Roseville, California audit found 71 percent of Flock alerts misread

2 August 2026. A Business Insider investigation reports that the Roseville Police Department in California analyzed the alerts generated by its Flock Safety license plate reader system across 2023 and 2024 and found that 71% of them misread the plate. The system generated 1,427 alerts in that period for vehicles reported stolen or linked to felony investigations. Flock Safety’s marketing states its cameras accurately read more than 96 percent of license plate characters.

The department confirmed that none of the false alerts led to traffic stops or arrests, because officers are required to independently confirm a vehicle’s status before acting on an alert. Roseville police told reporters they meet with Flock twice a month and have raised the issue repeatedly.

Flock apologized for the errors and disputed the framing. A company spokesperson called the 71 percent figure a mischaracterization, saying it applies only to cases where the system flags a plate as associated with a felony, and attributed the results to Roseville’s deployment specifically: older hardware, non-standard installation locations, and the city’s request that cameras scan only the rear of vehicles to avoid capturing faces. The company says accuracy in Roseville has since improved significantly; the department said it has not analyzed its 2025 and 2026 data to confirm that. Flock declined to say whether it independently tests its system’s accuracy.

The gap between vendor accuracy claims and audited field performance is a checkable fact in any jurisdiction. Residents can request their own department’s alert logs and any accuracy analysis under public records law, and can ask at contract renewal whether such an analysis has ever been performed.

Read the original reporting: Business Insider (via Yahoo News).