNews.
https://www.gastongazette.com/story/news/local/2026/08/24/privacy-debate-grows-over-flock-safety-cameras-in-gaston-county-nc/91402783007/
Not a flock statement but to the woman that was following me on veterans parkway in the right hand lane on thursday morning, a long line of traffic was ahead of me traveling about 40 miles an hour. As always I allow space between me and the car in front of me. The line of cars slowed and the person in front of me applied his brakes so I did also to keep from running into him, the next thing I know the lady behind me that was riding my bumper lays on her horn and I look in my rear view mirror to see her giving me not one but two double fingers. How intelligent was that? She eventually changes lanes several times to get ahead but has to stop at the stop lights ahead. I guess point being how sad that that is a prime example of some of the discourteous drivers that we encounter while traveling on veterans parkway.