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Brazos Valley | Flock has been in our area for at least 10 years. We are 90 miles from Houston and their criminals love to come up here and burglarize things.
Many years ago they walked into the mall and did a smash and grab at a jewelry store. A witness saw them get in a red car and headed out a certain exit of that mall. Police went and pulled the camera feed from the red light (that supposedly was only for traffic control and not surveillance) and was able to get a good read on the license plate. The PD put that plate number in the flock network and about 1hr later they were pinged passing through a toll road near Tomball. (Toll road camera is/was also part of flock). Deputies from the area caught up to them and arrested three of the four with one getting away on foot.
All of this was within 2hrs of the crime. I heard all of these details straight from a police lieutenant I used to attend church with. His exact words were if you have him a camera at every entry point to our city and a dozen detectives they could likely solve every burglary in town. I think that might have been a stretch but I understood his sentiment.
The thing about Flock though is they are able to use more than just a license plate to track your car. If you have a window sticker it will capture that and add it to the algorithm. Same friend told me this as well because our Houston peeps would use paper tags or pull the plates all together but the camera was able to connect the dots with other means.
One other thing about these cameras is they are also used by repo crews. The repo lot across the street from my shop has the cameras mounted on a Honda civic and they will frequently go drive store parking lots looking for cars to pick up. What I’m told is if a cop camera pings a repo it will send an alert to the repo man and vice versa so they are always looking.
I am in the camp that between these cameras, modern telematics in vehicles and the cell phone in the pocket most every crime can be solved these days. The criminal that will be hard to catch in my opinion is the one that uses cash only, drives a very nondescript car and carries no phone.
Living in a rural area where we have a lot of equipment and cattle thefts the cameras are a necessary tool.
Caleb | |
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FLOCK cameras
