Burlington uses new camera technology to track vehicles, read license plates
QUESTION: What’s the story behind the AI “flock” cameras that have popped up at various high-traffic locations in Burlington? What data do these cameras collect and who ultimately monitors them?
ANSWER: They aren’t a harbinger of the emerging “surveillance state” – at least not according to the top brass at Burlington’s police department. Nor are they a sign that artificial intelligence has reached the stage where it would rather waste time watching traffic cameras than doing our scut work.
In fact, to hear it from the police department’s administrators, the flock cameras in Burlington are merely a means to enhance the observational and deductive abilities of the city’s police officers.
“The flock cameras we use are not surveillance cameras,” insisted Josh Light, an assistant chief with the department. “It’s not much different than when an officer sits in a vehicle looking at cars. The main difference is that it enhances your ability to recognize plates and recognize vehicles.”
Unlike toll cameras and other surveillance technology, the city’s flock cameras are strictly tuned in to the backs of passing vehicles. They have no facial recognition features and no means of panning over to face oncoming traffic. Instead, they stay trained on the trailing ends of cars and trucks, which they photograph in high-resolution in order to capture license plates as well as information about the make and model of vehicles.
Nick Wright, Burlington’s other assistant chief of police, notes that this hyperfocus makes each of the city’s flock cameras an ideal lookout for the department – without the need to tie up resources or personnel in the process.
“It’s trained not to focus on irrelevant things, and it’s trained to distinguish license plates from the other things on the back of vehicles.”
– Burlington assistant police chief Nick Wright
“It’s trained not to focus on irrelevant things,” Wright explained, “and it’s trained to distinguish license plates from the other things on the back of vehicles.”
The department currently has 30 of these cameras mounted in strategic locations, which include high-traffic intersections and entry points into the city like interstate exits. The department also has one mobile camera that can be set up in any spot for a limited duration.
In addition to their basic function to “observe and report,” these 31 cameras make use of artificial intelligence in order to ferret out license plate data. They can pick out unusual or oddly-positioned plates, adjust for lighting and weather, and make sophisticated deductions faster than any human observer. The AI component can also compare license plates against records of stolen vehicles, missing person reports, and fugitives who are wanted for serious felonies.
Whenever the system matches a license plate with an item of flagged information, a notice about the vehicle’s location is sent to the department’s patrol officers. According to the department, these automatic alerts have enabled the city’s police force to track down at least 10 elderly or disabled people who have been reported missing by family members, and they’ve greatly enhanced the agency’s ability to find and recover stolen vehicles.
“When a car gets stolen, we enter the license plate into NCIC. Flock itself has a list of cars that it can match with the photos it takes of license plates.”
– Burlington assistant police chief Josh Light
“When a car gets stolen,” Light elaborated, “we enter the license plate into NCIC. Flock itself has a list of cars that it can match with the photos it takes of license plates.”
“We’ve had these cameras since May of 2025, and by December of 2025, we had recovered 37 cars…Last week, we had three stolen cars go past these cameras within an hour, and we were able to recover all three of them.”
– Burlington assistant police chief Nick Wright
“We’ve had these cameras since May of 2025,” Wright went on to recall in an interview last Tuesday, “and by December of 2025, we had recovered 37 cars…Last week, we had three stolen cars go past these cameras within an hour, and we were able to recover all three of them.”
The city’s flock cameras have also given the police force an edge in the pursuit of dangerous suspects from other jurisdictions. This past January, for example, a camera near Springwood Park happened to ping when it spotted a vehicle owned by Mark Thomas Sharp, who was on the run from the Stokes County sheriff after a near-fatal shooting. It wasn’t long before members of Burlington’s police force converged on Sharp’s location, only to have the fleeing suspect take his own life on the grounds of the park.
In addition to issuing these periodic alerts, the department’s new technology maintains a 30-day record of license plates that aren’t immediately flagged by its system. Investigators with adequate clearance can tap into these records to identify vehicles that have turned up in shootings and other serious crimes.
Alan Balog, Burlington’s chief of police, recalled that this technology was even able to provide a crucial lead in a random shooting that occurred along I-85/40 on June 22, 2025.
Despite having been shot in the head while driving, the victim of this shooting was able to pull off the interstate and call 9-1-1. Yet, the circumstances of the attack made it all but impossible for him to describe the assailant or the vehicle from where the gunshots originated.
Investigators were nevertheless able to identify the suspect’s car by reviewing images of license plates that a flock camera had captured near the same stretch of interstate. Within three days of the shooting, the department used this information to arrest 33-year-old Destiny Shavonta Quanshall Poole, who currently faces two felony charges for the drive-by shooting last June.
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“Without the license plate readers, we wouldn’t have known who she was.”
– Burlington police chief Alan Balog
“Without the license plate readers,” Balog added, “we wouldn’t have known who she was.”
With so much investigative power behind this technology, the police department has been careful to limit precisely who can tap into its database of flock camera photos.
For the most part, full access to these images is restricted to an elite group of officers and civilian employees who work in the agency’s Aerial Reconnaissance & Tactical Intelligence Center, or ARTIC. Located deep within the inner recesses of the police department’s headquarters, this high-tech control room is also the staging point for the agency’s remote-controlled drones and other next-generation technologies that the department employ.
The police department has also established a strict set of protocols for other members of the police force to access this database on an as-needed basis.
“We have substantial documentation and other procedures to make sure we access our system the way it’s intended,” Wright stressed. “We’ve even changed the way we request information so we can’t leave blank spaces. We’ve made it really hard to do what we shouldn’t do.”
Another selling point for the department’s flock cameras are they’re comparatively low price. According to Light, the city leases the flock cameras and the associated software for about $130,000 a year – a price that he insists is not much more expensive than the salary, benefits, and gear for a single patrol officer.
“The return on our investment is incredible. For the cost of one police officer, we get 30 observers that are active 24/7/365.”
– Burlington assistant police chief Josh Light
“The return on our investment is incredible,” he added. “For the cost of one police officer, we get 30 observers that are active 24/7/365.”
All that being said, the department’s higher-ups are emphatic that these cameras are, at their core, nothing more than a means to enhance the value of old-fashioned police work by humans in uniform.
“We get a lot out of them,” Balog contended. “But these license plate readers are just one more tool that we use to make our city safer.”
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