Flock's camera network lets police search video by written description

Police departments across the United States can search video footage using a typed description of a person, not just a license plate number, according to a Wired investigation into software made by Flock Safety. The outlet collected code the company sends to officers’ browsers before login and built a mockup of what officers see when they run a search.

One tool, an AI-powered watchlist, lets an officer draw a boundary around part of a city and set every camera inside it to run a continuous search for anyone matching a written description. A second tool, called FreeForm, searches video for details such as clothing or objects using plain language; on license plate cameras, search stays limited to vehicles. A third feature, People Detection Alert, notifies an officer whenever a person enters a boxed-off area on a single camera, with no written description required at all.

Wired’s analysis found that Flock’s system screens an officer’s written description against eight categories of sensitive content, including race, religion, nationality, and what the code calls “subjective or biased terms,” before a search can run against stored footage. Most categories can block a search outright. One category, described as political, social, and cultural expression, produces only a warning that the officer can dismiss by ticking a box and adding a comment. Tom Bowman, policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Wired that category sits among the most protected under the First Amendment, calling it notable that policing concerns there are lowest.

Flock told Wired its search tools are built to help police “while maintaining clear safeguards around how the technology can be used,” and that queries are evaluated against its content policies. The company did not describe how its moderation model was built or what separates one verdict from another, and did not say what stops a search submitted without a case number today. Flock says mandatory case codes, shorter data retention windows, and automated audits to flag misuse will apply across its search tools by the end of the year.

A pattern of misuse

The findings follow a string of documented abuse. The Washington Post has reported that at least 50 officers have recently been charged with or accused of misusing license plate readers, 46 of those cases involving Flock, with more than half targeting a current or former partner or someone the officer wanted to date. Separately, a Texas deputy searched more than 83,000 cameras for a woman who had an abortion, drawing a letter of concern to Flock CEO Garrett Langley from two members of Congress. Illinois also found the company had let federal immigration agents reach state camera data in violation of state law, and the backlash has led some police departments and city councils to cancel or reverse Flock contracts.

Wired’s analysis notes that Flock’s guardrails may discourage some abusive searches and will record them in audit logs, but nothing in the code it reviewed stops a search from running once an officer clicks through a warning. Whether that changes once case codes and audits become mandatory, and how Flock’s moderation model reaches its verdicts, remain open questions the company has not answered.