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bko • yesterday at 7:34 PM • 6 replies • view on HN

I am a pro-flock real person. I'll get down-voted and likely flagged for saying this so you may believe I don't exist but I do.

Crime has gone down considerably in the last two years.

> The declines were reflected in several of the FBI’s long-term measures. The 2025 robbery rate of 49.4 per 100,000 was the lowest in 20 years, while the rape rate of 36.1 was the lowest since 2012. The murder rate was the lowest in the past 20 years.

I imagine giving police the ability to apprehend violent criminals through technology is driving this reduction in crime. Not a stretch. You can think that this is not worth the tradeoff, but if you think giving police a tool like Flock will not have an impact of apprehension of criminals you have your head in the sand.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/violent-crime-falls-at-hist...

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/flock-mass-surveillance-and...


Replies

arjie • yesterday at 7:36 PM

Supervisor Matt Dorsey in San Francisco is pro-camera-enforcement and I was glad to be able to meet him and thank him for his efforts both for speed cameras and for ALPR in San Francisco. For my part, I'm not wedded to Flock so if people get upset about the brand name, I'm happy if the government uses Axon instead to provide the same outcome. The use of drone policing, ALPR, and speed cameras has substantially improved safety in San Francisco.

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nemomarx • yesterday at 7:57 PM

Take flock out of some cities and see if their crime trend continues. I expect you'll find the cameras really don't move the needle much.

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driverdan • yesterday at 9:29 PM

Correlation is not causation. Do you actually have any data or research to support your claim from an unbiased source? A far right blogger is far from unbiased.

FWIW Benn Jordan, who has his own biases, analyzed this data in his latest video and found it had no impact on most crimes but did have a small improvement in clearance rates for one category.

rconti • yesterday at 7:40 PM

Have you tried zooming out on the stats at all, or analyzing any other variables? You realize there was a crazy spike in crime in the wake of the pandemic, right? Certainly a reversion to the mean might happen alongside the implementation of cameras.

My own city's police (Redwood City, CA) credited Flock cameras with an increase in the clearance rate from 12% to 13%. Pardon me if I don't go out and celebrate.

felixgallo • yesterday at 7:49 PM

You can imagine that, but at least in my city, no, crime was going down before Flock, and continued its trajectory; Flock did not cause that. Same for, e.g., SF.

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slowin • yesterday at 8:09 PM

The police (and larger state apparatus) turning antagonistic toward the public will certainly increase crime, not decrease it. When cops go to war with literally everyone, the "law" will cease to apply in any meaningful way. A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.

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