In general cops err on the side of protecting themselves from danger and I can't fault them for that. How would you approach a car whose driver is suspected of homicide?
Obviously someone made a mistake here but I'm not sure this has anything to do with Flock. The car had an "APB" out. We want cops to pull over "wanted" cars, right?
Police could solve a ton of these issues if they investigated before they tried to apprehend. If we're going to live in a surveillance state, use the damn surveillance for situational awareness. Right now, the cops just get a hit like "APB - Homicide" with no retrospective analysis or attempt to verify. It's essentially an unverified tip - they should use some expertise and tools to try to validate it before they commit.
But they don't, because there's no cost or penalty to them for overreacting, and there's a risk if they underreact. It's really an incentives problem. I don't know if the right spot to address it is with the individual officers or the department, but someone should have some huge liability for this mistake.
https://www.youtube.com/@PoliceActivity
It's pretty unvarnished; there are good shootings and bad shootings, they just post everything released. There are ~2700 videos right now. Pretty big sample.
I think you might reconsider your "If I were going to approach" statement.
don't?
wait until they are out of the car and you can tell that they arent armed and also arent wieldign a deadly weapon -the car itself.
flock is adding a false urgency