alt Hacker NewsIt doesn't seem to me like Flock would reduce crime but increase the rate at which crime's are solved. Maybe a better stat would be median age of a criminal case involving a vehicle before and after Flock was deployed.
edit: i dont know if any stat would work at the city level, the advantage of Flock is the network works across state/county lines. So someone committing a crime in one state and then driving all night can still be located two states away without police departments having to coordinate a search.
There is one independent national study ( https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/independent-study-vehicle-t... ) which indicates vehicle thefts fell 11% following a flock installation.
However, the vast majority of vehicle thefts self-resolve ( 85% of passenger vehicle thefts are recovered, a third within one day ). Flock's apparent impact was that vehicles came back on average 1/4 day sooner; it did not appear to impact the rate at which they were recovered, so your instinct would be incorrect.
Additionally, vehicle theft has been steadily decreasing year-over-year since COVID, and it's possible/likely that the effects seen in the study were continuations of that trend rather than anything attributable to flock. The paper even says as much -- that the effect began in the months preceding flock installation.
Intuitively, you'd think that flock cameras would help a lot. I would think so too! But at least in my small-to-mid-sized city, they don't noticeably help at all with any kind of crime.
https://ij.org/how-flock-is-trying-to-take-credit-for-the-po...