The Crimefighting Case for Flock License Plate Readers

One of the most popular formats on network television and streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video has been police and federal-agent crimefighting dramas like Law & Order, Blue Bloods and NCIS. Within that category are formats like Chicago PD and FBI that routinely include high-speed car chases (and foot chases on FBI) that especially feature forensic investigative, pursuit and capture technology. Showrunners aren’t making this stuff up. Their production staffs obviously retain experienced expert consultants with state-of-the-art technical knowledge.

If I were a fugitive on the lam from a serious felony, I’d now be well aware to instantly get off and staying off the grid. That means no credit card use. No cell phone calls, lest I’m “pinged” at a tower. Staying away from my LKA (last known address). Abandoning my own car on which there’s a BOLO (be on the lookout for) alert. Better, I should steal a car, although that info will be put out over the police network soon enough. Then there are the omni-present surveillance security cameras in airports, stores, businesses, hospitals, homes, and government buildings that Chicago PD and the FBI access to track where I’ve been and where I’m at.

To make matters even worse, criminals have to contend with the dreaded Flock cameras, an invention of the Atlanta-based Flock Safety Company whose crimefighting systems are highly-valued by law-enforcement agencies nationwide as force multipliers for solving homicides, kidnappings, assaults, vehicle thefts, jewelry store robberies, missing persons, human trafficking, and more. It was a Flock camera in Boulder that quickly located the car and aided police in the arrest and conviction for murder of the Islamist antisemitic terrorist who firebombed a crowd on the Pearl Street Mall.

Flock’s automated license plate readers, installed at intersections all over town with the consent of local governments across the country, photograph the plate and record details, including GPS locations, of every passing vehicle and compares the data to a “hot list” stored in the Flock system of all wanted plates nationwide. Local police can be notified of the hot plate vehicle in as little as 16-seconds.

Despite the claims of anti-Flock paranoids, their cameras don’t record your Social Security number or what takes place in the privacy of your bedroom.

One critic equated Flock’s cameras with Big Brother’s mass surveillance of the entire populace in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, “1984.” But BB’s cameras were hidden in two-way TV screens in everyone’s homes! Flock’s cameras are only in public venues. As a law-abiding citizen who roots for the cops and FBI agents, I’m grateful for this modern technology. I have nothing to hide in public places. This technology makes me safer by helping to capture the robbers and other bad guys.

As for personal privacy, don’t be naïve. We live in a technological era that already compromises much of our privacy through our own behavior in internet interactions with countless servicers, retailers, unknown scammers, and on social media. We’re easy prey for sophisticated computer and email hackers. Your only sanctuary is to become a recluse.

Another silly ploy of the anti-Flockers is to falsely invoke the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and the requirement of a warrant supported by a probable cause. This is beyond Flock’s capabilities. And the Fourth Amendment isn’t absolute; gray areas have forced many exceptions. Like allowing mass searching of travelers by TSA agents at airports without “probable cause.” This is a rational tradeoff to protect travelers from getting blown up in flight by terrorists or crashing into the World Trade Center and Pentagon again. Will the next contrivance to handcuff crimefighters be outlawing fingerprinting and DNA evidence?

A large element of those who oppose Flock cameras are sanctuary-city activists who want open borders, and who coddle and defend illegal immigrants. They don’t want data from those cameras to be shared with federal authorities like ICE because they don’t want these people or any illegal immigrants (including the criminals among them) to be deported, even if Flock technology will assist crimefighters in apprehending criminals of all kinds. The organizations and lawyers that support those here illegally describe themselves as defenders of the rights of “undocumented immigrants.” More accurately, they’re defenders of “illegal immigrant aliens.” If you drive a car without a license, that’s illegal; you’re not an “undocumented driver.”

This is another example of the mentality of Denver’s progressive prosecutors, judges, and juries who pander to criminals at the expense of their victims. Like rewarding, with multimillion dollar settlements and awards, violent leftist protestors who intentionally attack and provoke police attempting to keep the peace.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.