"In San Diego police’s February 2026 Annual Surveillance Report, the department discloses that officers conducted more than 244,000 searches of the Flock automated license plate reader technology in 2025. Those searches played a part in “advancing 361 cases.” That is an outrageous 99.852% rate of ineffective searches. The police also disclose that the cost of the system will be over $2 million this year — $2,012,500.…
This is a flawed methodology for measuring success. Solving a case isn't a single correct search. It's a tool, and a single case could have hundreds of searches associated with it. As more regulation comes in, as it should, we should get much better auditing data that link each and every search to a specific case. This is evolving quickly at the moment, but ultimately it's up to the public to begin to push for requir…
Unless they’re saying every failed search is big problem because of the privacy issues I guess