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MN driver swarmed by cops after Flock cam mistake
A Minnesota man who reviews cars was involved in a frightening situation after his car was mistaken for a stolen vehicle due to a Flock camera error. Joel Feder with The Drive says he was testing a Range Rover when he and his wife were swarmed by law enforcement last week all due to the Flock camera error.
PLYMOUTH, Minn. (FOX 9) - A Minnesota man’s routine shopping trip turned into a tense encounter with police after a license plate reader error wrongly flagged his car as stolen.
Police surround driver after license plate reader mistake
What we know:
Automotive journalist Joel Feder was leaving Kohl’s in Plymouth when he noticed police cars with lights and sirens approaching from multiple directions, surrounding his Range Rover.
"And I see two cop cars lit up with sirens blasting coming in the backup camera from the passenger side. Then I look to my left in the glass and all of a sudden I see two more cop cars coming from my driver's side. So now I'm boxed and pinned in and I got four cop cars, lights going," said Joel Feder, automotive journalist for thedrive.com.
Officers asked Feder to step out and confirmed he was not armed, keeping their hands on their holsters but never drawing their weapons. The officers explained their suspicion: "The reason you have four cops here is your license plate is registered as a stolen license plate." Feder was able to show documentation that proved the car was not stolen.
Feder learned that his car had been flagged by Flock cameras, which automatically read license plates and alert police to potential matches with stolen vehicles. "It hit on our license plate readers the other day, too," an officer told Feder at the scene.
Feder’s plate, 3410 DTM, was misread as 34 DTM by the Flock system, which led to the confusion. Police believe someone in Los Angeles originally reported a similar plate as missing, with different small numbers where the "10" was on Feder’s plate.
Tens of thousands of Flock cameras automatically read license plates all over the country.
The company reports 20 billion vehicles pass its cameras every month and its readers accurately capture 93% of the license plates.
To find where fixed cameras are in Minnesota, click here.
Police, Flock respond
What they're saying:
The Flock system’s error rate means about 1.4 billion times each month police may receive no information or bad information, which can lead to unnecessary police stops.
"We take incidents like this seriously and are looking closely at what happened," Flock told FOX 9. "An alert should be one part of an investigation, not the whole basis for a stop. We consistently advise law enforcement agencies that alerts should be treated as investigative leads, and that officers should independently verify the license plate, vehicle details, and surrounding circumstances before taking any enforcement action."
Plymouth officers said they received alerts for Feder’s plate on June 26 and June 28, the day of the stop.
"With help from the driver, officers ultimately discovered that when the license plate was reported as stolen in California on June 24, 2026, it was improperly entered in the NCIC database with incomplete numbers," they said in an emailed statement. "Plymouth officers received alerts for the vehicle plate via Flock on June 26 and June 28, the day of the incident. License plate readers alert officers when a vehicle bearing a license plate that has been entered into NCIC passes by the camera. The reasons for an NCIC alert can include, but are not limited to, stolen vehicles, plates, property or guns, as well as missing persons. If an officer was on routine patrol and manually checked a license plate on their computer, they would receive the same information from NCIC that was received via Flock."
The broader impact of surveillance technology
Why you should care:
Flock cameras are automated license plate reader cameras that can scan your license plate and feed it into a database. Law enforcement agencies use these cameras to detect flagged license plates – like license plates for vehicles belonging to wanted suspects or license plates for stolen vehicles.
The cameras have become a hot button topic in recent years as people have raised concerns over how police use the data. There have also been concerns raised about law enforcement misusing Flock data. Just this week, a Milwaukee police detective was accused of misusing Flock data to track two innocent people.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota is tracking how surveillance technology like Flock cameras can be misused or lead to mistakes.
John Boehler, policy counsel for the ACLU of Minnesota, said, "He's lucky that the stop only involved their hands on the guns and no drawn guns."
Boehler noted that officers have even used alerts to stalk romantic interests.
Minnesota law only allows law enforcement to use automated license plate readers to monitor or track someone without a warrant in emergencies, known as exigent circumstances.
"That would be an unlawful use to track an individual without a warrant. Exigent circumstances are usually emergencies," said Boehler.
Boehler added, "The growing use of these technologies and their growing ability should concern people because, as Joel learned, whether or not you're doing something wrong doesn't stop you from being stopped through these technologies."
Feder said officers told him that the same missing plate alert had come up for other cars with similar dealer plates in Minnesota.
"We've got a confluence of issues of human error, it happens, humans make errors, it got amplified by a nationwide surveillance system," said Feder.
As police and cities rely more on automated surveillance, even small mistakes can have big consequences for everyday people.
Local perspective:
Last month, the City of Columbia Heights voted to remove all of its Flock cameras due to resident concerns over the technology.