Why A Florida Police Department Set Up Decoy Flock Cameras

Depending on whom you ask, there are between about 400,000 and 1,000,000 words in the English language, yet there are not enough words out there to adequately explain how fiercely people of all demographics seem to hate Flock cameras. Not cops, though. Dozens of police officers have faced charges for illegally using Flock cameras to stalk their ex-girlfriends, wives, and other civilians. In Georgia alone, at least 17 cops have been arrested for Flock-related stalking charges, and the USA Today findings that instigated these arrests highlighted "240 Flock users whose frequent and persistent searches" aroused suspicion, emphasizing that the publication's deep dive into 75 million Flock searches in recent years covers only a fraction of searches committed.

Some Oviedo, Florida cops seem to like these bespoke stalking machines so much that they've even begun setting up decoy Flock cameras to catch would-be vandals. The Oviedo Police Department felt inspired to put these fake cameras out in the wild after a rash of oh-so-violent crime in late July and early August of 2026 left a few of their Flock cameras in the Lockwood Blvd. corridor stolen or destroyed. This wave of anti-Flock action isn't unique to Oviedo, either. Citizens all around the country have apparently taken up the thrilling new hobby of vandalizing Flock cameras, in what just might be the most wholesome viral social activity since the bygone Pokémon Go Summer.

While the destruction of these couple cameras in Oviedo, Florida isn't the first of its kind and surely won't be the last, the Oviedo PD's response is unique, as far as we know. Let's cross our fingers that other police departments don't follow in Oviedo police's questionable footsteps by installing their own Flock clones and setting up stings for people targeting and destroying the Fourth Amendment-violating, privately-owned spy network's cameras.

The installation of decoy Flock units only came to light after the August 20th arrest of Oviedo, Florida resident Evan Meyer after he allegedly destroyed a 3D-printed decoy camera the police had installed a few days earlier, which reportedly didn't cost the same as a regular Flock camera and didn't store data (via 404 Media). Still, Meyer faces three felonies — property crime for damage to computer equipment, attempted larceny, and criminal mischief for property damage.

According to police, Meyer — with a pair of garden shears in tow — approached the fake camera around midnight a few days after it had been installed. He then allegedly used the shears to knock the decoy off its pole and proceeded to destroy the ersatz stalker-cam. We don't know if the decoy was equipped with an actual camera lens, a proper battery, and a solar panel to sell the illusion, so we can't know whether Meyer wondered if something was up while allegedly destroying it. But something was, in fact, up. Police officers had been keeping an eye on their fake camera from the moment they installed it and were just waiting for someone to vandalize it.

Little is known about how the police hatched this plan and created the decoy, as there is evidently no record of it in their paperwork. All the public has to go on is an OPD representative's statement to 404 Media, claiming that the decoy was 3D printed by one of the officers and "donated" to the police department. Interestingly, the police aren't the only ones leveraging their 3D printers when it comes to Flock cameras. One creator on Makerworld, a site for sharing 3D printer designs, has published a Flock Sock used to, uh, protect these cameras from UV rays.