Flock cameras, or automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have frequently been in the news lately for how they have been misused by law enforcement personnel and, in some cases, have led to innocent people being accosted and sometimes arrested by police despite never actually committing a crime.
In August, after an internal review revealed a startling number of errors made by the system with regard to reports of stolen vehicles, the Los Angeles Police Department decided not to extend its contract with Flock. Several other jurisdictions around the United States have made similar decisions, either for a similar reason or simply due to the backlash the cameras have caused.
One woman summed up the terror that misidentification by a Flock camera can cause
On Wednesday, 23-year-old Palm Beach, Florida, resident Lindsey Isaacs testified in front of Congress about how Flock cameras influenced the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) to mistakenly arrest her on vehicular homicide charges.
In her testimony, Isaacs explained how despite spending most of the evening of October 4, 2025 in her apartment, on October 5, at around 1:04 a.m., three Marion County Sheriff’s Office deputies and an FHP trooper showed up at her parents’ Ocala house looking for her.
They then informed her parents that she had been in a deadly car crash and inquired about her whereabouts and the location of her car because a Flock camera had captured her Dodge Durango approximately two to three miles west of the crash scene. They did this despite witnesses describing a Durango of a different color.
“I gave the troopers my receipt and information showing where I had been. I told them that I had not been involved in any crash. The troopers told me there was damage to my vehicle consistent with a collision,” she told Congress. “But I could not see the damage they were describing. My Durango was in immaculate condition. Yet I stood there watching law enforcement take it away while telling me that my vehicle had been involved in a crash in which three people had died.”
She was arrested and spent over three days in solitary confinement
On April 17, 2026, authorities issued a warrant for her arrest. She was then placed in solitary confinement for approximately three and a half days because of “because of the severity of the charges and pending evaluation.”
She was then, according to her testimony, “moved to a mental health unit for approximately 24 hours before ultimately being transferred to G-Block, a maximum-security housing unit, where I remained for approximately 10 days.”
On April 22, 2026, she was denied bond at her pretrial detention hearing. Only after her attorney presented the court with multiple photographs of her Durango in the FHP impound lot without the collision damage investigators had claimed was present, was she granted bond.
“The investigation instead resulted in charges against another individual,” Isaacs told Congress. “I came here today because I want you to understand that surveillance technology does not exist in a vacuum. Information collected by technology can become part of an investigation that affects a real human being.
“In my case, a Flock camera captured my vehicle a few miles from the scene of a terrible crash. That piece of information became part of an investigation that ultimately led to my arrest on three counts of vehicular homicide and 13 days in jail for a crash I had nothing to do with.”
Flock executives were invited to testify before Congress this week but chose not to attend. Lindsey Isaacs has filed a civil lawsuit against the Florida Highway Patrol.