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AI incident #1694 ·

Jackson Township Police in Stark County, Ohio Briefly Detained Driver After Flock Safety Alert Matched Vehicle to Stale Missing-Juvenile Hot-List Entry

Open on the AI Incident Database 1 news report Synced from the AIID API · record last edited 17 Sep 2026

What happened

In March 2023, Jackson Township police in Ohio briefly detained driver Michael Smith after a Flock Safety license-plate reader matched his vehicle to an NCIC hot-list entry from a missing-juvenile investigation that Cleveland police had closed two weeks earlier. Officers released Smith after confirming the juvenile had already been found. A federal court later held that Flock matched the plate to law-enforcement data but did not create the stale entry.

Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.

News reports (1)

Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.

  1. Smith v. Flock Safety, Memorandum of Opinion and Order
    cases.justia.com · Benita Y. Pearson · AIID #7974

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Road users Motorists Michael Smith (Ohio driver) Drivers
On AIID: Road users, Motorists, Michael Smith (Ohio driver), Drivers

AI systems implicated

Surveillance technologyLaw enforcement databasesFlock Safety automated license plate reader systemAutomated license plate readers (ALPR)

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

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Linked by AIID editors or by its text-similarity model.

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