Petworth

Flock Camera or a Traffic Counting Camera?

“Dear PoPville,

On Tuesday what at first appeared to be a flock camera has been installed outside my building at the corner of Randolph and 13th NW. It looks like it may actually be a Miovision Scout Plus – one of the temporary traffic counters the city uses to count cars, bikes and other traffic for engineering studies – rather than a new Flock police camera.

That said, the fact that the two setups look so strikingly similar – elevated camera mast, locked utility box strapped to the pole, etc. – seems like it could become a real problem moving forward.

The neighbors and I were convinced it was Flock, particularly with surveillance being such a major issue right now. If the city’s routine traffic-counting equipment looks this much like police tracking infrastructure, residents aren’t going to know when they’re simply being counted versus actively tracked.”

ICYMI: See a different “License Plate Readers” discussion we recently had here.