License Plate Reader Errors Lead to Wrongful Police Stops of Journalists
Flock Safety's license plate recognition system matched partial plate numbers without verifying complete plate information, leading to wrongful police stops of two automotive journalists in Minnesota and Nebraska. The errors stemmed from incomplete data entry in law enforcement databases and lack of verification protocols before initiating stops.
What happened
Automotive journalist Joel Feder was detained by multiple Plymouth police officers in a coordinated stop in a Kohl's parking lot after Flock Safety's license plate recognition cameras flagged his Range Rover based on a flawed database entry. Officers approached with hands on their weapons, ordered Feder and his wife out of the vehicle, and conducted pat-downs before verifying the car's legitimacy through Jaguar Land Rover.
The incident stemmed from an incomplete report of a similar plate lost during a photo shoot in California, which was entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database as "34 DTM" instead of the complete plate number "34 03 DTM." Flock's AI system matched Feder's plate "34 10 DTM" by ignoring the middle digits and generated alerts that led police to track the vehicle for days.
Fellow auto journalist Tim Esterdahl was pulled over by two officers in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, while driving a 14-year-old child in a Range Rover Sport with New Jersey plate "34 08 DTM," in a similar incident involving the same database error pattern.
Reported impact
Feder was detained on suspicion of grand theft auto and tracked by police for days before being released. The incident generated significant public attention, prompting Plymouth's city council to open a conversation about the use of Flock cameras within the city.
Index analysis
Flock Safety maintained that its cameras performed as designed, matching partial plates per law enforcement preferences for hotlist alerts, and that the system correctly identified the characters present without flagging that additional characters existed. However, the company conceded that the system was not built to flag discrepancies between the partial plate in the database and the complete plate visible in the cameras' own images.
Governance controls
Local officers did not fully verify the complete plate visible in Flock's own images before initiating the police stops. Jaguar Land Rover worked to correct the underlying reports in the NCIC database.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.