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Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley is no stranger to controversy, something he regularly uses to drum up press and raise the profile of his universally reviled surveillance company.
While we may be giving him exactly what he wants, his latest outburst is so insulting it has to be mentioned. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Langley defended the utility of his company’s automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), AI-integrated surveillance cameras which have turned Flock into one of the most widely hated brands in the US.
When the interview went off-track into the tragic kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, Langley chose to center his own personal interests: “we would have solved that case,” he bragged.
“One hundred percent,” Langley said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
It’s a pretty galling statement, and one that’s hard to comprehend. There are at least four known networks of Flock cameras in Tucson, Arizona, the city where Guthrie was forcibly captured by an unknown attacker or attackers over six months ago.
According to the ALRP-tracking site DeFlock, there were over 120 known cameras dotting the Tucson area at the time of Guthrie’s disappearance. That includes ALPRs lining the major throughways leading in and out of Tucson, like I19, I10 North and South, and state highways 77, 86, and 210.
The cameras were there, in other words, so the question is: why hasn’t Flock managed to hunt down her kidnapper? With over 120,000 ALPRs dotting the US at this point, it seems the one thing Flock excels at is enabling police officers to stalk innocent people — a far cry from Langley’s self-important claim.
More on Flock: Flock Surveillance Cameras Are Actually Horrible for Fighting Crime, FBI Data Shows