Anti-Flock Vandal Forgot About All The Other Cameras Watching Him
There's an obvious flaw in the plan to destroy Flock license plate readers in protest: the things are usually surrounded by other surveillance infrastructure. Marcus Bee, 40, of Pismo Beach, California, learned this the hard way when the Monterey County Sheriff's Office arrested him this week on suspicion of destroying at least three Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the small communities of Lockwood and Bradley.
According to deflock.org, a site that tracks Flock camera deployments across the US, Lockwood and Bradley between them host exactly three of the things. So if the allegations are accurate, Bee effectively wiped out 100% of local Flock coverage. Small victories, perhaps, but the neighbouring CCTV cameras apparently had other ideas.
Sheriff Tina Nieto confirmed that Bee was identified through footage from nearby surveillance cameras, combined with other investigative leads. The irony of being caught on camera while destroying cameras was not lost on anyone. Bee is now sitting in jail on $30,000 bail, facing charges related to thousands of dollars in damage to what police are calling "public safety infrastructure."
Nieto used the arrest to make the predictable point about deterrence. "These cameras have become an invaluable investigative resource," she said, reeling off the usual list of approved use cases: stolen vehicles, missing persons, shootings, homicides. The statement also included a somewhat defensive clarification that the cameras are used solely for legitimate criminal investigations and not, as critics frequently allege, to assist immigration enforcement.
That denial is increasingly difficult to sustain. While Flock has consistently said it does not contract directly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reporting suggests law enforcement agencies have been running searches on ICE's behalf using the system. Customs and Border Protection has also allegedly tapped into Flock data for immigration-related work.
This is all part of a broader and legitimate debate about what ALPRs actually do in practice. The ACLU has pointed out that fewer than 1% of vehicles scanned by these systems have any connection to criminal activity, yet data on every scanned vehicle gets logged anyway: make, model, colour, plate number, plus details like bumper stickers and bodywork damage. That is an enormous volume of information collected on entirely innocent people.
The stalking problem is less abstract. The Institute for Justice documented at least 26 cases of police officers misusing ALPR data to monitor romantic interests, with most of those cases surfacing since 2024. That is a concrete, documented abuse pattern, not a theoretical concern.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley pushed back this week in an interview with The Drive, claiming the cameras helped solve roughly a million crimes across the US last year. He also dismissed constitutional arguments, specifically Fourth Amendment concerns about warrantless mass surveillance, saying he sees no legal issues and doesn't expect any.
Bee's case is not unique. In Georgia last week, two Flock cameras were set on fire, though police there couldn't pin the attacks on anyone. And in Virginia, Jeffrey Scott Sovern, 41, faces charges over a string of ALPR attacks between April and October 2025. At a June hearing, Sovern argued the technology is unconstitutional.
Flock has condemned each incident of vandalism, noting that destroyed cameras could mean lost evidence in active cases. Which is a fair point. So is the one about 99% of scanned drivers never having done anything wrong.