A concerning bodycam footage in Sherwood, Arkansas, is now going viral after an innocent drive reportedly turned into a terrifying police encounter all because a Flock license plate reader incorrectly identified a family’s SUV as a stolen vehicle. To make matters worse, the family was held at gunpoint despite the parent looking after a 1-month-old baby.
Bodycam footage made public and shared online on August 10 shows officers approaching the vehicle with guns drawn and ordering the driver to raise his hands and exit. The incident, which took place on February 11, also shows the driver calmly explaining that his girlfriend and two children were inside, including a baby who was just one month old.
Still, the driver and his girlfriend were handcuffed while officers investigated the alert. The situation eventually unraveled over a single character on the license plate. The SUV displayed the plate APX 55X, while the stolen plate identified by the Flock system was APX 55Y.
Once officers compared the actual plate with the information in the system, they realized the family had been mistakenly flagged. Eventually, the occupants were released, and an officer acknowledged that the technology had produced the error.
“It might be a mix-up in the system,” says one of the police officers. “Your plate is not stolen; it’s one letter off. Yeah, sorry about that,” further explains another police officer after confirming the Flock license plate camera’s mistake. “Y’all about gave me a heart attack,” sighed the owner of the car in relief as her and her boyfriend’s handcuffs were taken off. “I’m not gonna say they’re completely perfect,” the officer said regarding the Flock camera error.
People online want the family to sue
The family was released, but the incident has prompted renewed outrage about the use of automated license plate readers and how police respond to their alerts. Online reactions were swift. “Sue-seriously! They are accountable for their horrible mistakes,” one user wrote on X. Another commenter focused on how quickly the situation could have gone wrong, writing, “These people were calm and cooperative. It could have escalated and ended badly.”
On Reddit, one commenter summarized the frustration more bluntly, stating that “The cop should have confirmed the license plate number.” In any case, some commenters advised legal action, not just against the police, but also against Flock itself, “Does Flock have qualified immunity? Sue them.”
Arkansas regulations reportedly require officers to visually verify the vehicle’s plate, including its letters and numbers, and confirm the plate’s status before initiating a stop based on a license-plate-reader alert. Flock’s technology is intended to assist law enforcement rather than replace human verification, but critics argue that innocent motorists should not bear the consequences when automated systems make mistakes.
