Over the Independence Day holiday, some privacy-loving Patriot apparently used a battery powered sawzall to cut down the Flock Surveillance camera in Havelock, NC.  The Flock surveillance camera which has been at 1212 US Hwy 70 East for several months now overlooks, um... overlooked,  the Craven County ABC store.  The surveillance system logs vehicle make, model, color, license tag, description, unusual features of the vehicle, facial ID of the person driving the vehicle, frequency of visits, and the date and time of every person visiting the liquor store.  The data is uploaded to the cloud at Flock, a corporation who has contracted with thousands of jurisdictions across the country to install cameras that spy on Americans travel habits on the public highways.  Flock provides this information (sells this information) to local law enforcement, (including ICE).  Currently there are three know Flock surveillance cameras in Havelock.

A Havelock Police Department official who spoke with me Wednesday, July 7th stated that the incident "occurred within the last 48 hours" but could not speak further on the incident as the investigaton is ongoing.  Craven County Sheriffs Office is handling the investigation because the County ABC stores are under their control.
Flock "Safety" Corporation is a mass public surveillance start-up based in Atlanta, Georgia that promises law enforcement and private business AI surveillance, license plate reading (LPR) technology, and real time alerts.  Flock cameras report locations with 10-digit UTM Easting/Northing coordinates, making them accurate to one meter precision.  AI enhanced Flock photos add contrast and sharpening to discern plate characters more easily.  Vehicles can be flagged by the Flock system and tracked across multiple Flock feeds, meaning law enforcement can track vehicles traveling across the city, or across the country in real-time.

A Standard Flock camera covers 1.5 lanes of one-directional traffic up to a distance of 75 feet.  They use a 16mm 1/2" lens with an IR filter, meaning the field of view is quite large but low-resolution.  For night surveillance, they are equipped with 6 LEDs that flash infrared light into the field of view.  They use solar panels for power and an LTE modem for sending and receiving data.  As a vehicle passes, a series of 6-12 photos are sent to Flock cloud servers where the AI logs license plate and vehicle details.  New AI additions to Flock recently include "Plate Swap Insights", a system that identifies when the same license plate has been spotted on multiple vehicles over the past 30 days, making it easier to detect and thwart criminal deceptive tactics.  Additionally, instead of manually sifting through thousands of images, law enforcement agencies can now search for vehicles with unique characteristics, such as "blue SUV with a racing stripe" or "white F-150 with a ladder in the back."  Flock cameras record a "vehicle finger print" which includes bumper stickers, after-market alterations, bike racks, dents, collision damage, scratches, and frequency of visits.  Flock surveillance cameras are also leased to property managers and Home Owner Associations; these clients receive up to date hardware, maintenance and custom applications such as "Hot List Alerts" which allow them to track any vehicle(s) they desire in real-time.

I observed the camera pod was missing - either stolen during the crime or collected as evidence by the Craven County Sheriff's Department.  Flock camera pods have an integrated taoglass GPS module.  This enables Flock to access where components were brought to or ended up, even after being damaged or disassembled.  The Craven County Sheriff's Office "defectives" may be able to locate the vandals from the GPS ping from the camera pod, which will continue until the pods battery expires.  There may be video evidence of the minutes prior to the crime stored on the pod's on-board SDD media that may reveal the identity of the Patriot or his vehicle.