Police departments are not regularly auditing how their officers use Flock, a powerful surveillance network -- so we did it for them. Three cops are now being investigated and one was arrested as a result of our inquiries. Here's how we did it... 🧵

Our Flock reporting just got five cops arrested. The Indiana cops were just criminally charged for spying on women. @aaronjschaffer, @dmac1 and I found suspicious searches and got their agency to investigate. How many bad cops are still getting away? wapo.st/4xDOH3d

Five cops in Indianapolis were just criminally charged with abusing Flock to spy on their ex-wives, their wives' ex-partners and women they met on duty. Audit was triggered by us at the @washingtonpost, the prosecutor said. Story incoming.

The gov's action on Flock cameras comes as @a_y_denrunnels was preparing to publish this investigation into how a state agency appointed by Abbott has used an auto insurance fee increase passed by #txlege to massively expand the Flock network across Texs texastribune.org/2026/08/28/…

New: Americans' feelings toward Flock & license-plate readers have completely flipped since last year. More Americans now oppose police use than support it, saying the cameras don't make them feel safer and that they don't want any near their homes. What the new polls show: 🧵

Wow! Recent polling shows that pretty much every American demographic group views Flock unfavorably. Proud to see that privacy and security is something we can all get behind!

.@GovRonDeSantis cites the case of the Florida cop we first found misusing Flock data, says license plate readers are "out of control" and could lead to a “surveillance state”: "What the hell’s going on with this? ... People are right to be concerned" floridapolitics.com/archives…

This type of public review—which resulted in three investigations and one arrest—is not even possible in Virginia because of a massive freedom of information act exemption in the 2025 law purporting to regulate law enforcement use of ALPRs.

These cops misused your service for years and went undetected by their departments, who never did audits. They only took action after journalists read the audit logs and flagged the suspicious use to the departments. Which part of catching these cops is Flock taking credit for?

In IJ's Norfolk, Va.'s Flock lawsuit, we learned that for 2 years no one at the NPD reviewed the audit logs (history of who searched for what). Even after we sued, they didn't start until after they lost their motion to dismiss. It turned out to be one guy in a basement.

Takes a lot of air out of the argument that cops getting caught & 'punished' shows the system working how it should when this is what it takes to catch them

A sheriff's office in Louisiana just fired a Flock-misusing deputy known as DJ Bulletproof (the media outlet was us, btw) wdsu.com/article/louisiana-s…

New: We found cops who misused Flock to spy on their wives. Their bosses at the police department had no idea. Three are being investigated and one was arrested after we asked about their searches. washingtonpost.com/technolog… @dmac1 @aaronjschaffer

In our story on the cops who stalk women with license-plate readers, we said Flock could make two simple changes to reduce abuse: Require case numbers for every search and proactively scan for suspicious behavior. Now, the company is adopting both wapo.st/3UgJLmZ

New @TheFP video on Flock says, "They're not interested in you unless you're a kidnapper," which is 100% wrong. Besides the fact that we found 50 cops who used Flock to spy on their wives, exes and others - the cameras record everyone's plates, whether they're criminals or not.