LAPD DITCHES ‘FLOCK’ CAMERAS: ARE WE SAFE FROM STOLEN CARS... OR JUST THE TRUTH?

It seems the Santa Barbara Independent finally found a news item that tickled their hyper-progressive sensibilities, breathlessly reporting that the LAPD is giving the boot to its 'Flock' automated license plate readers. Their original blurb made it sound like a victory for civil liberties, or perhaps just a win for cars mistakenly identified as hot. We, however, smell something a little less noble in the City of Angels.

Now, according to the Independent's carefully curated narrative, the LAPD *dared* to raise concerns over 'high error rates' and the potential for innocent citizens to be 'unduly surveilled.' Let’s be real. When has a progressive-leaning city government ever backed down from an opportunity to increase surveillance, especially if it can be framed as 'equity' or 'safety'? The real story is likely far simpler and more mundane: this tech wasn't producing the kind of 'data' or generating the 'results' they *wanted* – which usually means it wasn't providing enough justification for more funding, more grants, or more bureaucratic oversight. Maybe it wasn't catching enough of the 'wrong kind' of people, or perhaps it was just too effective at exposing the *actual* criminal element, which tends to be less convenient for the narratives pushed by activist groups.

This isn't about privacy; it's about control. The progressive establishment loves the idea of omnipresent surveillance, as long as it's pointed at targets they deem acceptable. When it starts flagging actual criminals, or, heaven forbid, proves too inept to be useful for *any* purpose other than wasting taxpayer dollars, suddenly it's a 'threat to civil liberties.' The truth is, these systems are often less about catching criminals and more about building ever-larger government databases, justifying ever-larger budgets, and providing ever-more 'job security' for the legions of bureaucrats who manage them. Perhaps LAPD just realized that real police work still requires actual police officers, not just expensive gadgets bought by grants from the latest federal boondoggle.