Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime

https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2026/06/07/a-flock-license-plate-reader-linked-a-san-diego-man-to-a-violent-crime-he-was-five-miles-away/

63•loteck•1h ago

Comments

variety8675•1h ago

I'm no fan of flock, but I dislike how these articles are blaming the technology when the real issue is the police not bothering to check the information they're given

SoftTalker•1h ago

Yeah this reads like the cops simply didn't properly identify the vehicle. If anything, the Flock camera photo proves he was miles away.

garyfirestorm•50m ago

But flock hit is the entire reason for the cops to go arrest them. And you’re right if they did careful assessment of other flock camera data, even the data of this particular flock camera they would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later. The whole point being misusing/abusing flock data to wrongly jail people and that is precisely what happened here. Flock is the center of this story.

bhickey•44m ago

> [T]hey would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later.

Tack on a reckless driving charge and a speeding ticket.

Wingy•35m ago

782.6mph is way too fast.

wombatpm•39m ago

Police would just argue that the second datapoint was wrong.

OutOfHere•48m ago

It is Flock's responsibility to grant access only to trained professionals who undergo routine training and testing in how to and how not to use the system.

pixl97•35m ago

So they can't show it to the police in the US?

OutOfHere•33m ago

Every police officer with access to the system must ideally have to undergo mandatory annual training and testing in using it to protect the rights of innocents. If they don't pass the testing, they ideally should not be granted access.

Flock should be held accountable for ensuring adequate protections exist to prevent misuse.

pksebben•26m ago

It's not a training problem, it's an incentive problem. You put these guys in a structure that requires them to justify their jobs at minimal cost of effort and then ooh ack surprise when they don't take the proper care to ensure that they're not stepping on innocent people in the pursuit of a healthy career.

Couple that with overburdening them with petty nonsense all the time and training them in military equipment and tactics and like it doesn't matter what tools you give them, those tools will be abused at convenience.

The issue is structural, not technical, but power tools = more damage per capita.

OutOfHere•20m ago

It's not a dichotomy. "Checks and balances" are a thing since the founding of the United States. If the local government fails to institute them, it should be the complementary responsibility of the vendor to have them. In their absence, lawsuits targeting all parties are highly desirable.

aaomidi•34m ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

turtlesdown11•30m ago

A tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem

dlcarrier•24m ago

Ironically, they're showing a situation where more tracking makes innocence clear. There's countless examples of innocent people being caught in a dragnet, based on data that correlates with but does not prove guilt, where more data collection leads to more innocent people suffering. That's what they should be focusing on.

FireBeyond•2m ago

There is absolutely that, but the CEO of Flock has said he believes a false-positive is better than a false-negative, so everything around the stack pushes police that way, too.

helterskelter•1h ago

ACLU needs to take his case and sue everything in sight.

Why would they not have a human look at the hit? Flock, San Diego and the SDPD are all liable.

tptacek•1h ago

This doesn't seem like a Flock story so much as SDPD making an arrest purely on a nexus to "red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows". From what I understand of the story, the Flock camera did in fact tag a red Alfa Romeo (there's a still frame in the article). It wasn't the right one, but ALPR cameras aren't psychic; they tell you features, make/model, and plate, not "criminal culpability".

turtlesdown11•33m ago

right, its the cops who decide "criminal culpability" all Flock did was lead them to the wrong person...poor innocent Flock

bryan0•1h ago

> Their tort claim notes that the path the men took to the cigar lounge passed by several other Flock cameras, which could have corroborated their story, as well as the location data on their cell phones.

It seems like if the police actually looked at the Flock data it would have exonerated them?

pixl97•38m ago

Quite often the cops job is to find someone close enough and then toss them into the jaws of the criminal justice system. We like to say "innocent until proven guilty", but you goddammed better be ready to prove yourself innocent unless you want to find yourself imprisoned.

amazingamazing•1h ago

Ironically flock is what proves innocence. What would happen here without it?

dehrmann•48m ago

There's a well-known story about a man who escaped a murder conviction because he was at a Dodgers game when the murder happened, and there just happened to be a TV show filming at the stadium that just happened to record him there.

https://innocenceproject.org/news/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-s...

I'd like to think motive and a police sketch wouldn't be enough evidence for a conviction, but that's optimistic.

sam1r•47m ago

FYI: This San Diego man also has been arrested before/prior this incident.. & has a past record.

So can you really blame the courtroom being handed this (eventually wrongful) license plate data.

throwaway87557•46m ago

It would only take 3 mins to get 5 miles away at 100 mph. Trying to say it was 5 miles away 23 seconds after an unknown reference is being intentionally obtuse. They had two eye witnesses say it was them and the hoodie was white instead of gray. No mention of the goatee however which is conspicuously left out of the article. Now how often do you see a red alfa romeo with tinted windows? Oh and of course they also just happen to have criminal records. This is just two criminals who got caught without enough evidence to convict. If you don't want to be treated like a criminal don't have a criminal record and illegal tint.

4MOAisgoodenuf•38m ago

I don’t think someone should be thrown in jail for a month for having polarized windows on their car.

Red is a very popular color for the Giulia and window tint is not an uncommon item.

Any random person on the street could be described as able to be “caught without enough evidence to convict”

throwaway87557•35m ago

He could have bailed out but criminals trying to carjack people dont have money to do that. Someone with an alpha romeo shouldn't have any problem doing that. Maybe his bail was set high because he has already been convicted of crimes in which case oh well that's life when you break the law. Us law abiding citizens don't want known criminals on the street when they are under investigation for additional violent crimes with two eye witnesses claiming it was them.

As for the tint. Those laws exist to prevent criminals from going around committing crimes and then shooting police when they get stopped. You can have light tint if you want the protection but if you want to drive around with limo tint like a thug don't cry when you get treated like one.

pksebben•22m ago

Dumb astroturf grok bot is dumb. Don't feed the trolls.

himata4113•43m ago

I saw a video recently that flock camera installations don't follow local or city laws. All poles that hold roadsigns generally need to safely handle impact and get certified / inspected. However, flock cameras have none of it.

Not the same video, but best I could find: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_zmZLJY5Ev4

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