Flock misread license plates in 71% of the alerts it sent to police in one California town

In 2023 and 2024, Flock sent 1,427 alerts to the Roseville [CA] Police Department. Roseville police found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of those alerts. Max Isaacs, director of technology law and policy with the Policing Project at New York University’s School of Law, described Roseville’s misread data as “stunning.” “A 71% misread rate is really beyond the pale,” he told Business Insider, referring to Roseville’s reported error rate for stolen and felony vehicle alerts. He added that “in the absence of concrete rules that directly address the problem of misreads, this technology is not safe to be deployed in communities.”