Dallas Police Use 600 AI Cameras to Track License Plates and Solve Crimes

Revolutionary Crime-Fighting Technology

When Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux started his first day on the job, a wheelchair-bound elderly man was shot dead near Fair Park. Hours before the sun rose on Dallas police Chief Daniel Comeaux's first day on the job, an elderly man in a wheelchair was shot dead near Fair Park. Two days later, the new chief stood among a cluster of officers outside the suspected gunman's home in west Oak Cliff. He was impressed by one tool the investigators had used to arrive there: the network of license plate-reading cameras scattered across the city. "I was like, 'Alright,'" Comeaux recalled saying, referencing the April case months later in an episode of Bridging the Divide, the Assist the Officer Foundation's podcast, "'explain this whole Flock camera.'"

In Dallas, police have access to more than 600 license-plate reading cameras throughout the city, according to documents recently provided to The News through open records requests. The fast-spreading surveillance network is often lauded by investigators, with many crediting the tool as one of their most effective in identifying suspects, making swift arrests and solving crimes. The chief described how the clarity of the vehicle images surprised him and how officers, with those photos in hand, were able to build a case for the arrest.

The license plate-reading cameras, usually mounted on 12-foot poles, have quickly become standard in police departments across the country, including the Dallas Police Department. One of the company's cofounders, Garrett Langley, told Forbes in an article published in September that they had more than 80,000 AI-powered license-plate cameras across the United States. About 5,000 police agencies use the company's tools, he told the magazine.

Advanced Surveillance Capabilities

The company markets what it calls its "vehicle fingerprint technology," a system that doesn't just read license plates but analyzes a vehicle's make, model, color and other cosmetics — like bumper stickers or decals — to flag it across a network of cameras. The technology, according to company documents, can identify vehicles with paper tags or no tags at all, search for them without a plate number and match images with scanned vehicles to generate investigative leads.

The information captured by Flock cameras includes a passing vehicle's license plate, along with its make, model and paint color. Flock Safety says its camera system is used by police departments, businesses and neighborhood groups in more than 5,000 communities across the country. A Dallas police spokesperson said the retention period for the city is one year. The data sharing extends beyond police departments, as the images can be downloaded and shared, for example, from a neighborhood association member to a police department.

Langley said in the Forbes interview that Flock's systems help solve an estimated million crimes a year and predicted that, within a decade, its nationwide network of cameras and drones could nearly eliminate crime. Success stories include cases where in January of 2023, a Flock camera helped identify the suspect in a shooting near Houston that resulted in the death of a school teacher. Sugar Land police told KHOU 11 that the information about car descriptions and license plates collected by the Flock camera ultimately helped them track down the shooting suspect when all they had was a vehicle description.

Privacy Concerns and Legal Challenges

Civil-liberties advocates are uneasy about the technology's rise. Those concerns have sometimes turned to action: In Texas, a handful of city and county governments have turned away from Flock Safety, one of the dominant private vendors providing the technology. In those instances, their elected bodies debated the technology's usages and moved to end or not renew their contracts with Flock Safety.

One recent lawsuit in Virginia argues the long-term databases of vehicle movements cross a constitutional line by enabling continuous tracking without a warrant. In that case, two Hampton Roads residents are suing the city of Norfolk, Va. They contend the city's use of a network of Flock license-plate readers amounts to unconstitutional, warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, according to The Virginian-Pilot. A crowd-sourced website created by privacy advocates, deflock.me, aims to map Flock cameras around the world and says it has identified more than 58,000 of them.

Metz, of Flock Safety, said the technology is built in a way that "maximizes public choice" and allows communities to establish public safety policies that best fit residents. "We don't believe that public safety and privacy protections are a zero-sum game — you can have both," Metz said. So far, courts that have considered license-plate readers have upheld their use, finding that drivers have little expectation of privacy when it comes to plate numbers visible on public roads. However, the technology's rapid expansion raises questions about the balance between public safety and personal privacy in an increasingly surveilled society.