The cops in this article didn't do a single thing wrong.

Their department did, maybe. Or the city/state. But reading the article, someone entered the plate wrong 1000s of miles away, and secondarily flock reads some plates wrongly.

However, the individual police were told "use this tool" and the tool said "spotted stolen car". They then showed up, and did their job.

I would blame the city or department head who signed with flock. I would blame flock. I wouldn't blame the individual officers which were just doing their job.

The cops said they had been tracking the car for days. So just once they should have looked at the license plate, and seen the full 7-digit number, which does not match the 5-digit number reported as stolen.

Instead they just blindly trusted Flock's identification of the vehicle.

The problem with giving a free pass to the lazy and incompetent cops who didn't do the least bit of due diligence before surrounding a couple with 4 cop cars in a manner that could have resulted in death, is that you can apply such flimsy excuses to everyone in the chain, and end up excusing everyone, because each link is only partly responsible.

Yes, I'd also blame the city for deploying constant warrantless surveillance.

Yes, I'd also blame Flock.

Yes, I'd also blame the Sergeants who set officer incentives and don't punish lazy cops, and prosecutors and judges who rarely hold police accountable.

But also blame the 4+ lazy and incompetent police officers, not one of whom bothered to double-check the pictures against the report and say, hey, this license plate has 7 digits...

Bull. That's passing the buck. The cops have a moral responsibility to do their job and not offload it to an AI that is known to hallucinate far more than a non-impaired, trained human.

"I was just following instructions" has been the excuse of every single low-level worker of authoritarian and abusive societies. It wasn't valid then, and it's not valid now.

Ruin the whole lot's life the way they tried to ruin this woman. At least ruin the relevant authority figures. Maybe the individual on-site officers should be spared, but the chief? Throw them out on their ass.

As far as Flock? At this point, they are fully an agent of the state and should be just as liable for Consitutional violations as the whole of the government.

Bullshit. Cops aren't machines who just follow the orders of a computer.

Anyone who has the power to do violence to or imprison someone has a responsibility to get these things right.