All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen

Re:All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down ... by mlfreeman on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @03:07PM (#49173410)

And vehicle theft doesn't even need cameras logging EVERYONE to Flock's databases - just cameras that only report in to the mothership when they see a plate on an internal "most-wanted" list.

Person reports car stolen, cop adds car info to plate reader most wanted list, most wanted list is transmitted to cameras, cameras don't let plate readings leave RAM unless they're 90% or higher confident that it's on the most wanted list.

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Re:All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down ... by SoftTalker on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @03:26PM (#49173670)

Are the cameras doing the plate recognition and OCR locally? Or (my guess) they are uploading images to a Flock data center where they are processed and then the plate number and location data saved to a database where active search queries are processed?

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Re:All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down ... by mlfreeman on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:01PM (#49176917)

The tech exists to do it on-camera (Ubiquiti among other vendors claims on-camera LPR), but I figure they're doing whatever is most battery-efficient since the ones I've seen all have solar panels.

I do wonder what they do on busy interstates though. Some of the ones I've had to go past would basically be sending a live video feed - LPR matches as text would save a ton of bandwidth and maybe even power compared to a cellular radio always transmitting.

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