Flock cameras captured data from 1.2 million vehicles in Jackson County from June 30, 2026, to July 30, 2026, according to Sheriff Doug Farmer. Of those 1,190,043 total vehicles captured, Farmer said 563 (0.04%) were queried by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, primarily in relation to drugs or narcotics investigations.
Farmer provided that information and more in a presentation at last week’s county commission meeting at the request of commissioners who say they have been on the receiving end of much public interest in the topic.
“I’ll be the first to tell you there’s a lot of mess about this out there,” Farmer said. “Don’t believe everything you see on social media.”
Jackson County Sheriff’s Office operates four Flock cameras in the county, but Farmer declined to provide their locations. However, there are several open-source websites like deflock.org or dontgetflocked.com where users can search for volunteer-reported Flock cameras across the country.
According to deflock.org, there are nine ALPR cameras in Jackson County. The Smoky Mountain News has not verified which are operated by JCSO but has submitted a public records request for the information.
The locations of the nine cameras and their orientation per deflock.org:
- One facing eastbound on the Macon-Jackson County line on U.S. Route 23
- One facing eastbound on U.S. Route 74 across the highway from Starlight Motel
- One facing northbound on N.C. 107 near Cashiers Sotheby’s International Realty
- One facing southbound on White Owl Lane in Cashiers
- One facing northbound in Cullowhee on Forest Hills Road next to the E.J. Whitmire Stadium on the Western Carolina University campus
- Two facing the parking lot at the Sylva Lowes Home Improvement
- Two in front of the Dillsboro Town Hall, one facing eastbound and the other facing westbound on Haywood Road (Farmer did confirm that these two ALPRs are not Flock Cameras nor are they operated by JCSO)
The Cherokee Indian Police Department also operates several ALPR Cameras inside the Qualla Boundary, and Farmer said the JCSO and CIP do not have a data-sharing agreement. Farmer mentioned that in addition to the four Flock Automatic License Plate Readers installed in the county, sheriff’s office squad cars were equipped with Axon in-car police system ALPRs.
In July, The Smoky Mountain News reported that in neighboring Macon County, commissioners voted unanimously to defund Flock cameras, due much in part to public outcry over the surveillance technology. Before the vote to defund, Macon County had 16 Flock cameras.
Over 100 people showed up to that July 15 Macon County Commission meeting. Macon Commissioner John Shearl was the most outspoken anti-Flock public official there and raised concerns over Forth Amendment violations and government overreach.
That anti-Flock sentiment stretches far beyond Macon County.
Across the country, Flock cameras have drawn public ire due to widespread concerns over mass surveillance and a growing number of highly publicized scandals. Flock critics point to mounting reports of law enforcement officers across the country using ALPR cameras to stalk romantic interests, AI software leading to faulty vehicle flagging, instances of federal immigration enforcement officers accessing Flock data from state and local agencies without their permission and more as reasons for their opposition. But law enforcement officers, like Farmer and Macon County Sheriff Brent Holbrooks, say the technology has offered them new and more efficient ways to conduct criminal investigations, and eventually, solve crimes.
“It’s a force multiplier for us,” Farmer said. “We utilize it and are respectful of our use of it, and we appreciate the fact we get to use those [cameras]. And it’s helped us to be quicker on those investigations and solve things that normally wouldn’t be solved in a timely fashion.”
In his presentation, he hoped to relay the facts on what the cameras do and don’t do. Here are the facts, according to Farmer.
JCSO captures photographs of vehicles with Flock cameras, and the cameras convert those photographs into searchable data that includes the make, vehicle type, color, license plate (full, partial, missing), state of the license plate and unique vehicle characteristics like damage/after-market alterations.
The agency does not use the cameras to record video, nor does it use facial recognition software to identify drivers and passengers. Additionally, Farmer said JCSO’s Flock cameras do not record sound, nor do they collect any cell phone data from nearby devices.
Data collected is owned by JCSO and stored in an Amazon Web Services server (a common choice for cloud computing across the public sector) for 30 days, after which it is deleted and no longer accessible by law enforcement officers unless they provide a warrant.
ALPRs notify law enforcement officers when they capture data from a vehicle that’s on what’s called a “HotList.” If a vehicle is on a HotList, it means it was either flagged and entered into a database by the FBI National Crime Information Center, the N.C. Division of Criminal Investigation or a local agency’s custom list.
A vehicle might be added to a HotList if it is reported stolen, connected to a missing person’s case or Amber Alert, connected to an active felony warrant or is connected to a criminal investigation.
Farmer said ALPR data alone does not constitute probable cause, meaning if an officer identifies a flagged vehicle on the road, they must conduct further investigations to make an arrest. Farmer also said Jackson County does not use ALPRs to enforce traffic violations.
“While Flock didn’t determine the guilt or replace traditional investigative work, it provided important pieces of evidence to help the investigators reconstruct events and strengthen investigations,” he said.
Additionally, Farmer said he has a zero-tolerance policy for ALPR camera misuse and that the JCSO has had zero such cases. He added that there were no abnormalities present on the agency’s latest Flock audit.
Of JCSO’s 82 employees, 17 can access Flock software. Flock user privileges require officers to partake in yearly security trainings.
Commissioners Michael Jennings and Todd Bryson were the most inquisitive members of the board once Farmer opened up the floor for questions.
During his presentation, the sheriff included a slide on ALPR case law citing Schmidt v. City of Norfolk (2026)/United States v. Porter (2026) and United States v. Yang (2020), where state and federal courts ruled the technology did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
“The thing that bothers me is, [that slide] says it does not violate the Fourth Amendment, but to what end?” Jennings said. “When Flock has updates and starts being able to do more than it can now, or we get a sheriff that’s not as strict as you are, there’s a lot of reasons it could go wrong.”
Jennings agreed that the technology helped Farmer do his job but said people are worried about what it could be used for in the future. And that concern may be valid, according to recent reporting on the devices.
While Farmer said JCSO does not capture video of any vehicles or use the technology to identify individual drivers and passengers, the agency does opt to share its data with 200 other agencies, and in July, tech media organization 404 Media found that some Flock cameras are capable of identifying individuals and groups of people and cataloging their characteristics like they would a vehicle. Law enforcement agencies across the country are using that data to query for individual characteristics like a person’s stature, clothing, race and even political affiliation.
Bryson raised concerns about the possibility of the cameras falsely flagging suspicious behavior of drivers who have committed no crime. Farmer assuaged his concerns and said his agency is not interested in surveilling people going about their day — the JCSO only uses ALPR cameras as one of many tools in their crime-solving toolkit.
Farmer also cited a long list of cases where the cameras have helped identify suspects. He said the cameras have helped identify a suspect in a sexual assault case; located a child abduction suspect and helped identify multiple child assault suspects, assisted in locating stolen property, assisted in creating timelines for a murder suspect from another jurisdiction, located elderly and juvenile missing persons and helped identify a suspect targeting elderly victims with a scams, among other things.
Farmer said he did not have data on what percentage of arrests or convictions were Flock-assisted but said it has provided JCSO substantial investigative assistance.
“Can it be abused?” Farmer said. “It’s just like anything else. Tools can be abused, and that’s not just in law enforcement. That’s in any profession.”