Toledo Police Arrested Man After Flock Misread Plate, K-9 Attack Left Him Hospitalized
Updated
Updated · Jalopnik · Aug 12
Toledo Police Arrested Man After Flock Misread Plate, K-9 Attack Left Him Hospitalized
3 articles · Updated · Jalopnik · Aug 12
Summary
Brandon Upchurch was stopped in Toledo in April 2024, ordered from his red Dodge Ram at gunpoint, bitten by a police dog, hospitalized and jailed for hours before officers determined his truck was not stolen.
A Flock license-plate reader had misread the 7 on his plate as a 2, triggering a false stolen-vehicle alert that police acted on without confirming the plate matched his truck.
The report says such incidents stem from three failures working together: bad data entry, scanner mistakes and officers relying on alerts instead of verifying basic details before escalating stops.
Flock says its system is 93% to 99% accurate, but at roughly 20 billion scans a month even a 1% error rate would produce about 200 million mistakes.
Other cited cases in Colorado and Aurora show repeated wrongful stops and gunpoint detentions, underscoring broader concerns that automated plate-reader errors can cause severe injuries, lost income and potentially deadly encounters.