Flock Cameras Lead Police To Identify Wrong Car In Road Rage Case, Armed Officers Surround Wrong House At 4 A.M.

Imagine police surrounding your house and knocking on your door early in the morning, suspecting you of a crime you didn't commit. That's what happened to Will Penn, Robin Pen, and Penn's 94-year-old grandmother, reports Lexington, Kentucky's Lex News. As is so often the case these days, this was a case of mistaken identity, spurred by a Flock camera.

The couple's Ring camera captured the sequence of events. At 3:56 a.m., several Lexington police cars began to surround their property. At 4:08, they shone their spotlights on the house, and armed police knocked on the door. Penn and Pen went outside to speak with them, which was when they learned what this was all about.

"There was an incident tonight in which the vehicle we are trying to find is nearly identical to yours," an officer said — a road rage incident the victim had reported, describing a dark Ram 2500 without giving a license plate number. The Flock system told police it could be Penn's truck. Per Lex News:

The victim gave a detailed accounting of the events which included a description of the suspect and the suspect's vehicle," [Lexington Police Commander Daniel] Burnett said.

Officers showed the Flock image of the vehicle to the victim, who confirmed it.

"The officers actually showed an image of that vehicle to the victim. The victim was very confident that that was the same vehicle," Burnett said.

The couple told police they had just returned from a taco truck. It may have been 4 a.m., but it's always a good time for a taco, so this seems completely plausible. Police believed them and said they were not in trouble. That didn't exactly calm the damage to their nerves, though. "My blood pressure didn't go down for about an hour until after the incident," Pen said. And Penn added: "My grandmother was scared to death."

Unlike many other cases where Flock's system actively identifies the wrong vehicle, this seems like police put too much faith in the information Flock gave them. By their own admission, the vehicle description was vague: no license plate number, and a dark-colored Ram 2500. The victim didn't even give an exact color. I'm not blaming them; it was dark, and they may not have been able to tell exactly which dark color it was, especially while they felt they were in danger.

It's up to police to take that into account, though, and not simply jump on the first easy lead they get. Along with a picture of Penn's truck they had the location and the time it passed by the Flock camera. Could the road rager have plausibly gotten there from the victim's reported time and location? We don't know. It seems like police found the first hit that potentially matched, then showed it to the victim. The confirmation bias is strong with this one. Plus, we all know the Ram 2500 is an exceptionally rare vehicle, especially dark ones. They might as well have been looking for a red Miata at an autocross.

Yet Lexington police stand by their methodology and tactics. The multiple police cars were appropriate for responding to a felony assault, Burnett said, and officers were simply checking out a lead provided by Flock cameras, "like lots of other information that law enforcement has access to."

Burnett is correct about that last part. Flock's vast network of spy cameras taking an unimaginably huge number of pictures is a powerful tool, but an imperfect one. Combine that with an understandably imperfect vehicle description, and police had little chance of finding the right truck, even with Flock's capabilities. Instead of accepting that, they went with the first truck they found, disturbing a couple and a 94-year-old grandmother in the middle of the night.

"I feel like they're not doing their investigation work properly like they used to and they're just jumping the gun on it," Penn told Lex News. It could be worse, though. At least the truck was a similar color to the one reported. At least police believed Penn and Pen and they didn't spend 86 hours in solitary because police believed Flock over them. It's only a matter of time until someone gets killed this way.