The $4 billion surveillance startup has been selling law enforcement clients on the promise of dramatic reductions in crime. But it’s not clear that the company lives up to its own hype.or a brief time in 2021, the affluent town of San Marino in Los Angeles County saw a dramatic decrease in residential burglaries, its most common crime. Between January and May, they dropped 80%, down to seven from 32 in the same period of 2020.
Even the town’s police chief John Incontro admits the 70% claim — still trumpeted on Flock’s website today — isn’t accurate. “I definitely need to talk to their marketing folks,” he toldThis isn’t the only example of Flock taking liberties with crime statistics to bolster its marketing.
This “borders on ludicrous barring clear evidence of what would be considered a four-alarm research finding,” Michael Sierra-Arévalo, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author ofColumbia University law professor Jeffrey Fagan bluntly said of the paper: “I doubt that this would survive peer review.”have used Flock’s marketing claims around crime reduction to sell their communities on the startup’s license plate readers.
But between 2021, the first full year Flock's cameras were installed citywide, and 2023, Group A crimes like aggravated assault and residential burglary rose by 5 percent across the city. As of April 2023, Fort Worth had 170 cameras on which the city Regardless of its true impact on crime rates, many law enforcement officials say they find Flock’s tech useful.
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