https://ir.law.utk.edu/utklaw_facpubs/468/

It isn't just cannabis.

what if the law categorizes abortion as felony/murder?

what if the law categorized certain types of sexual behavior as felony?

This is a very dangerous game, especially if you're not white.

Unless they have direct evidence (photo from Flock of him ripping bong hits in his car at a light) prior to the stop to attach probable cause to, it's a pre-crime judgment.

IANAL (if you are, feel free to poke holes), but I wouldn't presume it unlikely he walks under the 4th amendment, even if it's through appeals.

Indeed. Like, no shit strapping a camera and microphone and sending it to an all knowing AI to analyze it all is going to reduce crime. But it's a violation of our human rights.

It's clear these people do not understand the importance of privacy or rights. Crime is already decreasing. The bigger improvements would come from improving society, not restricting people's rights for more "safety".

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLE/comments/1srugkv

Let's say your just broke up with your girlfriend, shortly after, her house get burgled and a bunch of jewelry is stolen, including some you gave her when you were together. A surveillance camera catches the burglar, a drug addict with a criminal record, he gets caught, tried and sentenced to 2 years in prison. The kind of case that won't get a news article, you may not even be aware of what happened.

Without the surveillance camera, you would be a prime suspect, and even if you don't get convicted in the end, there is a good chance for the police to give you a hard time.

Here is the asymmetry, if a surveillance camera prevents a wrongful arrest, no one will notice, because you don't notice things that don't happen. Only wrongful arrests caused by surveillance cameras will be noticed.

More surveillance doesn't mean more arrests, trials and convictions. These are limited by the availability of police forces, magistrates and jails respectively. Even with a total surveillance zero privacy dystopia, you can't have more arrests without the means to do so. What will change is on what grounds the arrests are made: video footage, a witness testimony, etc...

It doesn't mean I support mass surveillance (I told you I was going to play devil's advocate), but that alone doesn't mean more wrongful arrests as a whole unless something else in the system is promoting wrongful arrests.

There are legitimate concerns about Flock that don't involve wrongful arrests, such as misuse of data by operators, like for stalking, data security, which may leak to criminals, and usage for purpose other than law enforcement, like marketing. The fact that it is a private company funded by public money with dubious contracts is another concern.

Depends on the situation. You'd absolutely be arrested. Get in front of a jury of 12 people and you might have a chance if you have enough evidence for a self-defense claim and the cop acting outside of the law.

This sounds like a problem with an unaccountable police force. London has had a CCTV system for 60 years.

"She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...

it gets worse federally.

"Blanche assures anti-abortion supporters that Dobbs will be ‘permanent in every single state’"

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/03/blanche-pledged-abo...

So what happens when they use cameras outside of usps to crate pretext so a crazy alt right state judge issues a warrant under the assumption that you picked up pills in the mail?

"AG nominee tells faith leaders he will take action to restrict abortion drug access"

https://stateline.org/2026/08/04/ag-nominee-tells-faith-lead...

And relevant to interstate weed, what about kava, peptides, 7oh? they literally have million+ plus stakes in pushing drugs. Even when it means blocking worse drugs (7oh) so they can push slightly less addictive but still harmful garbage.

"Senate inquiry suggests Trump administration softened kratom and tobacco policies in quid pro quo"

https://www.statnews.com/2026/08/05/senator-ron-wyden-invest...

"Trump Administration’s Fake Crackdown Leaves Most ‘Gas Station Heroin’ on the Shelves. According to March 2026 financial disclosures, Mullin invested between $500,001 and $1 million in Botanic Tonics, LLC, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, the company that makes Feel Free Classic – the tonic found in the victim’s bedroom. Mullin reportedly urged officials to remove language from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website warning of kratom’s harms."

https://www.citizen.org/news/trump-administrations-fake-crac...

It's all disgusting. Their voters deserve these consequences.

But they're forcing the rest of us to suffer.

Locally there was a recent pushback on them and the sheriff basically said "They've been there forever" and "Don't worry...it's just us with the footage"

I'm afraid that the way things currently stand, vast majority of people are only gonna see the cases where "it made sense to have that" for years and years, until they feel it one day on their own skin - and then their own story is not going to be heard, just like everyone else's before them. Frog boiling sometimes intentionally takes a lot of time

2. the article address that specifically:

> The case is an example of Flock cameras being used to arrest a wanted alleged criminal suspected of committing a violent crime. But it is also an example of police surveillance overreach *in that the cameras were specifically used to create a pretext to tack on additional petty crimes* based primarily on where a person’s vehicle had traveled.

> The vehicle was registered to Edward 12-01-1993. Edward had an active Brown County felony warrant with nationwide extradition.

so he wasn't just wanted but also had an active warrant.

> Multiple Deputies checked the area but were unable to locate the vehicle at that time

Police tried arresting him before, but couldn't find him. The police then used flock to find a pattern of coming/going over the state line. I'm guessing they stationed someone nearby to wait for a flock alert and arrest him.

The following is total speculation on my part: The police are including the "Based on prior flock hits, the vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal there." to build probable cause for searching the car and finding the marijuana.

Otherwise the only PC is: "He declined consent to search his vehicle. However, DeputyKowalski informed him he would be conducting a search of his vehicle due to the odor of marijuana".

Maybe the olfactory skills of officers are so dubious that courts need more facts than just an odor? That'd be my guess.

direct link to the complaint (it's also embedded in the article) https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28537132/2025cf000671...

Apparently the bail jumping charge was weak? That seems like a black-and-white situation to me so no idea what the details were, but there was clearly something wrong with that charge.

If the charge was so weak then they probably couldn't get a warrant to arrest him outright? Therefore they needed the marijuana probable cause to stop and search him.

Regardless the disturbing part is that they're using surveillance state footage of a person traveling to a state where something is legal as "probable cause" for a crime.

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1v78ihu/...

Article also states bail jumping charge was dismissed but the weed charge is the only charge that remains.

I'll bite. I'm sure it has happened. But how often?

If LE "just" shoots at you (i.e. you're not actively firing or an immediate threat - and without commenting on the "should" of that) then... you might be "fine", once you're disabled.

If you're actively firing at LE, they're going to hit you with "overwhelming force" (ever seen a news story where there's 50+ bullet holes in a car, or a suspect shot 15 times, by police? That's "overwhelming force") and any survival on your part is going to be sheer dumb luck and "not very likely".

Link for the curious

They actually wanted to add another charge. The cameras helped them find the right opportunity to do that.

If they just picked him up driving around, they would only be able to charge those existing crimes.

By waiting for him to cross state lines, they have a chance to add on another charge.

They already had enough PC for the stop, and they could have searched the car as incident to the arrest at any time.

The officer continued yelling at him to comply, all the while the man was ablaze, shocked, and bruised.

Cops should have tasers taken away. They believe they are "make people do what I say" devices rather than the rare "make this extremely violent person who is an imminent threat to life and person stop being violent temporarily so other officers can continue to use non-lethal force to de-escalate the situation".

https://www.kxlf.com/news/america-in-crisis/aurora-police-de...

As long as they shout "police", they can knock down your front door, throw a flash-bang into your infant's crib and disable them for life, then go "whoops" when they realize they have the wrong address and you'll be on the hook for replacing the door they destroyed.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...

> "Why are you now placing these children on the ground face into the concrete? It's hot! In front of all of us? Screaming at them. They are telling you they are hurt," witness Jenni Wurtz said.

I cannot believe LE will use this technology within ethical bounds, since they are willing to force a very young child onto the asphalt of a hot parking lot, who cannot possibly have posed a risk to their safety.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-backs-chal...

Hunter Biden trial would never have happened now too because of this - many people at the time wanted him to fight it out and be the poster child for this rather than the Pakistani guy in this version of the case.

So actually, you can indeed just say "yes" and than "vote your conscious" anyway, even openly - at least in the case of the few states that don't have "willing to nullify" as an acceptable reason to strike a juror during jury selection.

Note in this case guy was in an illegal state and also had cocaine.

>you can't have more arrests without the means to do so.

Not exactly sure what you're trying to say... you can always have more arrests. Make more things crime. Pre-crime, thought crime, speech crime. When you run out of physical space you start stacking the prisoners 10 deep. When that runs out of space you start executing them and putting them in ovens.

Not true. There is case law that allows for self-defense against unlawful use of force, or when when you reasonably believe the force was not coming from an officer (didn't announce, were not uniformed, believed to be imposters, etc).

You can be mauled by a police dog and if you hit the dog, you get an assault on a police officer charge. It's bad enough a cop can permanently disable you if you can't follow 3 conflicting orders being yelled, but they can also send an animal who literally doesn't know better.

I was lucky that for unrelated reasons the trial didn't happen and none of the jury selection stuff went through, but in a few states you cannot just rely on this as an easy out. This is awesome, because for true believers, you can actually do jury nullification. This was actually somewhat recently and notably used: https://www.eenews.net/articles/bundys-acquitted-in-huge-set...

Incorrect. Warrants have to be specific. An arrest warrant is not a general search warrant (in fact, general search warrants aren't legal). You don't lose your rights because a cop is arresting you.

Now, what can happen (and probably would happen) is the cops can take a drug sniffing dog to the car when it goes to impound and while the owner isn't there and claim "Oh, the dog signaled on the car so we searched it".

Regardless, even if the technology was used currently purely for good, when you’re “pro surveillance” you’re actually arguing it will always be used for good, even in some hypothetical future with hypothetical politics. That’s a very hard sell.

Unless this jurisdiction is an outlier, the pretext wasn't needed for the search. As the parent comment says, the cops used the interstate travel as a timing strategy to increase the charges.

But - to the OP's point, if you're trying to defend yourself against what appear to be police officers illegally shooting at you, the situation is just going to escalate. One police officer firing at you will shortly become many police officers firing at you. Taking cover or running is preferable to firing back at police.

Okay, but what if they just wear masks and use unmarked vehicles?

Then do they get a pass for shooting you in the back?

The whole group felt the felony charge was too much for that series of events. Somebody said "I don't want to vote on this". I suggested that is a valid option. The vote was the weakest of all the cases we covered. Several abstentions but just enough to send the case to trial.

To me that is nullification in practice. It is "the community" deciding that they don't believe the State is right in pursuing conviction. Juries are meant to be a randomized "council of elders" type body not just cogs in the machine.

Using your belief in jury nullification as a tool to get out of your duty as a citizen rubs me the wrong way. You have to participate in the functions of civilization if you want it to reflect your beliefs.

Why do you think people get away with minor traffic offenses all the time, something right in front of an officer? There simply isn't enough means to deal with these, so they just ignore most of them.

The main problem is the idea that I'm held captive by some fake contract to the state. I'm lucky that where I am the law is more just/libertarian than in most other places - meaning that in general the average arrested person is more likely to be actually guilty, but especially in places that are ultra authoritarian (i.e. Virginia), I need all the power I can get to protest their unjust system or I'm not going to have my time wasted.

Search "Brady violation" on youtube for some examples.

For example, in the 3rd district in New Jersey the odor is not enough because MJ is legal in NJ.

Looks like for this specific case odor is enough. [1]

[1] https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/InsideTrack/Pages/Ar...

Steal a car to rush somebody to a hospital then return it after and the letter of the law will convict you as a felon. It is the jury that could decide, as representatives of the community, that you should not be a felon for saving somebody's life even if you technically stole a car.

In most states the jury instructions are to make their judgement based solely on the evidence presented to them. These instructions make a jury a cog in the prosecution machine. The purpose of a jury is a final check on the government's execution of the law by members of the community.

I watched them happily train officers from Agencies on doing things they were not allowed to do by law, that Flock knew they weren't.

That "Chinese wall" of separation is nowhere near as concrete as you like to act.

Flock might not set the laws, but when the Flock CEO says he would prefer you to be collateral damage on his company's mission for "a world without crime, thanks to Flock" than dare risk someone not get caught for a crime or alleged crime, via Flock, then sorry, they absolutely are participating in things, and complaints against them are entirely appropriately targeted.

Yes, we need laws to help stop this. Ideally, those laws should entirely destroy Flock's business model and lead to its bankruptcy.

The issue is not whether cameras are useful for law enforcement. The issue is how that camera information is managed and overseen. What Flock is doing would fit right in in a cartoon authoritarian state, but it doesn't belong in the real world.

I think you're think of grand juries. They decide if there is enough evidence to go to trial, I.e. if the prosecution is just.

Even without grand juries, we'd still have juries that decide the verdicts. They decide if a conviction is just.