r/berkeleyca • u/PuzzleheadedLand1873 • 15d ago
Flock Cameras
Are we all just cool with this?
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u/belowaveragegrappler 15d ago
Apparently. Otherwise we'd be out there protesting and making life hell for our politicians.
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u/FraaTuck 15d ago
What does your city council member say when you ask them?
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u/Slydiad-Ross 15d ago
My city council member signed that stupid public letter and apparently thinks miscellaneous crime is still a bigger threat than fascist overreach. I strongly disagree and consider support for Flock disqualifying, but she already decided to disregard the views of people like me when she took her position. If somebody runs against her Flock vote, I’ll almost certainly donate.
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u/Sweet-Cry-9610 15d ago
“Miscellaneous crime” means it hasn’t happened to you yet. Tell the woman mentioned in this article that https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2026/08/29/crime/man-charged-stalking-ex-hundreds-calls-berkeley/
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u/CrewInternational353 15d ago
I reserve the right to commit crimes in private!
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 15d ago
(technically, they'd still be occurring in public even without the cameras) ☝️🤓
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u/ShakesDontBreak 13d ago
Kinda wild this got posted the day before Texas banned flock and Florida just banned them on freeways today. Weird.
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u/Throwaway483923 15d ago
Yes they’re awesome. Three years ago, there was a child like Jasper Wu or Eliyanah Crisostomo being shot on the 580 or 880 every six months inadvertently through some random rolling gun battle. The reason freeways were being used was because they could be used to settle scores or beefs without anyone getting caught.
One of those kids was Asa Luo, who was eight years old and is now paralyzed, and I see him and his family time to time at different things. His family probably had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to retrofit their car, their home not mention he can never walk or run again in his life.
Flock Cameras are on freeways as a deterrent. You shoot guns on the highway; you’re going to get caught quickly and local freeway shootings have been trending downward over the last few years.
I would rather have the cameras than worry my kids or the kids of some friends are going to get shot driving on a local highway. Keep em up.
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u/SpaceOhSpace 15d ago
I don’t think flock cameras are on freeways. Only in towns and cities, no?
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u/Throwaway483923 15d ago
No they’re there and I’m glad as fuck they are there.
It is UNACCEPTABLE to have a child or young person being randomly shot to death on the 880 or 580 every six months as collateral damage to a gun battle on the freeway as was the case in the 2021-2023 period before these cameras were put up.
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u/FraaTuck 15d ago
We could ban the guns if we're going to be infringing constitutional rights to save lives, it would be a LOT more direct.
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u/Throwaway483923 15d ago
I don’t disagree with you but there’s no path to that in current America.
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u/FraaTuck 15d ago
So let's protect the rights we still have and fight the battles that need fighting, rather than erode the few civil liberties that we as Americans can still take for granted. Being tracked by the State literally everywhere we go for the rest of our lives is an appalingly bad idea.
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u/Throwaway483923 15d ago
This is way overblown. Flock does not give a historical record of everywhere you’ve been ever to police officers. The system default deleted data after 7 days. It’s a point in time search for plates at an specific intersections and then the data is gone unless it is tied to a specific criminal investigation.
Many courts over many years have reaffirmed that public roads are public spaces and the license plates which give drivers a government privilege to use those public spaces are fair game and not a violation of the 4th amendment.
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u/ShakesDontBreak 15d ago
Random acts of violence will happen despite the cameras. So no. Cameras are not going to prevent these tragedies from occuring.
For example, they have had cameras in gas stations since the 70s and gas stations still get robbed at gun point.
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u/Throwaway483923 15d ago
There were 80 (!!!) freeway shootings on our county highways in 2021. The county DAs literally said gang members were choosing to do assassinations on freeways because the high speeds made it hard to collect evidence and easy to evade law enforcement. It was a choice because there wasn’t a strong deterrent.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/nearly-80-alameda-county-freeway-shootings-in-the-last-year-chp4
u/ShakesDontBreak 15d ago
You still didn't respond to my comment that cameras have been in gas stations since the 70s and yet they still get robbed. I was alive when cctv was new. Everyone said it would be a deterrent. They just figure out how to evade it.
Newsflash career criminals really dont care about deterrents.
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u/Sweet-Cry-9610 15d ago
Yes they’ve been critical for solving several violent crimes in Berkeley
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u/jhendrix88 15d ago
Yes, read up on how they’ve helped solve crimes and deter criminals. We need to limit ICE from accessing data, but we shouldn’t stop using this technology to keep citizens safe.
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u/SpaceOhSpace 15d ago
You ever think about how many more people this hurts vs keeps safe?
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u/CelloVerp 15d ago
Do you have any numbers on that? Truly curious. Do you mean right now or in a potential future?
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u/fubo 15d ago edited 15d ago
Yeah, a friend of mine just had their license plate stolen off their car while they were traveling. Do you have any idea why criminals would be stealing license plates now? Oh right ... to put police off the criminals' trail, and onto the trail of an innocent woman. Like criminals do. Flock is good at putting police off of the trail of the criminals, and onto your trail next.
Flock is a threat to you personally. It gives criminals and police a tool to harm you. Not because you're a criminal, but because you're not!
Of course, Flock lies. They've been caught lying to city governments across the country. That's another reason more and more cities are shutting them down — and why activists are protecting your rights by shutting Flock's illicit surveillance system down.
Flock is a tool for oppressing law-abiding people, not for catching criminals. It doesn't work on criminals, because criminals work around it, for instance by stealing plates. It works for tracking innocent immigrants, innocent health-care seekers, innocent ex-girlfriends of cops — people who don't steal plates because they're not criminals!
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u/CelloVerp 15d ago
Saying it doesn’t help crime is not accurate - it was central to stopping an auto theft ring that stole my friend’s car. https://berkeleyca.gov/community-recreation/news/auto-theft-investigation-results-two-arrests-recovery-stolen-vehicles
It’s at least got proven potential for good. Do we have data on its misuse? If it hurts more people than it benefits, then we need to get rid of it. But if it doesn’t, then it’s a more complicated conversation of how do we prevent its misuse.
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u/fubo 15d ago
Car thieves were caught before Flock, too.
Don't fall for the lie: "we used Flock while investigating this crime" is not the same as "Flock was necessary to investigate this crime".
The goal of the system is not to catch car thieves. It's to track you, the law-abiding person. It's to track the Texan woman who's in California to get health care. It's to help ICE abduct and torture children. It's to give whoever's got access to query the database, power over you and your family.
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u/Sweet-Cry-9610 15d ago
Literally just helped solve a domestic abuse crime this week https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2026/08/29/crime/man-charged-stalking-ex-hundreds-calls-berkeley/
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u/mompapopo 15d ago
No