Flock Blamed for Wrongful 13-Day Imprisonment and a Police Stalking Incident in Florida (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0186010730
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/03/0612209/flock-blamed-for-wrongful-13-day-imprisonment-and-a-police-stalking-incident-in-florida
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/28/us/video/cnn-sitroom-pamela-brown-lindsey-isaacs-flock-camera-florida-vehicular-homicide-wrongful-jail
> In late September 2026, 23-year-old Liz Lindseay Isaacs [2]testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about her harrowing experience after a Flock camera misidentified her Dodge Durango, linking her to a fatal hit-and-run miles away from where she actually was... "The cell door was shut, and it was not opened for approximately 86 hours". She spent a total of 13 days locked up — including the terrifying stint in solitary confinement — before prosecutors finally realized the AI had completely botched the vehicle identification and dropped the charges.
A Flock spokesperson contacted for [3]a CNN report argued the incident "appears to have been the result of human errors in judgment unrelated to Flock." The woman is now suing the Florida patrol over wrongful arrest, saying she partially blames the two police officers who she says claimed there was incriminating damage on her vehicle when there wasn't. But her lawyer says he blames Flock. "Because if it wasn't for Flock we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off."
And while police claim Flock solves more crimes, the lawyer adds that "you would also solve a lot more crimes if the police were allowed to kick down your door and come in and search your house whenever they want to, or search your car whenever they want to or violate your rights in other ways. There has to be safeguards in police that comport through the 4th Amendment, like the warrant requirements. It's as simple as that. This technology is growing so fast that we are unable to control it. And we must get ahead of it." And the woman incarcerated for 13 days agreed. "I wouldn't have went to jail if it wasn't for Flock."
Florida was also the site of another [4]Flock-related news story . ("Florida Deputy Allegedly Used Flock Cameras to Stalk 17-Year-Old Girl, Visiting Her at Work 9 Times".) The officer "was charged with official misconduct and accessing computer electronic devices without authority — both are third-degree felonies. In Florida, if he's found guilty on both charges, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison."
"Americans have no idea who's looking at that information, or why it has to be collected in the first place," U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer [5]said Sunday , adding "They deserve to know."
> SCHUMER: "This company said the data on its cameras was encrypted and secure. Then hackers took one down and found the key sitting right there," Schumer said. "Most Americans just want to get to work and get home to their families without a private company keeping a file on where they go. The next step here is simple: turn the lens around and zoom in on Flock." Schumer also demanded answers from Flock about how much data from its cameras sits on its servers and whether any federal agency has accessed that data, directly or through local law enforcement.
Schumer's office sent an official letter to Flock's CEO giving them 12 days to respond to its questions about Flock's data retention and security policies. "Americans should not have to sacrifice their right to privacy simply by driving down a public street," Schumer wrote.
And [6]in other news ...
> Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock Safety — a company that deploys over 120,000 automated license plate reader cameras across the United States — recently requested that his Atlanta home be blurred out on Google Maps Street View. In swift retaliation, online activists pinpointed the property and officially marked his front lawn as a "Public Toilet" on the mapping app.
[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/flock-ceo-hides-his-house-on-google-maps-internet-marks-it-a-public-toilet/
[2] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/florida-woman-wrongfully-jailed-in-flock-camera-debacle-testifies-before-u-s-senate/
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/28/us/video/cnn-sitroom-pamela-brown-lindsey-isaacs-flock-camera-florida-vehicular-homicide-wrongful-jail
[4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/florida-deputy-allegedly-used-flock-174045955.html
[5] https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/leader-schumer-demands-answers-from-flock-safety-on-nationwide-license-plate-surveillance-network-that-is-tracking-americans-warns-private-camera-giant-has-built-a-mass-surveillance-tool-with-no-rules-no-oversight-and-no-consent
[6] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/flock-ceo-hides-his-house-on-google-maps-internet-marks-it-a-public-toilet/
Karma score (Score:1)
The Police officers and detectives need to have a public karma score based on being correct or making mistakes. They should be fired when the score goes negative.
Re: (Score:3)
Who will score them, other police? The basic issue is that police, prosecutors, etc. are judged on how many arrests or convictions they get, not on how many are justified. It is more important to them to make an arrest in a case then to actually identify the guilty party.
Re: (Score:1)
It would be as simple as an indepedent administrator that looks at public records. If someone is wrongfully arrested then the detective and judge who ordered the arrest get their score lowered. If a kid can create an automatic tracking bot for Elon Musk flights they can easily track wrongful arrests.
Re: (Score:2)
Those boards have zero power to do anything. Even if the city fires a cop the union sues and they get their job back with pay.
Re: (Score:2)
Start with ending qualified immunity and require a degree. My wife's hair stylist required more training time than the cops.
Re: (Score:1)
People with degrees dont become cops. They know its a thankless job. The future will be robo cops
Cops gone wild (Score:1)
They put her a cell for 86 hours and in solitary? I'm no fan of Flock, but they have shown us just how lawlessly police will act when given the chance. Perhaps the cameras should be in the police station.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably put her in solitary because she kept insisting she was innocent.
I'm in Florida (Score:2)
and I got pulled over in late August because the officer "couldn't read my license plate". Admittedly, it was faded because the car sat for a few years when I was out-of-state. I'm sure there was an ALPR involved because a human with average vision could still read the plate. I'm convinced it was one of these cameras that "couldn't read the plate", not the human. Got a ticket for that.
Re: (Score:2)
A ticket, or a fix-it ticket? I don't know how the fix-it tickets work in Florida - if they're anything like California, it's a matter of fixing the issue and then paying an admin fee: ~$25 for a replacement plate, ~$25 admin fee, plus your time getting an officer at a local office to sign off. Based on the number of issues around my home (Los Angeles area) I doubt fix it tickets are very common... it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Then again, I also wonder how often tickets are more liberally given to t
Flock isn't just a terrible company (Score:4, Insightful)
because they encourage laziness. They also encourage a whole host of petty, or even outright dangerous, behaviors in people who aren't always the most stable. ON top of that it doesn't matter if it's the government, or a private company, building a database of everyone's movements: THIS IS STILL A TERRIBLE IDEA!
I'd argue it's even worse if a private company does it because how long will it take for a third party (corporations) to start abusing it? When they start selling access to corporations, of course.
What? Did you think this would remain a government only tool?
Stop Voting For Champions of UnFreedom. (Score:1, Troll)
> "Americans have no idea who's looking at that information, or why it has to be collected in the first place," U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday, adding "They deserve to know."
You know what Americans also deserve to know, oh exalted lawmaker of yore? Why the fuck you're pretending Mass Surveillance just fell off the back of the Flock truck when you've been around long enough to have voted for Clipper Chip kickbacks in your 401k and name your grandkids Prism and Orwell.
There's a difference between a Politician and a Representative. If you cannot uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the very citizenry you're elected to Represent, then you are in the wrong as a l
Anonymous tip (Score:2)
If the cops receive an anonymous tip that CowboyNeal is an insensitive clod, and then decide to arrest him without checking out any of the evidence, I blame the cops. There's plenty to bitch about with Flock but "the cops don't care about doing their job" isn't one of them. That's a cop problem.
Don't treat any stupid robots as somehow "better" than an anonymous tip called in from a payphone. It's just, like, something's opinion, man.
Time surveil all Flock staff 24x7 (Score:2)
We need cameras and microphones set up outside their homes, livestreaming everything constantly. We need to follow them wherever they go and post audio/video/stills from that too, along with their exact locations. We need to run facial recognition on them and everyone they encounter. We need to do everything possible to ensure that they have absolutely no privacy, ever. This includes the children because, after all, they're doing it to our children -- why should theirs be exempt?
This is what Flock i
You'd almost think... (Score:3)
Flock being misused or abused; a botched execution in Tennessee; Trump continuing to block CNN despite a court order... you might almost think there's something wrong with the American legal system.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL yeah botched execution. "First all female execution team at request of Pike"
[1]https://nypost.com/2026/10/01/... [nypost.com]
[1] https://nypost.com/2026/10/01/us-news/christa-pike-likely-got-her-wish-for-an-all-female-execution-staff-before-botched-lethal-injection-attorney/
Ugh (Score:2)
Don't blame the tool, blame the tools.
sue them all, I guess (Score:2)
> Because if it wasn't for Flock we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off.
Because if it wasn't for police we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off.
Because if it wasn't for cameras we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off.
Because if it wasn't for cars we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off.
Because if it wasn't for computers we wouldn't be here in the first place, and this whole nightmare... would not have kicked off.
Becaus
Keep suing (Score:2)
I like that she is suing the police, but she needs to sue flock as well. Pain and suffering, libel, whatever you can find to make it stick. I think libel may fit very well here, "falsely accusing someone of criminal conduct is one of the classic categories of defamation per se, where reputational harm can be presumed rather than requiring the plaintiff to prove every dollar of resulting damage".
Claiming that I was the perp in a hit and run and placing me in jail has real harm and they published it to the po
Not Flock (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw part of the testimony. This all comes down to human over-aggressiveness—not even mistakes.
The detective used Flock to look for all Dodge Durangos within a radius of the accident. They located her at her apartment. So far, so good. But her car is a different color than what eyewitnesses said. Other details did not match up with eyewitness accounts. There was NO damage to her vehicle, but they arrested her anyway. The detective doubled down and the police continued there prosecution of her.
I'm no fan of Flock, but in this case it's simply bad police.
Re:Not Flock (Score:5, Insightful)
But Flock (or other technology) is fuel or at least a catalyst to such "bad police".
Second in place only to the habit to cover up police misbehaviour.
Everyone who talks about "just a few bad apples" needs to remember that the saying is that "Just a few bad apples will spoil the batch"
Re: (Score:1)
Still doesn't make this flocks fault in any way...
Re: (Score:1)
> Still doesn't make this flocks fault in any way...
Really? Exactly how large does the print have to be on the glove being slapped across the face of Flock Greed that spells out the 4th and 5th Amendment protections and Rights?
Should we print it on a fucking baseball bat instead?
You can stop pretending they don't have ANY clue as to what all the "fuss" is about. Because you sound like a Flock investor of the lowest accord.
Re: Not Flock (Score:5, Insightful)
And guns don't kill people... they just help people kill 50 at once instead of 1. Therefore you still have to acknowledge their large role in killing people.
Re: Not Flock (Score:3, Insightful)
I argued the same when I gave a loaded gun to a homeless man having a psychotic break.
Re: (Score:2)
The dependence on "AI" is the danger because it's incredibly stupid, and officers are not very smart. They need solid foundational training to favors innocence. They do get a lot of that, and it's almost always bad laws that lead to these situations (including the entire war on drugs).
Flock is a big problem here because it is clearly violating the 4th amendment. You can say "they're in public" and sure .. that's true. But when you start doing deep analytics automatically on everyone in "public," it's mor
Re: (Score:2)
> Just a few bad apples will spoil the batch
Correction: One bad apple will spoil the barrel.
Aside: A common excuse involves "good cops". But there's never a 'good' cop around when a cop goes bad. The ordinariness of police officers doing bad things reveals there's many more bad cops than 'good' cops. Since police are not punished for, and rarely blamed for, bad behaviour, it is a systemic flaw. Framing systemic behaviour as "a few bad apples" is excusing the criminal immunity given to the people demanding everyone else obey the law.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a no-win situation to do the right thing as a good cop. Call out the bad ones, then you're looking over your back from retaliation for the rest of your life, assuming you have much life left to live. (Better Call Saul demonstrates this pretty well).
Re: Not Flock (Score:2)
While the reasons matter they aren't relevant to the point, which is that any cops covering for bad cops aren't good cops. If the system is designed to reject good cops, then both the system and the cops are bad.
Re: (Score:2)
"'Better Call Saul"
Um, using popular entertainment as an example of real life behavior is not quite as dumb as it gets, but it's on the same block.
Re: (Score:2)
"two police officers who she says claimed there was incriminating damage on her vehicle"
"But her car is a different color"
Common police tactics, and generally legal, but not very ethical.
The claim of evidence, whether it is true or not, is a common interrogation tactic, intended to elicit a confession. This is when you, the accused, either demand a lawyer be present to represent you, or clam up and invoke your right to remain silent (and let them prove their case on their own).
The mistaken color is another
Re: (Score:2)
> This is when you, the accused, either demand a lawyer be present to represent you, or clam up and invoke your right to remain silent (and let them prove their case on their own).
> The mistaken color is another common police tactic. t.
Always ask for a lawyer immediately when questioned in such cases. Do not wait, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Re: (Score:1)
The police amount to a hammer. They aren't paid to think, only to arrest criminals. Computer says Durango, person guilty, arrest.
Re: Not Flock (Score:2)
That's not how it works, Flock identifies a suspected vehicle, detective (the one that gets paid to think) has to check the provided evidence before asking for an arrestwarrant, and in the end the patrolofficers just execute the warrant, they have to rely on the person issuing it to do their job properly and not having to question the warrant.
Re: (Score:1)
The detective is paid to maintain the status quo first and think second, like every other cop, except that he's actually paid to think at some point.
Re: (Score:2)
Where was the detective in this scenario? They lied about damages to her vehicle to get an arrest warrant because they had no proof. They also refused to care that the license plate and color of the vehicle did not match. A nine year could have realized this didn't make sense. If a detective was paid to think here, he should be fired.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't want cops to think too hard though.
[1]https://abcnews.com/US/court-o... [abcnews.com]
[1] https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Re: (Score:2)
Detectives aren't much better. I've been listening to true crime podcasts and the amount of cases where the police develop tunnel vision and arrest the wrong person is scary.
Re:Not Flock (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that tools give people the impression that they can escape responsibility and therefore accountability. And if the law confirms that, we're all fucked. So there needs to be a severe sanction against someone, and I mean a real person, not a fine to a company. Otherwise we create dystopia one step at a time.
Re: Not Flock (Score:3)
If you bring beer to an AA meeting repeatedly and tell everyone how great it is, you'll probably find at least a few folks fall off the wagon.
Most will have the willpower to resist abusing but there are always a few who look for the quick fix.
Re: Not Flock (Score:2)
And that's the whole point yeah, Flock isn't to blame, any false arrest due to tye use of flock cameras is up to the police for not doing their job, checking the images/videos provided by flock these flock cameras or any data provided by any automated system. It's just plain incompetence if they don't check properly before doing any arrest.
Re: (Score:2)
True. Eyewitness reports, a BOLO for 'Durango' out over the radio or network, and Liz gets this treatment anyways.
So flock is still to blame (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they actively encourage police to believe that their matches are 100% accurate.
Cops are dumb. This is on purpose. The job is extremely boring so they filter out more intelligent people because smart people get bored and leave the job after all that expensive training.
So flock rolls in and tells these cops who already aren't the sharpest tool in the shed how accurate and amazing their software is. So the cops just take it for granted and arrest anyone the software tells them to arrest.
I mean yeah we could hire smarter police but that would require a ton of police reform nobody is willing to do. It's just easier to get rid of the flock cameras and that's at least on the table.
Re: (Score:1)
> Cops are dumb. This is on purpose. The job is extremely boring so they filter out more intelligent people because smart people get bored and leave the job after all that expensive training.
No they just don't like cops who have a brain and can think instead of just following orders. When you want a force that just walks out and beats down people you don't want someone who has actual empathy / emotional intelligence / fill in word, the ability to reason independently, and who actually looks for information. Tehy certainly don't want a situation where police might prioritize say, something else over property crimes.
I'm not going to claim that cops were Sherlock Holmes or actual geniuses, but
100 abuses + 1 million arrests + 20,000 murders (Score:2)
>> Cops are dumb. This is on purpose. The job is extremely boring so they filter out more intelligent people because smart people get bored and leave the job after all that expensive training.
> No they just don't like cops who have a brain and can think instead of just following orders. When you want a force that just walks out and beats down people you don't want someone who has actual empathy / emotional intelligence / fill in word, the ability to reason independently, and who actually looks for information. Tehy certainly don't want a situation where police might prioritize say, something else over property crimes. I'm not going to claim that cops were Sherlock Holmes or actual geniuses, but we (America in particular) prioritized the ability to blindly follow orders.
Spotted the 2 privileged /. posters who have never been to a bad neighborhood before!, hence your simplistic and childish view of police officers. You sound like children demanding no one should ever get shots because needles are ouchies! The intellect of the average police officer is due to it being a blue collar profession with low pay. The smarter ones go into different branches, like the FBI, DHS, etc. A police officer's primary function in the legal system is to get a suspect in front of a judge, wh
Re: (Score:2)
> Who is making mindless rants about Flock? People who have never felt threatened by crime and maybe some fucked up weirdos who are either casual criminals or secretly aspire to be ones.
Thank you for showing us that your lens is cracked.
Pervasive surveillance is antithetical to a Free Society. Period.
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno where you live, but police around where I live (and for at least a 100 mile radius) do not think their jobs are boring, unless you think the risk of a bullet boring a hole in your body is 'boring'.
Repetitive? Yeah, domestic violence, homeless overdoses, e-moto kid stupidity, and random-ish shootings, rinse and repeat.
Re: (Score:3)
> I saw part of the testimony. This all comes down to human over-aggressiveness—not even mistakes.
> The detective used Flock to look for all Dodge Durangos within a radius of the accident. They located her at her apartment. So far, so good. But her car is a different color than what eyewitnesses said. Other details did not match up with eyewitness accounts. There was NO damage to her vehicle, but they arrested her anyway. The detective doubled down and the police continued there prosecution of her.
> I'm no fan of Flock, but in this case it's simply bad police.
Correct. Flock provided data for teh cops to review and make informed decisions. Part of the problem is often pressure ot close cases, so an easy arrest is one way to do that, which then points to poor leadership who wants good stats. We can argue all day about Flok's role, and personally I am against Flock's use without very strict guardrails (which will never be imposed), but this is simply shoddy police work.
Re: (Score:2)
> I saw part of the testimony. This all comes down to human over-aggressivenessâ"not even mistakes.
> The detective used Flock to look for all Dodge Durangos within a radius of the accident. They located her at her apartment. So far, so good. But her car is a different color than what eyewitnesses said. Other details did not match up with eyewitness accounts. There was NO damage to her vehicle, but they arrested her anyway. The detective doubled down and the police continued there prosecution of her.
> I'm no
Re: Not Flock (Score:2)
Let's not put tools into the hands of people who abuse them. At least not without more significant safeguards and better transparency than we have today.