09/10/2026
FLOCK Technology: An Effective Tool for Keeping us Safer
By Shane A. Tieman, Scioto County Prosecuting Attorney
I am unapologetically and unabashedly pro law enforcement. I know the thin blue line, despite its fallacies and mistakes, protects our families and property. For me, that thin blue line is not a faceless entity. Rather it is people. And not just people, but our friends, our neighbors, our families - sons and daughters, moms and dads, who disregard better paying jobs to protect us. And from this perspective, I want to discuss Flock cameras.
Public safety is one of the foundational duties of local government. Since my initial foray into prosecution in 1998, criminal activity has evolved. It has become increasingly mobile and high tech, from various apps that entice our youth into terrible situations to the arranging of drug transactions via payments apps, clandestine chat programs and location tracking. As such, the tools law enforcement have used to protect our neighborhoods, roadways, and families must constantly be improved to keep pace. An early example of this evolution of law enforcement can be seen from Cleveland, Ohio, where the former leader of the Untouchables, Eliot Ness, became the Safety Director. He is credited with modernizing the police and fire departments, traffic control, and juvenile delinquency prevention. For example, he did away with the smaller police outposts and began the modern patrol method, where automobiles were used to get officers to scenes quickly around the city, thus improving response times and coverage for the police force.
Likewise, throughout my career, law enforcement has had to update its methods to ensure we can stay one step ahead of the criminals. Criminals continue to utilize whatever methods are available with no regard to the safety or rights of citizens. Legislators and activist courts have continued to place additional requirements on law enforcement above and beyond those that are constitutionally required. As law enforcement has evolved, changes continue to be vetted, tested and challenged through the courts of law and public opinion.
One of those technological advancements that has become part of the evolution of law enforcement has been the FLOCK safety cameras. Across Ohio and the entire country, this technology has transformed from an experimental concept into a critical, objective investigative asset that consistently saves lives, solves crimes, and holds offenders accountable.
To understand the value of this tool, it is important to first understand what it actually does and does not do. Like every topic of public interest today, there is a lot of hype and misinformation being fed to us via social media, television, and the like. Simply put, FLOCK cameras are fixed optical devices placed along public roadways. They do not utilize facial recognition, they do not track personal identities, and they do not monitor individual driving habits. You know what does use these things? All those apps you voluntarily give information to on your phone.
Rather, FLOCK cameras function as an objective digital witness. When a vehicle passes through a public corridor, the system captures an exterior snapshot of the vehicle and its license plate. That information is checked against state and national law enforcement databases for stolen vehicles, active felony warrants, and emergency alerts.
The practical impact in real-world criminal investigations is undeniable. When a child is abducted, the initial hours dictate whether a case ends in tragedy or rescue. In Quincy, Illinois, when an alleged child abductor fled the area, regional FLOCK cameras tracked the suspect vehicle across multiple states to the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. Law enforcement intercepted the vehicle, took the suspect into custody, and safely recovered the child. In Palm Springs, California, police have attributed more than thirty felony arrests directly to automated plate alerts, including the immediate intervention in multiple active kidnapping cases where officers were dispatched before the suspects could leave the jurisdiction.
The same rapid recovery capability protects vulnerable adults. When an eighty-six-year-old woman, suffering from memory loss, disappeared from Orange County, North Carolina, automated plate alerts tracked her vehicle hundreds of miles south into South Carolina. Deputies were able to coordinate across state lines and return her safely to her family. Agencies from Lexington, Kentucky, to Kearney, Nebraska, and Charleston County, South Carolina, regularly report that FLOCK alerts have eliminated the delays that historically plagued missing persons investigations, hit-and-run cases, and violent crime responses.
Beyond emergency alerts, these systems assist in dismantling interstate organized criminal activities and solving violent offenses. When a vehicle connected to a violent shooting, a commercial burglary, or other criminal offense flees the scene, traditional eyewitness descriptions are frequently fragmented or incomplete. FLOCK provides objective verification of vehicle make, model, color, and registration, allowing law enforcement to trace suspect movements, establish accurate timelines, and secure search warrants backed by verifiable facts.
Despite these clear public safety benefits, discussions surrounding FLOCK cameras tend to stop at a rallying hue and cry of “invasion of privacy.” While a healthy distrust of “the government” and public scrutiny of any government tool is beneficial, it is essential to ground the conversation in constitutional law and common sense.
Under established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which addresses our rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, individuals do not possess a reasonable expectation of privacy on what is observed from the outside of the vehicle while traveling on public thoroughfares. Operating a motor vehicle on a public street is an open activity, and license plates exist specifically to identify vehicles in the public domain. There is no constitutional infringement in observing or recording what is knowingly exposed to public view.
Furthermore, the privacy concerns frequently raised stand in stark contrast to everyday digital reality. Many of the most vocal critics of public safety cameras routinely carry smartphones and maintain active social media accounts where they voluntarily broadcast their real-time locations, travel itineraries, family photographs, and daily activities to corporate servers and the general public. While commercial social media platforms harvest and monetize deeply personal data, law enforcement systems operate under strict legal guardrails. I readily acknowledge that there is a vast difference between our conscious decision to forgo privacy rights to private entities as opposed to perceived government intrusion on those privacy rights but I urge you to think about it from this view - which of these different entity types gets more public scrutiny and has more protections in place against any such intrusions?
FLOCK systems do not track personal data, and the information collected is typically deleted automatically on a rolling thirty-day cycle unless it is actively tied to an ongoing criminal investigation. Access is restricted exclusively to authorized law enforcement personnel who must have an articulable, legitimate policing purpose to query the system. Every search creates a digital audit trail, ensuring institutional accountability and preventing abuse. And much like other law enforcement databases, improper use violations can be and are treated very harshly.
Law enforcement officers cannot be on every street corner at every hour of the day. I daresay Director Ness would see FLOCK cameras as a force multiplier, allowing agencies to do more with their existing resources and ensuring that criminal investigations are guided by hard, objective evidence rather than guesswork.
I would submit to you that embracing this technology is not a compromise of civil liberties. It is a modern, constitutionally sound measure designed to deter crime, protect victims, and ensure that our communities remain safe places to live, work, and raise our families. If I am wrong in this assertion, I am sure that there will be several Courts that will educate me and other prosecutors on this, and we will adjust to those interpretations. But what additional limits society places on its law enforcement is up to you. So, before you hop on the "ban FLOCK" bandwagon, please consider whether the benefits to this effective law enforcement tool outweigh perceived intrusions. What additional impediments to law enforcement do you wish to put in place? Or to say it another way, how much of a head start or advantage to criminals are you willing to endure in the name of privacy rights?
I thank you for your consideration.
