Home / Technology / License Plate Readers Flunk Accuracy Test
License Plate Readers Flunk Accuracy Test
1 Aug
Summary
- Most Flock camera license plate alerts were incorrect.
- Police faced thousands of false alerts, wasting resources.
- Wrongful arrests occurred due to faulty camera data.
Flock Safety, a company with over 120,000 cameras and 12,000 customers across 49 states, provides automatic license plate readers to law enforcement. However, a Business Insider analysis of alerts sent to the Roseville Police Department between 2023 and 2024 found a significant accuracy issue. Of 1,427 alerts concerning stolen vehicles or those used in felonies, 71% involved misread license plates.
Flock attributed some of these issues to unique deployment preferences by Roseville, including older hardware and non-standard installations. Despite Flock's claims of significant improvement, Roseville Police dispute this. The company has characterized the 71% misread figure as a mischaracterization, stating their internal testing shows high accuracy under optimal conditions.
Despite no documented instances of Roseville police making arrests based on faulty Flock scans, the department reportedly spent $450,000 dealing with misinformation. This issue is not isolated to Roseville; the Institute for Justice has documented at least 27 cases of drivers being wrongly detained or arrested due to Flock alerts. Incidents include a family being held at gunpoint in Arkansas and a man wrongly jailed for nearly a month in San Diego.
