09/05/2026
13 DAYS IN JAIL — BECAUSE THE TECHNOLOGY POINTED POLICE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
We keep being told that Flock cameras are “just a tool.” Fine. Then police need to start treating them like a tool and not like an electronic eyewitness. A 23-year-old Florida woman says she spent 13 days in jail on felony charges for a fatal crash she had nothing to do with, and her attorney says police reliance on Flock camera information played a role in putting the wrong person behind bars.
Think about that for a moment. Not a speeding ticket. Not an inconvenient traffic stop. Thirteen days in jail. This is why the debate over automated license plate readers has never simply been about whether cameras can help solve crimes. Of course they can. The real question is what happens when the technology is wrong, incomplete, stale, misunderstood, or trusted too much.
A license plate reader sees a vehicle. It does not establish who was driving. It does not establish guilt. It does not interview witnesses, examine physical evidence, understand context, or replace basic police work. The information should be an investigative lead, not the end of the investigation.
We have already seen reports around the country involving officers accused of misusing Flock systems for personal searches. We have seen an outdated Flock alert reportedly lead to innocent motorists being stopped at gunpoint. Now we have another warning about what can happen when investigators follow a digital trail too far and end up at the wrong person.
This is the part that concerns me most. Technology can be incredibly useful, but people have a tendency to trust computers because they appear objective. Once a system says a particular vehicle was in a particular place, it becomes very easy for investigators to build a theory around that information instead of continuing to challenge it. That is exactly why corroboration matters.
There must be meaningful supervision. There must be audit trails. There must be accountability for misuse. There must be independent verification before someone loses their freedom. And elected officials should be asking these questions before communities are covered with privately operated surveillance cameras that can track vehicles across jurisdictions.
Because when a camera makes a mistake, the camera does not spend 13 days in jail. You do.
Government has enormous power. Handcuffs are power. Felony charges are power. Taking away someone’s freedom is power. When government combines that power with mass-surveillance technology, the standard should not become lower simply because a computer produced the information. The standard should become higher.
That is what Consent of the Governed means. The issue is not whether technology can catch bad guys. The issue is whether we are willing to build enough safeguards into the system to protect innocent people when the technology points at the wrong one.
