Cobb County Crowd Grills Police Over Flock Cameras After Wrong Driver Gets Pulled Over Repeatedly

A standing-room-only crowd packed the Milford Recreation Center in Cobb County this week to confront police officials over the growing use of Flock Safety license plate readers, after resident Renee Jones described how her daughter was pulled over multiple times in a single day because of a tag still flagged for a previous vehicle owner. Jones said her daughter, who was gathering belongings to return to college, was driving a brand-new car with temporary tags when the mix-up occurred.

Dozens of residents turned out for the meeting, according to Atlanta News First, which reported that Cobb County residents gathered specifically to hear from the Cobb County Police Department about how it uses the automated camera network. Jones told the outlet she believes Flock may have caused her daughter to be pulled over repeatedly because the system had not cleared the old tag association. Cobb County Police Chief J.D. Ferrell addressed the crowd directly, warning that officers who abuse the technology risk losing their jobs or facing criminal charges.

A National Wave of Officer Misuse Cases

The Cobb town hall did not happen in a vacuum. Residents raised a string of recent scandals from across the country, including a Kentucky case in which Shively Police Officer Asad Zahir was arrested after investigators say he used the Flock system more than 2,000 times to track his ex-girlfriend's vehicle, a case detailed by CNN. In Texas, a police officer was arrested after allegedly misusing the Flock system more than 10,000 times, and Lufkin officer Zachary Klein was separately indicted on 100 felony counts tied to an internal investigation into camera misuse, according to CBS19.

Georgia has not been immune. At least 18 Georgia law enforcement officers and department personnel across multiple agencies were arrested, fired, or placed under investigation in July and August alone for allegedly running unauthorized personal queries on Flock readers, Hoodline previously reported on the statewide misuse wave. Departments in Hall, Habersham, and Paulding counties faced disciplinary purges tied to the technology.

Cobb Leaders Defend the Cameras While Tightening Oversight

Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid has praised Flock technology even as the county moves to tighten oversight of how it is used. Cobb County retained its existing annual audit while also adding new monthly and random audits throughout the year, changes officials say are meant to catch misuse faster than a once-a-year review would allow. The shift mirrors a broader trend among metro Atlanta agencies; an August internal audit by the McDonough Police Department reviewed 32 Flock camera searches from January through July and found every query complied fully with department policy, a result Hoodline reported showed at least one neighboring agency's system working as intended.

Cobb's relationship with Flock runs deeper than policing. The Atlanta-based company opened a $10 million, 97,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Smyrna, within Cobb County, in April 2025 to build public safety hardware and assemble drone technology, creating an estimated 210 local jobs, according to the Office of Governor Brian P. Kemp. Cupid attended the facility's ribbon-cutting, underscoring the county's dual role as both a customer and a host site for the surveillance vendor.

Some Cities Are Pulling the Plug Entirely

Not every municipality facing similar complaints has chosen audits over deactivation. Tempe, Arizona, turned off all 33 of its Flock cameras and ended its contract without seeking a replacement vendor, even after an internal review found no evidence of local system abuse. Mayor Corey Woods said, according to FOX 10 Phoenix, that “the risk of misuse is too great.”

Frustration with the cameras has also turned physical in some places. Three 19-year-olds in Chester County, South Carolina, were arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy and property destruction after allegedly sawing down two Flock cameras and setting them on fire earlier this month, per the Indian Express. Nationally, Flock cameras have faced physical damage or destruction in at least 36 states, and more than 100 municipalities have deactivated their cameras or ended vendor contracts altogether, according to civil liberties researchers cited in the same report.

Company Responds With Shorter Data Retention

Flock itself has made changes amid the scrutiny. The company reduced its default data retention period for license plate scans from 30 days to seven days nationwide earlier this month, while still allowing local agencies to choose longer retention windows, a shift that followed an Atlanta News First investigation into how long departments were holding onto vehicle data. Founded in Atlanta in 2017, Flock has grown into a dominant public safety contractor, expanding to more than 100,000 automated license plate readers across 49 states and processing over 20 billion vehicle scans monthly for roughly 7,000 police departments and 5,000 private clients, according to Inc. Magazine.

For Cobb County officials, the challenge now is convincing residents like Jones that stricter audits can prevent both the officer misconduct seen elsewhere and the kind of mistaken, repeated traffic stops her daughter experienced. Chief Ferrell's warning that misuse could cost officers their jobs or land them in jail was meant to reassure the crowd, but with cities like Tempe choosing to walk away from the technology entirely, Cobb's bet on oversight rather than removal remains an open question for the residents who packed into Milford Recreation Center.