{"slug": "flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data", "title": "Flock Surveillance Cameras Are Actually Horrible for Fighting Crime, FBI Data Shows", "summary": "FBI data shows that Atlanta's deployment of over 5,000 Flock Safety automatic license plate readers has had virtually no impact on crime clearance rates, with homicide clearances falling from 53.4% in 2021 to 48% in 2025, according to the Atlanta Community Press Collective. Len Phillips, head of DeFlock Atlanta, said the public was asked to accept surveillance based on a promise of improved safety that was 'just a one-way transaction.'", "body_md": "Since the launch of Flock Safety in 2017, the [ACLU estimates](https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/get-the-flock-out) the company installed some 100,000 automatic license plate readers throughout the United States. The dragnet comes with plenty of downsides to privacy and civil liberties: it’s ripe for [abuse by crooked cops](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/police-ai-surveillance-stalking), powered [by sweatshop labor](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-surveillance-flock-philippines), and [nearly impossible](https://futurism.com/future-society/flock-ai-surveillance-colorado) [to escape](https://futurism.com/future-society/flock-cameras-police-swarm-innocent-man) once it designates you a target.\n\nBut police officials insist it’s worth the trade off — because at it least it helps them catch the bad guys, right? Unfortunately, the reality isn’t quite that peachy.\n\nAtlanta, Georgia has experienced far and away the largest influx of ALRPs in the country, with over 5,000 various Flock cameras now blanketing the city. Yet as bombshell data released by the FBI shows, the city’s massive web of surveillance has had virtually zero impact on the Atlanta Police Department’s ability to solve crime, with some clearance rates for offenses like homicide even experiencing a decline over the past few years as the cameras have proliferated.\n\nFirst reported [by the Atlanta Community Press Collective](https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/07/28/flock-cameras-atlanta-clearance-rates/), the FBI data is a damning refutation of Flock’s primary claim: that ALPRs are necessary to help officers keep the public safe.\n\nAccording to the *ACPC*, the rates at which the APD resolves crimes like homicide, robbery, miscellaneous larceny, and shoplifting have actually *decreased *between 2021 and 2025, when the city’s ALPR build-out hit its full stride.\n\nFor homicide, the numbers are especially embarrassing, with the FBI reporting case closures at just 48 percent in 2025, down from 53.4 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, rape remained flat year over year, holding steady at a pitiful 37.7 percent closure rate from 2021 to 2025, and dipping down to just 21.2 percent at its lowest point in that four-year span.\n\nThough the APD actually did show improvement on some crime categories as Flock’s cameras sprouted all over the city, the changes from 2021 to 2025 amount to little more than rounding errors.\n\nFor example, case closures on crimes like aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft ticked up by just 0.2 and 0.3 percent, respectively. One would think motor vehicle theft solve rates would be an easy win for a technology designed to track cars, specifically. Yet in 2025, the APD was solving just one in tencases of auto theft, even with thousands of Flock ALPRs at its disposal.\n\nLen Phillips, head of the anti-ALPR community group DeFlock Atlanta told *ACPC* that the “public has been asked to accept a significant expansion of surveillance based on the promise that it would dramatically improve public safety.”\n\nIn reality, Phillips continues, that tradeoff between safety and civil liberties “was just a one-way transaction.”\n\n**More on Flock: **[In Light of Overwhelming Backlash, Flock Cancels Creepy Audio Surveillance Feature](https://futurism.com/future-society/flock-surveillance-backlash-audio-distress-screaming-police)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data", "canonical_source": "https://futurism.com/future-society/flock-surveillance-atlanta-fbi-data-crime-case-solve", "published_at": "2026-08-01 19:02:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-01 19:26:59.531151+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Flock Safety", "ACLU", "Atlanta Police Department", "FBI", "Atlanta Community Press Collective", "DeFlock Atlanta", "Len Phillips"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flock-surveillance-cameras-are-actually-horrible-for-fighting-crime-fbi-data.jsonld"}}