How much safer do Flock cameras make us?

Scott Morkas (0:01)

NPR.

Ricky Mulvey (0:06)

If you drive in the US., there's a good chance that a flock camera has taken a photo of your license plate.

Wailin Wong (0:12)

And if you watch the news, you've probably heard about flock or seen some viral clips of concerned citizens. Like this man who dressed like Darth Vader at a San Diego City Council meeting last month.

SPEAKER_4 (0:23)

The emperor is a fan of flock, and we must continue utilizing flock technologies.

Ricky Mulvey (0:29)

Less than a decade ago, flock started by selling cameras to a couple of neighborhoods. Today, the Atlanta-based company has over 120,000 of them across the United States. Flock itself is worth over $8 billion.

This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey.

Wailin Wong (0:47)

And I'm Waylon Wong. Flock cameras can help police departments find stolen vehicles and violent criminals. Officers can tap into a network that tracks bad apples across counties and states.

Ricky Mulvey (0:58)

But they've also been misused to stock ex-partners, track protests, find people who are doing stuff that's legal.

Wailin Wong (1:06)

Today in the show, we break down the economics of Flock. What are police departments getting for their money? And do Flock cameras actually make communities safer?

Stoplight and speeding cameras have been around for decades. They may have led to an unwanted letter in your mailbox a time or two. These cameras are known as automated license plate readers. These are the little cameras mounted on stoplights or white boxes along the highway.

Ricky Mulvey (1:33)

For a long time, these cameras were controlled by individual police departments. If the cops wanted to find you, they had just a few cameras they could check around a city. Flock cameras are different, and that was a big selling point. Its system is easy to search.

Wailin Wong (1:47)

This is unlike another national database, the FBI's Next Generation Identification System. If you have ever been fingerprinted for a job or arrest, you're in the system.

Ricky Mulvey (1:56)

If someone wants to use the fingerprint database, there's a higher gate to get into the system.

Wailin Wong (2:01)

Depending on the state, Flock can have fewer restrictions. Some police use it to track activities that are legal in some states and illegal in others.

Ricky Mulvey (2:10)

Jason Kebler is the co-founder of 404 Media. He's broken stories on high-profile cases of police misusing the Flock system.

Jason Kebler (2:18)

Well, it is interesting because Flock initially pitched itself to homeowners associations and to local police as being a way to recover stolen vehicles. This is explicitly what they are for.

Wailin Wong (2:32)

Flock cameras aren't just tracking and recording specific infractions. They're recording all the time and keeping track of where vehicles go.

Ricky Mulvey (2:40)

Flock's default is storing this data for a week, but some police departments have stored it for up to a year.

Wailin Wong (2:46)

So they're different from the older generation of automated license plate readers, because they're not just recording traffic violations like running a red light. They're recording all the time. They can keep track of a driver's whereabouts, even if they aren't suspected of a crime. But these cameras have been used to solve crimes like murders and car thefts.

Ricky Mulvey (3:04)

And car thefts are really tough to solve. Stolen vehicles rarely have a witness. Cops and victims often don't have suspects. It can seemingly be a random crime.

Scott Morkas (3:14)

The only way you're going to be able to clear one of these crimes with an arrest, typically, is if you find somebody in that stolen vehicle.

Wailin Wong (3:20)

Scott Morkas was a police officer for two decades. Now he teaches criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.

Scott Morkas (3:27)

And a lot of that comes down to chance, right? A lot of that comes down to, is there a police officer driving by right when that stolen vehicle is occupied by somebody who stole it?

Ricky Mulvey (3:35)

Scott wanted to find out how effective flock cameras are at stopping auto thefts and other crimes primarily from an economic lens. He remembers getting a lot of sales pitches from different companies as a police executive.

Scott Morkas (3:47)

You will have vendor after vendor coming to you, trying to sell you what their product is, making all the promises under the sun. You might buy it, you might not, but if you do buy it, you find out that it doesn't even deliver on 50 percent.

Wailin Wong (3:59)

For example, each flock camera costs around $3,000 per year for a police department to operate. Fargo, North Dakota spends about $130,000 per year on its flock system.