Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog
It seems like every day I hear another FLOCK camera story in the news, and usually it’s not good. Whether cities should even use FLOCK cameras is now largely up for debate. Those in favor cite instances where FLOCK cameras have located criminal suspects or missing or kidnapped children. Those against often cite their Constitutional right of privacy, especially where police do not have a warrant to surveil your whereabouts without your permission or knowledge.
I recently represented a young woman who was wrongfully arrested solely based on the use of a FLOCK camera in the City of Powder Springs in Cobb County. I won’t characterize it as the “improper” use of the FLOCK camera, but it was, at a minimum, the unknowledgeable, untrained use of a FLOCK camera that led to her wrongful arrest. In that case, the day before my client’s wrongful arrest, a man and his girlfriend, driving a black Dodge Charger, committed an armed robbery of a citizen in a large parking lot of a shopping center. This shopping center had several stores in it, including a Wal-Mart and a Pizza Hut. My client had just moved to Powder Springs that very day. She happened to drive a blue Dodge Charger. She went to the Wal-mart that day to pick up cleaning supplies for the home she had just moved into. On the day after the armed robbery, my client and her daughter drove to this shopping center from their home just around the corner to pick up a pizza for dinner. It was then that chaos began, due to the misuse of a FLOCK camera.
The City of Powder Springs illegally stopped my client, whose young daughter was in the back seat of their car, forced my client out of her car and to the ground, hand-cuffed her, all the time with their guns drawn and aimed at her while yelling at them “Get out of the car!! Get out of the car!! Get down on the ground!!”” This occurred without a warrant. My client was taken in the back seat of a police car to the police station, wrongfully detained, illegally searched, and was wrongfully accused of robbing someone. The police department then towed her car, the blue Charger.
The City’s officers had no probable cause whatsoever to arrest her, but arrested her solely on the basis that she drove a Dodge Charger and was a black woman. The officer involved used FLOCK cameras data that showed the armed robber drove a black charger and my client drove a blue charger and happened to be in the same parking lot as the armed robber. (She was picking up her pizza). He made the ridiculous leap that because the armed robber from the day before drove a Dodge Charger, and because my client drove a Dodge Charger and was in the same parking lot (picking up pizza) that my client must have been the armed robber. When she was questioned at the police station and, of course, denied any involvement in the robbery, the officer even accused her of lying! This was an absolutely illegal arrest. It was a violation of my client’s Constitutional rights and, at best, it was negligence by the police department. It’s actually mind-boggling that this is what occurs in many cities. Both my client and her daughter suffered anxiety, humiliation, worry, distress, fright and mental suffering from wondering why in the world she was being arrested when she had committed no crime. They were terrified they were going to be killed.
This wrongful arrest was all captured on police car dashcam video. The video is horrifying. My client was only one hair-triggered shot away from being another George Floyd or Rayshard Brooks or Breonna Taylor or Botham Jean or Philando Castille. I could go on and on. Police kill more than 300 black Americans—at least a quarter of them unarmed—each year in the USA. Scientific medical studies have shown that these killings have spillover effects on the mental health of people who are not directly affected. [1] So you can imagine the negative effect a wrongful arrest has on the person actually wrongfully arrested. My client was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder as a result of this horrifying encounter with the City of Powder Springs Police Department. Her daughter also suffered from anxiety from the incident and didn’t want to leave her mother’s side.
[1] Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study
Jacob Bor, SDa,† ∙ Atheendar S Venkataramani, MDb,† Send email to atheenv@pennmedicine.upenn.edu ∙ Prof David R Williams, PhDc ∙ Alexander C Tsai, MDd
Fortunately, I was able to secure a nice settlement for my client for the humiliation and anxiety she suffered from the wrongful arrest, all because of the improper use of a FLOCK camera. And I have another case that I think had FLOCK cameras been properly used to avoid an unnecessary police chase, my client’s son would still be alive today. So with that very recent experience of how FLOCK cameras can be misused, I wanted to take a look at what I call the Good, Bad and Ugly of FLOCK cameras. Let’s start in reverse order.
- The Ugly
Many of the news reports currently involving FLOCK cameras center around the absolute improper and perhaps illegal use of FLOCK camera data by officers who use them to flock ex-spouses, or perform improper surveillance on a perceived enemy. Many officers in Georgia have now been fired from their respective police forces because of this improper use. Some officers have even been arrested. It is astounding. Little did they know that an audit of FLOCK camera data can be performed to show how they were used and how often. One such audit even found an officer had inappropriately used a FLOCK camera over 20,000 times to stalk an ex-spouse.
2. The Bad
The account of my client’s experience above in Powder Springs is an example of The Bad. The officer didn’t misuse the FLOCK camera on purpose to catch a spouse cheating on him; rather, he was not properly trained on its use and jumped to mind-boggling conclusions simply based on FLOCK photographs of two different Dodge Chargers. The FLOCK camera led him down the wrong path and in his police zeal to make an arrest, he jumped to the wrong conclusion. Police departments who use FLOCK cameras need better, more in-depth training on the proper use of FLOCK cameras. 
3. The Good
After all of this, can a FLOCK camera be used for good? I think the answer is yes, if used correctly. In some circumstances, FLOCK cameras have been used to find missing children. They have been appropriately used to locate criminal suspects to keep them from getting away. I think these are all good, valid uses of FLOCK cameras. Which raises the question in my mind of whether FLOCK cameras could be used to eliminate dangerous, unnecessary police chases? Considering they have been used to find numerous criminal suspects already, the answer has to be a resounding “Yes.”
4. The Useful
I currently represent the parents of a young man who was in Buckhead on an evening around 8:00 p.m. when a police chase caused the criminal suspect being chased by police cars to wreck into my clients’ son’s car, killing the son. He was an innocent bystander, just driving home from dinner. He had done nothing wrong. But police chased a suspected robber 9 miles in a high speed police chase into one of the most densely populated areas of Atlanta and ended up killing my clients’ son. But had the police officers simply followed the suspect’s car using FLOCK cameras, no innocent lives would have been taken and the suspect would still have been caught. I think with FLOCK cameras now apparently everywhere, there simply is no excuse for a high speed, miles-long police chase through a densely populated City. There is no reason for an innocent citizen to die at the hands of over-zealous police officers. So I put this use of FLOCK cameras under a new heading: “The Useful.” With this FLOCK technology that is now seemingly everywhere, there is never again an excuse for an innocent bystander to be killed in a police chase. And I hope and pray police departments everywhere take note and make policy changes.
Robin Frazer Clark is a trial lawyer who pursues justice for those who have personal injury claims as a result of being injured in motor vehicle wrecks, trucking wrecks, defective products, defective maintenance of roads, premises safety, medical malpractice and other incidents caused by the negligence of others. Ms. Clark was the 50th President of the State Bar of Georgia, a Past President of Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, a Past President of the Lawyers Club of Atlanta and has practiced law in Georgia for 38 years. She is a Fellow of the International Society of Barristers and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, representing the top 1% of the country’s trial bar. She is also a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and a Fellow of the American Board of Trial Advocates. Ms. Clark is listed as one of the Top 50 Women Trial Lawyers in Georgia and is a Georgia Super Lawyer. Ms. Clark is the co-host of the podcast “See You In Court.”
Robin Frazer Clark ~ Dedicated to the Constitution’s Promise of Justice for All.
