alt Hacker News"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.
A 99.852% ineffective rate means city leaders will spend $2,009,521.50 on license plate reader technology that does not help any case."
Replies
If I apply the Purpose of a System is What it Does (POSIWID) heuristic, then the purpose of Flock cameras can not be cost effective law enforcement.
> A 99.852% ineffective rate means city leaders will spend $2,009,521.50 on license plate reader technology that does not help any case."
That's not at all what it means. The cost of the system is almost independent of the usage rate of the system. The proper math is that they spent $5,575 per case advanced. Is that a reasonable cost?
I don’t think this is the right argument, and I say that as someone who wants legislation to prevent such data from being accessible to federal agencies.
Those cases that WERE solved using Flock data could have impacts worth far more than $2 million. For example if one kidnapped child were recovered, what is that worth to the parents? What about to society, who can feel secure about their kids and also actually experience higher safety due to better deterrence? That’s worth more than the few thousand dollars you could say was spent to support that one search of Flock data.
Ultimately, the data is also only as good (and bad) as how it is used. If local jurisdictions use it to solve crime and to actually prosecute criminals (rather than letting them go) then it can be very beneficial. A lot of people are frustrated by criminals not being brought to justice. And obviously, if their privacy is lost, that’s a downside, but it’s not the sole thing to weigh here.
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 requirements like these.
Currently departments do not necessarily require a case number, as many times a case number has not been created yet.
I think a more fair method to measure success is look at how effective each dollar spent on LE accounts for the whole picture. How much more effective did ALPR make each officer/detective on the force? Generally speaking, these are force multipliers and are much more effective than spending on pure body count. Many departments cannot fill seats even if they wanted to.