Michael Williams, a resident who is involved in a local organization called “Deflock Joplin,” questions the need for the camera systems that record license plate numbers and details of cars. Williams said he considers it to be an intrusion of privacy by law enforcement agencies using the license plate readers.
Additionally, he raises red flags about potential misuse of Flock camera systems and the details they record that can be used to track motorists for nonpolice reasons.
That was the case in January when Williams, looking through publicly accessible data on Flock records for Joplin, noticed a trend.
He found Joplin police activity on Flock’s publicly accessible camera system data with an unusual amount of activity on the logs by one particular user.
“I thought maybe it was incorrect” at first, Williams said. Then he thought it could be misuse.
It turned out that hunch was correct.
Joplin police on Jan. 12 announced that an officer was no longer employed as the result of an ongoing internal investigation that determined there had been misuse of the city’s license plate reader system.
An investigation by the department’s Office of Internal Affairs began in December after it was learned there had been improper use of the system, according to a statement released by the department.
Williams said that was one example, but there are 1,000 police departments nationwide using Flock systems. That multiplies the risk of misuse of individual motorist’s data, Williams said.
“One of my biggest concerns is that the Joplin Police Department can only see their own logs. If another city has a bad actor or is selling it (Flock data) to someone else, the Joplin Police Department wouldn’t have any way to tell,” Williams said.
‘Deflock.me’
Williams said he first learned of Flock cameras on the website deflock.me.
“I thought. ‘What is this?’ This was my eye opener.”
He read some articles and watched some videos about Flock camera use. What he learned from that, he said, is that “this would have to make it up through a lot of cybersecurity issues.”
The systems are marketed to police agencies and private communities.
Networks of cameras are mainly placed on public roads and streets to capture images of passing vehicles. These images are sent to Flock’s servers, where an AI platform scans license plates and analyzes images to index vehicle characteristics such as make, model and color. This data is then compiled into a vast, searchable database, Williams said. A search result means an operator on the Flock system queried the database for a specific license plate using the Flock application and its website.
According to Flock’s information, a user does not necessarily have to be a police officer, and a search does not imply a motorists was stopped or investigated. Search policies vary, but many police agencies do not require a warrant or even suspicion to perform a search.
After Williams found activity by one user that he thought could be misuse, some other police departments told him they “thought Flock had been hacked,” because of the amount of activity, Williams said.
The officer who was misusing the Joplin system was hiding the license plate number that had been searched, Williams said. “This problem went on for a year.”
When Williams was trying to unravel the repeated use patterns he saw in the Joplin system, he made open records requests of the city of Joplin for Flock system records and paid $160 initially to the city to obtain the records. “They delayed the release and wanted another $60 for corrections they were asked to make,” Williams told the Globe.
System audit
The Joplin Police Department said in a statement on Jan. 12 that the license plate reading equipment is designed and used to locate vehicles associated with criminal activity only.
Police Chief Richard Pearson said in a statement about the Flock misuse that “during that investigation, it was found that this single Joplin police officer did violate the policy regarding department equipment and systems. An audit of the Flock LPR system showed that no other policy violations were committed by any other Joplin Police personnel.”
Details of an internal investigation conducted by the department were not publicly available at the time that the officer’s departure was announced, because the investigation was still active.
“However, as a matter of transparency and accountability, the Joplin Police Department has requested the Missouri State Highway Patrol conduct an independent investigation to determine if any criminal violations have occurred relating to this incident and the now former JPD officer,” the statement said.
The Globe has filed an open records request to obtain that investigation report, but there has not yet been a response from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
License plate readers are designed to capture photos of vehicle license plates and other vehicle identifiers such as make, model and color. They are not designed to capture readily identifiable images of individuals or their faces, and they do not use any type of facial recognition software. Additionally, license plate readers are not intended for remote or automated enforcement of traffic violations, and Joplin police said they do not use them in that capacity.
Court ruling
Williams said that the use of the cameras and data collection resulting from the Flock system could be a violation of people’s Fourth Amendments rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures without warrants.
Chief Pearson told the Globe that a federal court decision on Jan. 29 in the case of Schmidt v. City of Norfolk (Virginia), rejected the theory that Flock camera systems violated Fourth Amendment rights.
“This is a significant ruling,” Pearson said. The use of 75 camera clusters taking photos over 21 days does not “track the whole of a person’s movements nor does it provide an ‘intimate’ window into where citizens drive, park, visit, linger, sleep or patronize,” the court said in that case.
“Importantly, the court’s decision aligns with strong national precedent,” Pearson told the Globe in an email. “It recognizes key distinctions between license plate reader technology and other systems that require a warrant, affirming what courts across the country have consistently found: When used responsibly and lawfully, LPR technology does not constitute continuous surveillance and is constitutional. The court also left open the door to future suits on future facts, so we all must remain diligent to operate LPRs with good policy and within the confines of the law.”
At about the same time as the Globe discussed the Flock questions with the Joplin chief, the Carthage City Council fell one vote short of approving acceptance of a state grant that would have allowed the Carthage Police Department to procure and operate two Flock license plate reader cameras on Carthage streets. Other departments have opted to discontinue their use.
The Joplin City Council’s Public Safety Committee had passed a resolution to allow the city to accept $24,795.27 from the Missouri Department of Public Safety’s Local Violent Crime Prevention grant for the purchase of two Flock cameras and some other traffic equipment.
© 2026 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
