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Flock repeatedly flags 76-year old Grandmother for arrest, erroring zero for "O"
(guessingheadlights.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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Flock is programmed to run it both as a zero and an O. It returns both as results to one car. The programmers were concerned it couldn't recognize the difference.
So a plate of 123 MNO
Would return both
123 MNO
123 MN0
Some states may not use zeros at all, but most of them do today.
And unfortunately this lady has a tag that is similar to one a suspect used at one time.
I mean that’s just common sense? Even a person calling into the police wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Any sane jurisdiction has a single instance of confusing digits. So hence why flock works that way, it’s the objectively correct way.
How our jurisdiction handles custom license plates
And yet in non-flock instances, this is checked and verified before inconveniencing the person. And there's not a network of cameras at every intersection to false-identify people.
So weird that scaling up a problematic response doesn't fix the root problem!
What…? What give you the idea that the police wouldn’t respond to someone calling a stolen vehicle in?
If someone calls in a stolen vehicle because of a misidentified plate, the cops are showing up. You can’t just make shit up to defend your point.
And the root of the problem is having license plates that can be confused with each other, Glock has nothing to do with this error, it’s purely a design issue of the plates. People make this mistake ALL the time, it’s why smart jurisdictions solved this decades ago. Even before tech was an issue mate…