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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

Someone that is innocent is going to get killed soon because flock flagged them incorrectly. I recall reading the auto journalist that got flagged for a stolen car while test driving a car. We have seen how often pull over/arrests can derail when a stupid cop that is aggressive pulls out their weapon first, fires fast and then investigates last. An innocent person that reacts wrongly is eventually going to make the news. :-(

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https://www.jalopnik.com/2219072/auto-journalist-harassed-by...

Link for the curious

Link straight from the source (the actual journalist)

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...

flock's out, glocks out

https://abcnews.com/US/man-speaks-after-police-release-9-tra... He was attacked by a police dog after a flock camera misread his license plate. He was then charged for "obstruction", which was dropped 4 months later.

Police dogs are another insane thing we allow.

You can be mauled by a police dog and if you hit the dog, you get an assault on a police officer charge. It's bad enough a cop can permanently disable you if you can't follow 3 conflicting orders being yelled, but they can also send an animal who literally doesn't know better.

And the absurdity of a dog sniffing around the car for contraband. Crazy that’s allowed and taken seriously by the justice system

Well the courts said they need probable cause for a search, so they needed an on-demand probable cause generator, or else they wouldn't be able to do pretextual searches on "randomly" stopped minorities anymore, which would be a violation of they(the police)'re civil rights.

The best thing is that the dog's actions are taken seriously from a judicial standpoint, yet the dog obviously can't be held responsible, so if there's wrongful action, no one is ever at fault!

That might already have happened for all we know

Woman with SUV filled with minors pulled out by cops and handcuffed on the ground in Colorado based on flock ID'ing the license plate of stolen... motorcycle with same number (but from a different state). You can't make this shit up.

https://www.kxlf.com/news/america-in-crisis/aurora-police-de...

glad you posted this.

> "Why are you now placing these children on the ground face into the concrete? It's hot! In front of all of us? Screaming at them. They are telling you they are hurt," witness Jenni Wurtz said.

I cannot believe LE will use this technology within ethical bounds, since they are willing to force a very young child onto the asphalt of a hot parking lot, who cannot possibly have posed a risk to their safety.

I mean, even people who are guilty of many crimes shouldn't be summarily executed in the street. Stealing a television or driving a tractor trailer of illegal weed from coast to coast isn't a death sentence even after a jury trial & conviction, so we shouldn't really be all that sanguine about guilty people being killed either.

They have already destroyed at least one life. There was that woman arrest

"One California town found Flock's license plate cameras were wrong 71% of the time"

https://www.techspot.com/news/113320-one-california-town-fou...

and the saying OP is looking for is "You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride". A police saying since the early 70s.

Flock doesn't kill people. Cops do.

The systems we have in place kill people. Aiming to blame just one point of failure, in a complex network of systems, is a failure itself

that's why you don't give cops unaccountable tools which they can use to kill/harm/harass people even more effectively.

Cops need to be on a leash because the profession attracts the untrained pitbulls of humanity.

These people should be digging ditches half the time, yet they're the ones with qualified immunity and guns.

> We have seen how often pull over/arrests can derail when a stupid cop that is aggressive pulls out their weapon first

I'll bite. I'm sure it has happened. But how often?

Well, I'll bite. How often would it need to happen for you to find it outrageous?

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