Woman Wrongfully Accused by a License Plate-Reading Camera - Then Exonerated By Camera-Equipped Car (electrek.co)
- Reference: 0179933724
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/01/2359245/woman-wrongfully-accused-by-a-license-plate-reading-camera---then-exonerated-by-camera-equipped-car
- Source link: https://electrek.co/2025/10/30/rivians-onboard-cameras-save-owner-from-a-false-accusation-by-police/
"You know why I'm here," the police sergeant tells Chrisanna Elser. "You know we have cameras in that town..."
> "It went right into, 'we have video of you stealing a package,'" Elser said... "Can I see the video?" Elser asked. "If you go to court, you can," the officer replied. "If you're going to deny it, I'm not going to extend you any courtesy...." [You can [2]watch a video of the entire confrontation .] On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had. "We can show you exactly where we were," she told him. "I already know where you were," he replied.
>
> Her Rivian — equipped with multiple cameras — had recorded her entire route that day... It took weeks of her collecting her own evidence, building timelines, and submitting videos before someone listened. Finally, she received an email from the Columbine Valley police chief acknowledging her efforts in an email saying, "nicely done btw (by the way)," and informing her the summons would not be filed.
Elser also found the theft video (which the police officer refused to show her) on Nextdoor, [3]reports Electrek . "The woman has the same color hair, but different facial and nose shape and apparent age than Elser, which is all reasonably apparent when viewing the video..."
But Elser does drive a green Rivian truck, which police knew had entered the neighborhood 20 times over the course of a month. (Though in the video the officer is told that a male driver in the same household passes through that neighborhood driving to and from work.) The problem may be their certainty — derived from Flock's network of cameras that automatically read license plates, "tracking movements of vehicles wherever they go..."
> The system has provoked concern from privacy and freedom focused organizations like the [4]Electronic Frontier Foundation and [5]American Civil Liberties Union . Flock also [6]recently announced a partnership with Ring , seeking to use a network of doorbell cameras to track Americans in even more places.... [The police] didn't even have video of the truck in the area — merely tags of it entering... (it also left the area minutes later, indicating a drive through, rather than crawling through neighborhoods looking for packages — but police neglected to check the exit timestamps)... Elser has asked for an apology for [officer] Milliman's aggressive behavior during the encounter, but has heard nothing back from the department despite a call, email, and physical appearance at the police station.
The article points out that [7]Rivian's "Road Cam" feature can be set to record footage of everything happening around it using the car's built in cameras for driver-assist features. But if you want to record footage all the time, you'll need to [8]plug in a USB-C external drive to store it. (It's ironic how different cameras recorded every part of this story — the theft, the police officer accusing the innocent woman, and that innocent woman's actual whereabouts.)
Electrek 's take? "Citizens should not need to own a $70k+ truck, or even a $100 external hard drive, to keep track of everything they do in order to prove to power-tripping officers that they didn't commit a crime."
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/flock-cameras-lead-colorado-police-wrong-suspect/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zTYO7ib-cM
[3] https://electrek.co/2025/10/30/rivians-onboard-cameras-save-owner-from-a-false-accusation-by-police/
[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/anti-surveillance-mapmaker-refuses-flock-safetys-cease-and-desist-demand
[5] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-pushback
[6] https://www.abc10.com/article/news/nation-world/ring-flock-safety/507-cd7aa4e7-156a-4831-8c6e-e97ba90928e0
[7] https://stories.rivian.com/software-update-2023-14-0
[8] https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/how-to-install-an-external-drive-for-rivians-gear-guard-and-road-cam.40284/
Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Not seeing that it's a problem that this was merely looked into at all .
The problem was how the information from the system was used, the refusal to actually view the video, etc. Not that oh noes, Flock even exists.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem in this case, as usual, was lazy government rather than big government. A government with high capacity to get things done is not necessarily bad, but usually government turns into a power trip or a mire of reasons that things cannot be done -- and big or effective government is bad in both of those cases.
Re: (Score:3)
> The problem in this case, as usual, was lazy government...
Does any other kind known to exist?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes! Yes, there are places where government works. Indeed, there are times in history where our (North American) governments worked!
Honestly, that's basically what DOGE found—the Federal government in America works surprisingly efficiently. Scientific research, conservation, foreign aid—all of it was extremely well run and delivered what they were supposed to. Even if you look at SNAP: for every 1 person a food bank feeds, SNAP feeds *9*.
There are so many good, efficient systems, and those are t
Re: (Score:3)
I like transparent and accountable government. The size is not critical to me, and it can depend on the functions that the government serves and its overall mission. (for example, a nation with world's most expensive military and the largest economy probably has a big government)
Re: (Score:3)
> I like transparent and accountable government. The size is not critical to me...
Larger more complex systems experience more entropy and require more effort to prevent de-cohesion. This is fundamentally why the larger in size the government the less likely it is to be transparent and accountable.
Re: (Score:3)
Or at least requires a lot more work to keep it together.
Organizing people in general is easier in small groups. Easier to take 5 people out for lunch without a hitch than 50. The later, I would recommend planning it at least a few days in advance if not a few weeks.
Getting a small group to agree to action, like in a club, small team, small charity, etc is relatievely straight forward and there is usually not too much fiction of politics involved. You start trying to get a community group, church group, or
Re: (Score:3)
Well spoken. Magic-number I've seen is 150 people in stable , pre-law self-governance. Worth noting you ended your point about mechanisms of group organization/decisions with Robert Rules of Order. That indeed was the gentlemanly place to stop.
But. It's not historically a correct endpoint for "societies". I believe the earliest attested cases are about 12,000 years old ( southern Egypt ? ) ... the mass killing sites where one portion of society conflicted with anot
Re: (Score:2)
There's a long history of small towns being taken over by groups on one power trip or another until restrained (or removed) by a state or the feds.
The problem with "big government" is that there's no supervising entity with the power to restrain them. That power needs to be constrained by other power seems to be true at every scale. Abusive family members need to be constrained by the local govt. Abusive local govt.s need to be constrained by the states, abusive states need to be constrained by the feds,
Re: (Score:2)
" ...abusive feds need to be constrained by...?" Bible/Koran/Torah, local school-boards, the 2nd Amendment and Fredrick Remington. Grinding bloody-handed asymmetric warfare is a lose/lose for big-gov and big-finance.
Why did I put the "good books" 1st? Has nothing to do with a spaghetti-monster in the sky. The Abrahamic religions make human individuals a special case with responsibilities and powers. Tyranny hateshateshates individual power.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think that the relationship is that straightforward.
You can, absolutely, build bureaucracies to resist accountability and avoid transparency; where nothing is every anyone's fault in particular, and all the records are classified, and the department in charge of checking its own work invariably concludes that procedure was followed. It takes some doing because the amount of formalized process required to keep a large org from just disintegrating means that you can't help but leave a paper trail,
Re: (Score:2)
"Larger more complex systems experience more entropy and require more effort to prevent de-cohesion."
You make non-trival claims relating "size" and entropy. For example, when a polymer collapses it's entropy goes up ( more micro-states create similar macro-states ). But, when mechanical watch-pieces are assembled (see watch-repair video ) the entropy goes down ... TIKTOKTIKTOK... Yes, yes I know neither are closed systems -- point is the net entropy change is non-trivial to evaluate for ra
Re: Hmm (Score:3)
4 magic words: "Take me to court."
If they only show the video in court, then court it is. If you know you haven't been there, you know the video can't possibly show you there beyond reasonable doubt. And the moment they summon you, you have a right to see the evidence against you.
Re: (Score:3)
That's why the U.S. has about 10 times the number of lawyers per capita than any other country.
Re: (Score:3)
> That's why the U.S. has about 10 times the number of lawyers per capita than any other country.
The US doesn't have the most per capita, let alone 10x the most. You can google it.
Also lawyers have specialties, there are many reasons someone might have a law license. They're not all trial lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
And one of the biggest numbers of prisoners per capita.
Re: (Score:1)
The US has more people in prison than China.
Not per capita. In absolute numbers:
[1]https://www.prisonstudies.org/... [prisonstudies.org]
[1] https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All
Re: (Score:3)
> 4 magic words: "Take me to court."
Those words aren't magic. They seemingly very much were going to take her to court. In court even if you win you still lose. Aside from any legal expense you may incur which you may actually not get back, you also have the wonderful joy of having to take one, or multiple days off work, congrats that just cost you more than a typical speeding fine. Seeing the evidence doesn't help you with any of this.
Re: (Score:2)
2 magic words make this a no-win situation: lost wages
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck putting your life back together if you spend any amount of time in jail waiting for trial after you've lost your job and your housing. Hope you can afford to get your arrest expunged while you are living on the street with no job.
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem was how the information from the system was used...
This is human condition. We can be certain that a significant number of people would always trust a system that is correct most of the time unless and until they encounter an error.
Re: (Score:2)
'unless and until they encounter an error." Oh? Given the current state of the pop., they don't even believe evidence that their beliefs are incorrect. They merely ignore the new information as "aberrant"....not wrong per se, just information they choose to ignore since it requires they change one of their beliefs.
Re: (Score:2)
Biases are necessary for you to function, otherwise combinatory explosion of choices results in a decision paralysis. It is ability to deal with these biases and error correct, also known as wisdom, is that lacking. This is mainly because institutions and systems that used to teach people how to do wisdom are lost. Modern age has information and tools to process it, but not the methods and practices to deal with bias and self-delusion,
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
> Not seeing that it's a problem that this was merely looked into at all .
> The problem was how the information from the system was used, the refusal to actually view the video, etc. Not that oh noes, Flock even exists.
I hear you, but I have a different angle.
What happens when the only evidence police have implicates SuspectA? They're going to focus on SuspectA, regardless of if SuspectA is innocent or not. Meanwhile the actual guilty party - who has no observed evidence trail - is going to be ignored. I think the flood of low-quality data in the form of poor cameras which aren't supposed to be recording other private property does disservice to investigations.
The same thing is going to happen in a court. "Well, this footage looks like it could be you, and we know your vehicle was in the area, and there's nobody else coming up at all, so the overwhelming evidence says it's you. And you wore a wig."
(Smart) criminals are going to game the system and won't show up. Innocent people will. This is the problem with blanket surveillance.
Re: Hmm (Score:3)
If it's a criminal proceeding, that's called "reasonable doubt". Of course. procedural errors happen, but generally, law has provisions for "we can't prove it's you, we just have a bunch of stuff that could match, but could also be of someone else."
Re: (Score:2)
The provisions are officially there. How often are they ignored?
Re: Hmm (Score:2)
I don't know. Do you?
I'm guessing it depends on your lawyer.
Re: (Score:3)
Just plain and ordinary negligence... Hope this has consequences.
Re: (Score:3)
It's more than negligence. It became more when he refused to let her see the video.
Re: Hmm (Score:2)
You are probably right... Very weird.
Re: (Score:2)
No you’re just seeing what has been happening for decades. The only difference is now it happened to a white, well off person. The police don’t care if they get the guilty person. They only care about the case being closed.
Not weird. (Score:2)
Stark raving normal.
Re: (Score:1)
You should see what it takes when the police outright murder someone.
Re: (Score:2)
> Not seeing that it's a problem that this was merely looked into at all.
No, actually the problem is that it wasn't looked in to at all. It was just cut and pasted from a spreadsheet.
btw (by the way) (Score:5, Interesting)
"btw (by the way)"
Why abbreviate the words, then explain what the abbreviation means?
Skip the abbreviation, then.
Re: (Score:1)
> Why abbreviate the words, then explain what the abbreviation means?
That's easy: zombies.
Re: (Score:2)
> "btw (by the way)"
> Why abbreviate the words, then explain what the abbreviation means?
> Skip the abbreviation, then.
Primary language and then proper language. These days you go to speak the language of the street dawg... wait that was the 90s. Err... [calendar emoticon] [street emoticon] [language emoticon] [two people chatting emoticon] and then in brackets you write properly.
Micro$oft Sucks (have a nice day fellow Slashdotter)
Re: (Score:1)
IKR?! (I know right?) TBH (to be honest), I just wanted to leave a comment here for the LOL (laughing out loud) factor. I can do this all day but I don't have all day, have to leave ASAP (as soon as possible). TTYL (talk to you later).
Re: (Score:2)
tl;dr.
Re: (Score:2)
News stories in the USA are written so middle schoolers can’t be confused while reading it.
This must stop (Score:2, Informative)
This was yet another of a myriad cases where police had trusted the image-recognition software without any manual review of the footage.
This can't go on. Would legislation have to be necessary for preventing it from happening again?
Re:This must stop (Score:5, Interesting)
This will go on and it will get worse, to the point that in not so distant future mistakes like that would result in un-personing. This is one of the reasons digital ID is so dangerous - human to human interactions evolved with a heavy error-correction baked in, human to machine interactions do not. This is because up until very recently, our mechanical implements acted deterministically (e.g., a hammer either hits a nail or don't and it is clear which one just happened) and with clearly delineated outcomes. Computer algorithms, especially with any kind AI involved, are increasingly act in non-deterministic way and almost always opaque on the error state (i.e., imagine a hammer that always made metal clink noise even if you miss the nail).
Re: This must stop (Score:2)
This is why we need to support and donate to EFF and other people protecting agencies. So they can fight this injustice in courts and help the victims
Extend you any courtesy? (Score:3)
To quote My Cousin Vinny: "It's called disclosure, you dickhead!"
Re: (Score:3)
Disclosure only works the case goes to court. A state-level FOIA law might help here.
The laziest and sloppiest basis for arrest (Score:5, Interesting)
The burden of proof continues to shift to the accused?
Clearly the state's evidence was faulty and the tools they're using are suspect.
The only reason this person was not unjustly dragged into court and very likely
[1] coerced to [npr.org] [2]plead guilty to [innocenceproject.org] [3] a crime they did not commit [americanbar.org]
was that they paid for and submitted to constant surveillance.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justice
[2] https://innocenceproject.org/news/guilty-pleas-on-the-rise-criminal-trials-on-the-decline/
[3] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/resources/magazine/2024-winter/fourteen-principles-path-forward-plea-bargaining-reform/
My video vs your video (Score:3)
I guess you could corroborate evidence by comparing a statistically significant number of clips, but with Gen AI, you might new able to argue the video is cooked.
I'd sue for expenses, lost wages, time spent at $200/hour to prepare my defence. Plus whatever. You'd want to pad that as much as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
*Beyond reasonable doubt*.
The "nu ah, it's fake" excuse typically doesn't hold up well in court. ... Historically, even when something was fake. The burden of proof is too high.
Misleading headline (Score:3)
"Accused by a License Plate-Reading Camera" but in fact the camera had merely recorded "a green Rivian truck, which police knew had entered the neighborhood 20 times over the course of a month".
trusting the counter-proof (Score:3)
a) over here the video from the woman would be not admitted because it does not come from a certified device (e.g. the timestamps on the video would not be trusted). That is, of course, also true for the video used by the police. Unless it comes from certified cameras operated by the police, it should not be admissible.
b) in world of AI you can anytime generate video of you being 100 miles away from the crime scene. How is that supposed to be a relevant proof?
I don't know what's more dystopian (Score:2)
The pigs using ubiquitous street camera surveillance to accuse the woman, or the woman using ubiquitous in-vehicle camera surveillance to prove her innocence.
No part of this story makes me warm or fuzzy.
It wasn't the license plate reader (Score:3)
Not that it helped, but there's video of the cop and it's stupidly obvious that he's using standard cop tactics to try and f Force a plea deal out of her through intimidation.
I think the real problem was when he was intimidating her she recorded intimidation and to be blunt she's not black so she lawyered up and beat the charges.
Basically this is just classic police abuse so that they can check off a conviction. There's several really nasty cases going on right now of police getting caught with quotas for DUIs and arresting sober people all over the country especially in the south. Tennessee just had a massive one.
The basic problem is every year crime goes down but every year we put more cops on the street because it's an effective political issue for politicians who can't actually run the country.
Too many cops and not enough crime. Sooner or later they have to come after you.
Re: (Score:3)
What seems even more concerning is that this is how he acts when he knows he's on camera and speaking to a relatively poor railroading candidate.
Because of their enthusiasm for working at or beyond the limits of their actual authority; you normally expect even dumb cops to have a decent instinct for the informal sociology of what they can get away with and against who. Columbine Valley, CO, household median income of ~$130k, over 50% over-40, most of the young under-18s presumably attached to households,
Cameras don't "accuse" people (Score:3)
"Woman Wrongfully Accused by a License Plate-Reading Camera" .... no, she wasn't.
LPR cameras don't accuse people, nor do they order their arrests. An LPR camera takes a picture of a license plate, reads it using standard image processing algorithms, and provides the plate number and plate image to law enforcement for verification.
What happens next depends on the police. This wasn't a failure of technology, but instead a failure of investigative procedure by the Columbine Valley Police Department.
It was also a failure of Ring cameras, which are absolutely abysmal for security purposes. As the article pointed out, the porch pirate was never recorded getting into the Rivian. That's because Ring cameras don't provide continuous-time internal recordings, since it would interfere with Ring's subscription model. Even a $50 Wyze Cam + memory card would have shown who got into and out of the vehicle.
The accused woman's Rivian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and captured in the background during the recording of a crime. The CVPD added 2 plus 2 based on incomplete evidence, and got 5.
Nicely Done (Score:3)
No sir...this should be an embarrassment to your department.
Proper investigations should have been done. They were not.
Your police force is a farce.
IQ (Score:2)
Studies have shown that cops are at best of average intelligence. But studies have also shown that cops rate the highest in arrogance.
Re: (Score:2)
They're smarter than most criminals they deal with, who are typically of sub-average intelligence.
Tell the cop to fuck themselves with a broomstick (Score:2)
That you will go after their badge personally, and that the judge will back you in this.
98% chance they chicken out. 2% chance you have to go after their badge, and the judge will back you.
Should sue (Score:1, Insightful)
that is the only language the pigs understand.
Re:Should sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you do sue, the officers are rarely held personally accountable. The taxpayers end up footing the bill and the officer either returns to working the same job or relocates to a new job in a different district, potentially at a higher pay level.
Re: Should sue (Score:4, Insightful)
No way, i agree, sue the pigs. The more problems they have and bad publicity to be under pressure the better
Re: Should sue (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure sue them, that's about the only recourse you have. But also write or call your representatives in the state legislature. Maybe see if anyone at the local news media will pick it up as a story, especially if the details are juicy. Embarrassing the officer publicly, especially after they lose a civil lawsuit can at least make it harder for them to escape their past
Re:Should sue (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why cops should be required to purchase their own malpractice insurance, and be paid more so that the good ones can afford their premiums.
Re: (Score:3)
> This is why cops should be required to purchase their own malpractice insurance, and be paid more so that the good ones can afford their premiums.
That really doesn't solve the problem. It just increases the cost of law enforcement, whilst driving cops to make even more sure that they cover themselves.
The lessons of [1]the Innocence Project [innocenceproject.org] has been completely not learned in America. The lesson is not that DNA evidence saved people. The lessons are that that:
many many innocent people are in jail in America
once the police believe they have the person, they fit the evidence to the crime
wealth is the main thing which determines if people get justice - p
[1] https://innocenceproject.org/
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> That really doesn't solve the problem. It just increases the cost of law enforcement
This is a good thing. The more expensive it is, the less spurious bullshit like the stuff in this article there will be. Fewer, more qualified cops = good.
Re: Should sue (Score:2)
But what makes the UK plea bargain review more robust that that in the US?
Re:Should sue (Score:4, Informative)
Should we apply that same standard to any public servant that can adversely impact a citizen's life? A school principal? A teacher? A judge? A Congress critter?
If that is going to be the standard for police, then it should be a universal standard with an enforcement mechanism that has teeth in addition to potential financial ramifications.
Why the 'flamebait' mod? (Score:2)
Why the hell the flamebait moderation??
We all know cops are pigs because of the way they act/protect each other, and yes suing them, and ideally their union funds paying for their defence of their incompetence/sloppy work instead of taxpayers footing the bill, will send the message people won't tolerate their bad actions.
Remember, this asshole cop say he was "100% sure" of the Trump-level bullshit he was spewing.