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Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

Had a random person submitted a pic taken on their phone of a vehicle in the same location the Flock cam did, police would ask:

- Does anything connect this vehicle to the accident?

- Did it look damaged; as though it had been in a crash?

- Did it look like it was fleeing or driving erratically?

- Was there anything suspicious about the vehicle or the driver?

Police would have deemed the photo irrelevant and moved on. But that didn't happen in this case.

Their failure to do so doesn't have to do with source of the image (Flock, shop CCTV, dashcam), but with their inexplicable lack of rigour.

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I would say part of it could be on flock depending on how flock displays information and details in responce to a query. Simply flagging a photo for review, no. But if it was like "this single person matches your search parameters exactly and here is their name, address, and current location", which could heavily imply guilt through overconfident displays of information.

At no point does a cop have to look at the photo(s), the timestamps, confirm the plate, see if the person who owns the car is driving it, or see the dozens of other cars in that area at the time that should also be of potential interest. They enter the query and get a single answer so obviously accept it as likely perpetrator.

The lack of rigor doesn't seem "inexplicable" to me- the lack of rigor seems fairly well described in the comment you're replying to.

Can you give an account of the lack of rigor, or is it some kind of holy mystery?

The police should have thought “okay a car was seen within several miles of an accident - so what?”

Their conclusion (after 5 minutes) would have been (obviously) that there’s not so much as a strand of chewing gum connecting the car to the accident, or making it stand out from dozens of others, and they’d promptly get back to searching for the car that actually was involved.

Yeah, I agree that is what usually would or should happen.

But the question is why it didn't happen. Because that is not what happened.

The answer is that it's flock, and that's the point you're "inexplicably" ignoring.

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