A Colorado woman, Crisanna Elser, has filed a federal lawsuit against Flock Safety and local police after a license plate reader error led to her being accused of a theft she knew nothing about, according to infohub.kz.
In the fall of 2025, a police officer served Elser with a court summons, claiming he had ironclad proof of her guilt in the theft of a $25 package. The only evidence was footage from Flock's smart surveillance cameras showing her pickup truck passing near the scene of the crime. The officer flatly refused to consider the woman's alibi or review other footage, threatening to strip her of any benefits if she refused to admit guilt.
To prove her innocence, the woman gathered footage from her vehicle's dashboard camera, GPS tracker data and her smartphone's location history. These showed that she was at a tailoring shop at the time of the theft, and that a pedestrian had stolen the package. Only two weeks later, after receiving a written appeal with the evidence, the local police chief dropped the charge and acknowledged his subordinate's mistake; the officer was later reprimanded.
The plaintiff is demanding limits on surveillance and that Flock Safety be required to obtain a court warrant before handing data to police. The stress of the ordeal caused her hair to fall out, she lost a significant amount of weight and nearly lost her job in the financial sector.
Flock denies any wrongdoing, saying its system correctly identified the vehicle and that law enforcement agencies themselves are responsible for interpreting the data.