A Colorado cop handed Chrisanna Elser a criminal summons before asking her a single question.
Now she is taking Flock Safety and local police to federal court.
The sergeant who showed up was 100 percent certain his cameras do not miss.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Put Chrisanna Elser at a Scene She Never Visited
Sgt. Jamie Milliman drove to Elser's Fort Logan home on September 27th, 2025, with the criminal summons already in hand.
The accusation: she had stolen a $25 package from a neighbor's porch five days earlier.
The evidence: a Flock Safety automated license plate reader showing her vehicle had driven through the area 20 times over the prior month.
Milliman never checked her dashcam footage, her GPS records, or her phone location data – all three of which would have placed her more than a quarter-mile away, getting fitted for a gown.
Instead, he boasted about his cameras. "You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out without us knowing," Milliman told Elser, caught on doorbell and body camera.
He told her the case was "one hundred percent. No doubt."
Elser spent the next two weeks sending the department the evidence Milliman never checked.
The chief voided the summons in mid-October after reviewing the evidence she sent him.
Now, Elser is suing Flock Group, the towns of Columbine Valley and Bow Mar, Sergeant Milliman, and Chief Bret Cottrell in federal court – seeking to force local governments to obtain warrants before pointing this technology at citizens.
Flock Safety's response: the cameras worked perfectly, and the sergeant misread the data.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader False Arrests Are a Nationwide Pattern
Milliman is not the only cop who stopped asking questions the moment a Flock camera gave him an answer.
The Institute for Justice documented at least 17 cases in which officers used automated license plate reader technology to surveil former partners, ex-spouses, and strangers who had caught their attention.
A San Diego man was falsely linked to a violent carjacking – he was five miles from the crime scene when a Flock camera captured a red Alfa Romeo and a detective decided the color was close enough.
In New Mexico, officers detained a woman at gunpoint and placed her 12-year-old sister in the back of a patrol car because a reader mistook a "2" for a "7" on their plates.
In Florida, Lindsey Isaacs filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against two state highway patrol investigators for false arrest and malicious prosecution after a Flock camera led to an arrest that never should have happened.
In Colorado – the same state as Elser – a driver was repeatedly pulled over after officers entered a wrong plate number into a Flock hotlist and never corrected it.
The pattern never changes: the camera generates a hit, the officer stops asking questions, and someone who did nothing wrong pays for it.
Flock Safety's system captures an estimated 20 billion license plate scans per month – every plate, every car, logged and stored regardless of whether you have ever done anything wrong.
Federal courts are now doing what city councils refused to – asking whether any of this is constitutional.
A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that accessing a vehicle's monthlong location history through Flock databases without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.
Republican Congressman Greg Steube of Florida introduced legislation this year requiring federal agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing networked license plate reader data.
Florida's Department of Transportation revoked all active Flock permits on state highway rights-of-way, effective August 31, 2026.
Dozens of local governments have cut their Flock contracts this year alone.
The Supreme Court settled this in 2018.
In Carpenter v. United States, the Court ruled that long-term location tracking requires a warrant because Americans have a legitimate expectation that the government is not silently building a map of their every movement.
Carpenter drew the line at warrantless long-term location tracking, and Milliman crossed it.
The government does not need to kick down your door to violate your Fourth Amendment rights.
It just needs a camera on every corner, a database that never forgets where you drove last month, and one sergeant who already had the paperwork printed before he said hello.
Chrisanna Elser was at a gown fitting when Milliman declared her guilty – her dashcam, GPS, and phone records all confirmed it.
The Flock camera said otherwise, Sgt. Milliman chose the machine, and an innocent woman paid for his certainty.
Sgt. Milliman is still on the job, Flock Safety still has contracts with thousands of departments, and somewhere right now a camera is logging your plate.
Sources:
- Jeff Charles, "Falsely Accused Woman Is Suing After Flock Surveillance Misidentified Her," Townhall, October 13, 2026.
- Institute for Justice, "Dozens of Innocent Motorists Have Been Pulled Over, Detained at Gunpoint, or Jailed Due to AI License Plate Camera Errors," Institute for Justice, July 1, 2026.
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma, Judge Sara E. Hill, ruling on warrantless license plate reader data access, 2026.
- Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018).
