Nothing To See Here

A running, sourced timeline of how license-plate readers, body cams and AI policing tools are actually going — and what the failures cost taxpayers.

Timeline / entry

· US

Flock's '10% of U.S. crime' study draws scrutiny from its own academic co-author

On February 8, 2024 Flock Safety issued a press release headlined ‘Flock Safety is Instrumental in Solving 10% of Reported Crime in U.S.’ The release analyzed crime-clearance data from 123 law enforcement agencies collected between April and June 2023. In March 2024, 404 Media reported the study was conducted by Flock employees with oversight from two academic researchers, one of whom said ‘I personally would have done things much differently’ and that the police data was ‘too varied and incomplete’ for meaningful statistical analysis. The researcher also said the two were brought into the study late in the process. The findings drew significant criticism from other criminologists.

Sources

  1. New Study Finds that Flock Safety is Instrumental in Solving 10% of Reported Crime in U.S. — GlobeNewswire (Flock Safety press release), Feb 8, 2024 (globenewswire.com)
  2. Let's Talk About the Flock Study That Says It Solves Crime — 404 Media (404media.co)
  3. Researcher Who Oversaw Flock Surveillance Study Now Questions How It Was Done — Slashdot, Mar 20, 2024 (tech.slashdot.org)
  4. Studies Show Flock's ALPRs Reduce Crime… So Long As Flock Controls The Inputs And The Methodology — Techdirt, Apr 1, 2024 (techdirt.com)

Something wrong? Send a correction — cite a source and we'll fix it and note the change.