You may have seen the term “flocked” showing up in headlines recently, and it has nothing to do with birds. It refers to Flock Safety, the company behind a fast-growing nationwide network of AI-powered license-plate cameras used by police departments to track vehicles. A new investigation has found that dozens of officers across the country have misused this same police surveillance system to track women in their own lives often without those women ever knowing they were being watched. It’s a troubling reminder that tech-enabled stalking isn’t limited to consumer gadgets like AirTag® devices. We wanted to break down what’s actually happening, what “getting flocked” means, and why we’re keeping a close eye on this story.
What Is Flock, and What Does It Mean to Get “Flocked?”
Flock Safety makes automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras — small roadside devices that photograph every passing vehicle, log its plate number, and feed that data into a searchable, mappable database. Police departments can then run searches to see where a specific car has been spotted and when, building a detailed picture of someone’s daily movements over time. The system now operates in more than 6,000 communities nationwide, recording roughly 20 billion license-plate scans every month.
“Getting flocked” has become shorthand for being tracked through this network and increasingly, it’s being used to describe something darker: being surveilled not as part of a criminal investigation, but by someone abusing police access to stalk a specific person.
What’s Going On
A Washington Post analysis of police and court records found that authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers nationwide of misusing license-plate reader systems for unauthorized purposes, including tracking women without their knowledge or consent. In 26 of those cases, investigators and prosecutors say officers used the technology specifically to spy on wives, girlfriends, exes, an ex’s new partner, or women they were pursuing romantically. Most of the cases identified in the investigation involved Flock’s system specifically.
The investigation documented troubling individual cases, including:
- A Wisconsin officer who allegedly used the system to check whether his ex-girlfriend had visited an abortion clinic.
- A Kansas police chief who allegedly tracked his ex’s location through the system and showed up while she was with another man — conduct that led to his firing.
- A Florida sheriff’s deputy who used a similar license-plate tool to monitor a woman he’d added to a watch list, later crashing his patrol vehicle while rushing to her location.
- A California case in which a former deputy allegedly used the camera network as part of a months-long stalking and harassment campaign against his former fiancée, which also involved a hidden camera concealed in her roommate’s bathroom.
Some officers involved were fired, prosecuted, or sentenced to prison. In other cases, according to the reporting, departments allowed officers to keep using the same systems even after being warned about misuse. One officer who was fired and sentenced to probation reportedly told the Post that improper use of the system was widespread within his department and rarely audited.
Flock has said it is developing new tools to flag suspicious search activity, and rolled out an optional “audit assistance” feature earlier this year. But there is currently no federal law governing how license-plate readers may be used, and with roughly 18,000 police agencies operating in the U.S., oversight (and accountability) varies enormously from one department to the next.
Why This Matters for Women
Cases like these highlight something advocates have warned about for years: Technology built to fight crime can just as easily become a tool for coercive control when it lands in the wrong hands — especially the hands of someone with a badge, a gun, and legal authority. Being tracked by a partner or ex is already a recognized form of domestic abuse and stalking, and it can escalate into more direct forms of sexual assault and workplace or personal violence if left unaddressed. When that tracking is powered by a government surveillance network, and carried out by someone sworn to protect the public, the imbalance of power — and the danger — is even greater.
The reporting also makes clear this isn’t an isolated incident involving one bad actor. It’s a pattern that has surfaced across multiple states and multiple license-plate reader systems, tied directly to gaps in oversight that make misuse easy to commit and hard to catch. For women who have experienced stalking, harassment, or coercive control from a current or former partner in law enforcement, this investigation may be the first confirmation that their fears weren’t unfounded. And it fits into a broader pattern we track under personal injury and safety issues affecting women.
Where We Stand
Right now, most of what’s known comes from a small number of confirmed cases uncovered through public records requests and court filings, while reporters and advocates have noted that these are almost certainly not the only instances of misuse, simply the ones that happened to be caught. We’re not interested in fueling panic, but we do think it’s important for women to understand what tools like these can do, and what recourse may exist if you believe you’ve been targeted.
We are actively following this story, including any new findings about which departments and camera systems are involved, how agencies are responding, and what legal protections may be available to people who’ve been tracked without their knowledge or consent. If you believe a current or former partner — including one in law enforcement — may have used a license-plate camera network or similar surveillance tool to track your movements, you may have legal options worth exploring. This is exactly the kind of issue our mission is built around: helping women understand their rights when systems meant to protect them are turned against them instead.
If you have questions or think you may have been affected by this kind of surveillance, contact us — we’re here to help. You can also browse our full blog for more coverage of issues affecting women’s safety, health, and rights.
You can read the original investigation in The Washington Post.
