A San Diego police department is facing a lawsuit after jailing a man for a month based on a Flock camera alert that cops allegedly should have known, based on the timestamp, did not depict the car that they were looking for.

Last November, Hugo Parra was arrested on felony charges after San Diego police relied on Flock data and a witness statement to wrongly connect him to an attempted carjacking at gunpoint, the Times of San Diego reported. Cops were looking for a red Alfa Romeo car with tinted windows and a man wearing a gray hoodie, and Parra happened to be wearing a white hoodie while riding in a friend’s car that roughly matched the vehicle description.

Although Flock cameras can capture license plate data, cops did not have even a partial plate to help them verify if the car was involved in a violent crime. But the Flock data cops used to justify the arrest actually showed that Parra was five miles away at the time of the crime, Parra’s attorney, Alex Coolman, told the Times of San Diego. Rather than arrest him, cops could have used that data, as well as Parra’s cellphone location data, to corroborate Parra’s statement that he was innocent, Coolman said.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    When I lived in San Diego, I got a ticket for not paying the toll on an LA freeway I wasn’t within 100 miles of.

    This shit is a fucking trend, everyone. Lucky for me, the person driving that car didn’t murder anyone.

    Edit: the car wasn’t the same as mine, and the plate was visibly wrong. Just full on fucking bullshit.

    • GarboDog@lemmy.world
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      23 minutes ago

      Got 2k bill and over due fees over due from the Texas, we’ve never went though a toll in Texas before and at the time we haven’t driven in 2 years while living in nyc

  • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    “For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer"

    -Sir William Blackstone

    • rossman@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours ago

      i can’t think of any meaningful reform passed that has benefited a citizen. if it did, it’s not enforced enough to be significant. cops have too much power and influence on the courts to ever face accountability. i watch civil rights lawyer and most of the time cops commit crime when it comes to money or avoiding accountability.

    • Zron@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Make em get practice insurance just like doctors and nurses, and I think lawyers are also insured for their jobs.

      Most professions where you hold the future of another human in your hands require some kind of insurance, except for police. Yet a cop can mistakenly arrest you, drag your name through the newspapers and the mud, hell even shoot you for no good reason, and then walk away like that didn’t just ruin your life just as badly as a surgeon cutting off the wrong leg, or a nurse overdosing you cause they fucked up the math.

      Make cops carry insurance. If they can’t afford the premiums or get dropped for being to risky, well then they can go pound sand.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    These systems are meant to be used against you. Police will never volunteer information that helps you.

    • EvergreenGuru@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      In theory the police want to investigate crime and eliminate suspects, but in practice they give up after making an arrest. The access to new technology or information change nothing about this practice.

      This is why it’s important to curb these kinds of dystopian surveillance systems in the first place. They change nothing and give reach for further unwarranted intrusions into the lives of citizens. This has been seen as cops using these systems to stalk people.

    • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      6 hours ago

      Sort of. They are required to provide exculpatory evidence… but they only have to provide that information for the trial so you can prepare your defense, not during the active investigation.

  • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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    14 hours ago

    This is an interesting corollary to the “anything you say can only be used against you in court” adage.

    • r0ertel@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      …and then sue the camera company and then sue the city or property owner that allowed the cameras to be in use and then use the money to buy a politician to write and pass a law to disallow warrantless surveillance.