How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way?
I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.
I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.
Basically the entire point of the fourth Amendment (and sort of the Bill of Right as a whole) seems to be based on the assumption that we cannot trust the government to not abuse its power, so we purposefully limit its power. At least that's the impression I got, IANAL disclaimer I guess.
If we cannot safely assume that every cop is above-board, which we obviously cannot, then it's trivial to come up with cases of "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" defense. A bad cop could use Flock to stalk an ex-girlfriend. A bad cop could find some unsavory-but-not-illegal behavior from a politician (e.g. visiting a porn shop) and blackmail them. A bad cop could, as demonstrated by this article, simply use a Flock camera to harass someone they don't like.
I didn't think this was a controversial opinion, but I do see a lot of Flock/mass-surveillance defenders so I guess it is.
Remind them that whether they're doing something wrong or not is not their call. That sometimes shows signs of sinking in.
The cop using the cameras to stalk his ex girlfriend really should have put an end to such argument. No, survellillance via an unregulated, private company that any "law environment" can access on a whim was never going to end well.
Abusing surveillance tools has nothing to do with legitimate policing, so "over-policing" is probably the wrong word.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sure sounds bad. Poor communities have frequently suffered the most from police forces, since by and large police are designed and funded by the wealthy to protect their interests.
The police have always been oriented towards protecting the wealthy from the poor.
Police perform an important function. Unregulated, unchecked, untrained, militarized police taught that they are immune from prosecution for crimes against citizens do not.
Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
A well-regulated police force drawn from the population it is sworn to protect is a good thing. It's a hard, important job.
And yes, it's obvious Flock was going to be abused and no I don't think a well-regulated police force should have access to pervasive surveillance. But that doesn't mean I want to do away with police in general.
The whole ACAB narrative is one of the most deeply unpopular views of the American left, polling at something like 80% disapproval. I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor? A mercenary? Gotten out the community pitchforks? Because that ends well as a mechanism for justice? I genuinely don't know, but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
They also suffered from a lack of point to point teleportation. Or, I mean, they would if that existed.
The point being that it's not terribly useful to talk about things that only exist in theory.
Police, rather by definition are regulated by the people with money because they can afford it. The people in "poor neighborhoods" can't afford to pay for police.
> Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
Says the person trying to change the topic of discussion to hypothetical ideal instead of the world we actually live in.
As for ACAB and its polling, well, that's like saying "socialism polls badly", it probably does, but also nobody answering the polls actually agrees on how to define it.
There is an absolutely massive amount of (american) propaganda devoted entirely to portraying police in the best possible light and influencing people towards that end. We have endless movies and tv shows and books and cable news shows and radio talk shows and on and on.
> I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor?
No, literally nobody thinks that and it's a pretty sad attempt at rhetoric to suggest it.
> but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to draw a distinction here, if you actually look at americans, you can pretty easily divide them into two groups, one of which that wants "transparency and demilitarization" and one of which wants a police force with more military style weapons and equipment, and if you are on the side of demilitarization, then guess what, you're on the same side as everyone yelling acab.
You aren't some kind of special person who can some how see the perfect compromise between all positions that everyone else has missed.
"Police should be monitored by a complete separate agency with no chain of command in common with the police force, answerable to voters in a more direct way, as well as trained to de-escalate situations and held accountable for their crimes" doesn't fit on a placard and it's hard to chant. ACAB is a lot shorter.
Also, as a final takeaway, the phrase is "a few bad apples SPOILS THE ENTIRE BARREL" not "a few bad apples are perfectly fine and nobody minds them".
I'm sure most police aren't actually committing crimes and abuse of power. But they also refuse to hold the ones that do accountable and are therefor 100% complicit with all the abuses.
That's really not what policing is about even in the most charitable view. It's certainly what policing has been propagandized to be.
Besides playing candy crush in a cruiser, the vast majority of policing everyday is responding to complaints that happen after a crime happens (or someone getting nervous).
The role of police, in the most charitable framing, is to catch people suspected of committing crimes.
Evil is also something I'd quibble over. For example, the cops that are doing things like hiding in closets to catch people jumping a turnstile certainly aren't "stopping evil people". People are complex, there are few that are truly "evil".
Now, my less charitable read on cops is they have overbloated budgets, too little oversight and consequences, and they certainly don't prioritize impactful crimes to low class people. Cops, for example, very rarely try and catch/stop bike theft. Cops primarily exist to punish people that pester the rich and well connected. See, for example, BAM and reckless ben.
Mugged, no. But I've certainly had someone try and pickpocket me.
> you are clearly someone who already doesn't have to deal with crime
Not in my day to day. In fact, most people don't. I've certainly known people who have been mugged and the thing they've said is universal "The police didn't do jack shit".
> and are projecting your own insecurities about it.
That's an uncharitable reading of my comment.
> In real life, good people want criminals stopped at all costs, especially when it inevitably happens to them.
In real life, police don't stop crimes. They don't stop muggings. That's not the job of cops. As I stated and you don't really want to contend with, the role of cops is catching the people that mug after the muggings happen. Unless you want to literally blanket the streets with cops, they will never have enough presence to stop a mugging because, spoiler, muggers don't tend to be blind and they don't tend to mug when cops are around.
Also here's that "good and evil" stuff again. No, good people don't have universal beliefs, you are using your own standards as "good" and classifying anyone who disagrees with you as evil. Life isn't black and white. I gave some pretty clear examples of that already (which you didn't respond to).
> but being unconditionally anti-police is a great way to get normal people to disagree with your politics, and we get people like trump.
Where, anywhere, have I stated that I'm anti-police? You are strawmanning me.
Police are a necessity that should exist. But, unlike you, I realize they aren't superheroes flying in to stop crime. The state has to have enforcement of it's laws and something like cops will always exist. The question is, how much should we fund them and how much accountability should we expect.
My standard is that cops who flagrantly abuse their authority (such as the cops in this article) should lose all ability to be cops. They are done, no more career. Do you disagree with that?
Unless you are making the argument that it's impossible for cops to not power trip, then you should be able to clearly see that I'm not advocating that we abolish the police.
Stop trying to play armchair psychologist and actually address my comment in your next response. It's annoying that you decided to put forward so many bad faith and misrepresentations of my argument in just a few sentences.
While I don't think police are omniscient superheros stopping crime before it happens, they are often true heros in every sense of the word. They put their lives on the line in very dangerous situations to try and prevent danger to others, and cops are killed in duty very regularly to no fanfare outside the local community.
Police are a public good. Without a public police force the wealthy would happily fund their own security, and most already do. There are neighborhoods in San francisco with private security teams who simply bypass the shortcomings of SFPD. I'm not sure I follow why police inherently exist to serve only the interests of the wealthy. I agree with most everything else you said.
I agree police are a public good that society should maintain. The alternative is just a pile of bad ideas.
That being said, we, as in America, do a terrible job of maintaining our police force as a public good.
You talk about being "heroic" and "risking their lives", and that's technically true, but only for a very tiny subset, a larger subset is abusing their power and authority, and more crucially, never being held accountable.
Preventing all crimes is functionally impossible, although the incidence can be reduced in certain ways, but what we need is the criminals to be prosecuted. And a lot of police who commit crimes are not.
That tiny subset of heroics is not trivial just because it's a small number. Police are in danger every day and even if they draw a weapon .1% of the time that 1/1000 is everything, if they're not respected for putting their lives on the line then why would anyone take on the job. SF already can't hire enough police in part because of the anti police culture and overtime rates are a huge drain on the budget.
Preventing all crimes is impossible, but the culture that forms around taking them seriously or not absolutely contributes to local crime rates. In SF gangs and like minded criminals all talk to each other, they know whether they will get away with crimes, and it's why young children feel brazen enough to commit violent crime knowing the system will protect them.
Ivory tower academics can analyze police all they want from their already safe neighborhoods, the rest of us have no patience for it. I said this topic was a wedge, and even if I'm wrong it absolutely represents the sentiment of a huge portion of regular people who vote, and will vote red on this issue alone.
There's a lot of stats on this, cops are just as likely to die in a car accident as they are to die from being shot (not very). It is a dangerous job, but not one that requires heroic fortitude.
I believe the way you view police directly contributes to their lack of accountability. They are just people. Getting training and a badge doesn't transform someone into the hero you expect them to be. There is an endemic of bad cops because they very often get a "these are heroes" treatment by a large percentage of the public.
I actually want cops to be the heroes TV portrays them to be. But to do that, you have to weed out the losers and bullies who figured out it's a cushy job that pays pretty well for very little education and oversight. That will involve doing things the police union will certainly protest. For example, a national registry of police misconduct and mandatory background check. To stop the problem of a cop who egregiously violates someone's rights from just moving to the next town over.
The poorest communities need good policing the most, and suffer from bad policing the most. Both things are true at the same time.
Malfeasance is the $10 word that's probably more appropriate here for the actions of officers intentionally abusing the systems their authority grants access to.
‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party
IIRC originally posted in reference to anti-trans women who voted Republican and were shocked to find out that women’s rights weren’t a priority
I don't think the people recording regular police interactions and refusing police instructions when stopped ever had any doubt about being over-policed.
> NSF funding from my relatives: "yes, funding has been illegally cut,..."
How is a cut illegal? Does any additional dollar in funding have to persist for all of eternity. For reference:
| FY | NSF appropriation |
| 1952 | $4M |
| 1960 | $153M |
| 1970 | $440M |
| 1980 | $992M |
| 1990 | $2.08B |
| 2000 | $3.91B |
| 2010 | $6.87B |
| 2020 | $8.21B |
| 2024 | $9.06B |
| 2025 | $9.06B |
| 2026 | $8.75B |
If the Office of Management and Budget follows a president's order to cut NSF funds and they violate the Anti-Deficiency Act, it's literally a crime. If the president orders the violation in order to achieve some political outcome, that's also bribery and extortion.
In this mafia regime it's a case of 'throw it on the pile,' but it doesn't change the fact that this stuff is wildly illegal. The president's job is to be the dumb unthinking agent of Congress and to execute the laws they pass on behalf of the people. Budgets are laws.
Execution will never be as simple as the textual content of a bill, so I'm not sure 'mindless' is a useful term.
While the POTUS is expected to be a bureaucrat, functionally and conceptually that is only one aspect of their responsibilities. Military oversight and diplomatic coordination as head of state, comes to mind.
Yes, exactly, and if someone don't like what the Constitution says, then you either do the proper patriotic thing and gather enough folks who agree with you to change or amend it, or you (as the MAGA loons are so fond of telling folks) move to a different country with rules you can agree with.
Sadly, that's not the world we now live in. We've let psychotic narcissists overun our government to a dangerous degree, making it near impossible to change those things that need changed, because they have all the money, power, and weapons, and they're not afraid to use them against "We The People". At this rate, I half-expect I'll see Trump out on 5th Avenue one day soon, testing his theory about him shooting someone without consequence.
Accountability: misuse of cctv or bodycam footage can lead to disciplinary action of various kinds including being sacked. The link below will give you an idea of the volume of formal complaints and the 'pipeline' from complaint to potential dismissal and criminal proceedings against officers;
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-misconduct-e...
The accountability system is 'under review' (we do this a lot, slows things down nicely and looks like action);
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-review...
It isn't unicorns and rainbows by any means;
Of course, sensible policy like this won't happen. Better to cut them all down.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
That's what's meant by a lack of accountability. Cops abusing their authority to pester people they don't like has been happening for nearly as long as there has been cops. But in modern America they have extra protections and one of the most powerful unions in the US which shield them from all real punishments.
Just being caught abusing the system is meaningless.
> Cops abusing their authority to pester people they don't like has been happening for nearly as long as there has been cops.
I think on net cops are good. We grant them power and put in reasonable guards for them to not abuse that power. And when they do there are remedies, like this guy is pursuing.
Because these lawsuits all play out the same. The city pays out, the cop is maybe fired and they go get a job in the next city over as a cop.
> What do you think it should be?
At a minimum every cop involved should lose the right or ability to be a cop anywhere.
> I think on net cops are good. We grant them power and put in reasonable guards for them to not abuse that power.
I think cops are necessary, I wouldn't call them good. I don't think we have reasonable guards because cops abuse their power all the time and face few consequences. More than a few cops have gotten away with murder.
> And when they do there are remedies, like this guy is pursuing.
The remedy is that the city pays, not the cops. That's not accountability. The city doesn't even have to fire the cop, just pay out.
Qualified immunity is a joke. They have absolute immunity with the exception of when it is too politically hot and the cops were stupid enough to leave a trail that worked to convict them.
Policing in America is effectively a state-sanctioned mob. I get the need for the law to have teeth in its enforcement, but when the law doesn't apply to those that enforce it then the system is inherently broken.
Until this current regime, my assumption was a simple hierarchy of oversight up to the federal level but the current regime itself has no oversight and is absolutely fine with the system as it is.
People suck. The tool shouldn't exist.
I genuinely do not understand the boot-licking. Bizarre. It show's a complete and utter lack of foresight.
The tool absolutely should exist. It has literally helped solve 10k kidnappings. Here are a few examples:
https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-w...
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnappin...
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/kidnapping-investigation-l...
Has someone checked if they didnt abuse their power over 100 other people? Very likely no.
No they don’t. This is an ignorant statement to make knowing the history of lawsuits against police and how little to no effect that’s had on police abuse of power.
It’s just like gambling: who gives a shit if you’re playing with someone else’s money.
2. It's lack of public oversight because an attorney filing a complaint about an unlawful arrest noticing a suspicious photograph from a month after the incident and then compelling the police to turn over evidence isn't oversight.
Accountability would have started with the officer, who knew very shortly after arresting the victim that the arrest was unlawful, being placed on leave almost immediately. But since it progressed to this point, accountability would look like literally any administrative action being taken whatsoever once the improper use was discovered.
Public oversight would have looked like that audit trail actually being read internally to determine whether there was a legitimate use for the searches in the first place. An audit trail that never gets looked at unless you're getting subpoenaed isn't "oversight".
> Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor.
The cop wasn't doing anything illegal, from the article: While standing in a private parking lot in Sussex, Wisconsin, on May 4, 2025, Napoleon Jones witnessed a traffic stop made by an out-of-county police officer. "It just didn't sit right with me,"
Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up.
Can you cite the law that requires more than “it doesn’t sit right” to record police officers in public?
Why citizens cannot record cops?
They are just shameless because making money has been canonized as a greater moral good than being a decent human being. We need to bring back name and shame.
You could argue that YC has more of a conscience than other investors like A16Z. But I'm not sure how much I believe that seeing Gary Tan's moral indifference towards startups that are the incarnate equivalent of the Torment Nexus.
This is a vastly smaller set of situations compared to what a health society would consider acceptable.
There is a huge gulf between what the law allows, and what being a decent person requires, and that gulf is called "being a scumbag."
We should not alter the law to prohibit everything in that gulf, because it would create an authoritarian society ripe for abuse, relying on controls like mass surveillance and the erasure of civil liberties.
However, we can and should name, shame, and socially/commercially outcast people who gleefully engage in the art of being a scumbag.
> trying to make money
It is indeed possible to make money without funding evil things.
For example - I don’t have links to substantiate this yet - but I’d bet the same playbook that’s always used was used here as well. Flock cameras were provided to cash strapped police departments at a very low cost - unsustainably low for any other non vc funded company to compete with - in order to juice growth and build the scale/network effect to make the system valuable.
There have been 1m “cases supported” and helping to locate approximately 10k missing persons. If you don't believe that look at a few real cases. Every example of a bad case is basically cops keeping tabs on ex-girlfiends or wives. Yes, that's bad but I prefer to save kids from kidnapping.
Saying its "anti-American" isn't an argument. I think it's very pro-American in that it protects law abiding Americans from criminals.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock
https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-w...
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnappin...
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-...
In fact, we should take the pictures from public school districts and feed them into this system. Facial recognition immediately available on any kid that happens to walk on any public street. Why would anyone want to opt out of such a system?
(/s if it isn’t obvious)
This is why the human life arithmetic has to be dropped if you want to genuinely steelman your point, it's a tortured statistic that we can use to justify any number of outlawed practices. If you can defend your point sincerely without the use of hysteric examples, then please walk us through the logic and authority that convinces you Flock is good. If you can't, then I'm going to have to agree with the people dogpiling on you, this is a ridiculous opinion.
2. find one superficial similarity between them (this proves they are actually identical)
3. "why are you against one but not the other"
Can we drop the human life arithmetic and discuss the pros/cons like normal people? Do you understand why your stance is being repeatedly mocked in the same exact way?
"It's a camera bro, taking the same pictures of your daughter that anyone can take with their phone. If you don't want there to be a log of the route she walks home, take it up with the police."
Strawman. I have never heard of one single ingenuous person that believed these would only be used appropriately.
The main issue is that our government has too much power as to be unstoppable.