Out-of-state police agency searched a university’s Flock camera network more than 183K times in 3 months – WSMV

Out-of-state police agency searched a university’s Flock camera network more than 183K times in 3 months  WSMV

Records obtained from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte show that out-of-state police departments are searching the college’s network. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV/Gray News) – Records obtained from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte show that out-of-state police departments are searching the college’s network of Automatic License Plate Recognition cameras far more than local law enforcement. The agency that searched the UNC Charlotte network the most between March and May 2026 was the Houston Police Department. The law enforcement agency conducted searches that included the UNC Charlotte network more than 183,000 times from March through May 2026. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police ranked 30th in total searches of the UNC Charlotte network.

UNC Charlotte Police Department ranked 1,491st, with 229 searches over the three-month period. As cars drive by the Flock cameras on the UNC Charlotte campus, the cameras capture license plate numbers and add them to a nationwide database that law enforcement agencies across the country can search. Searching the data and the license plates they capture is limited to law enforcement, but there are also cameras owned by private companies and HOA’s that are included in the network. Records from UNC Charlotte show that when Houston officers searched a license plate in the Flock system, they often searched more than 6,000 networks across the country, while many other departments appeared