An Arkansas police officer pulled over a family and handcuffed them after misreading Flock camera data.
The incident reportedly took place in Sherwood, Arkansas, in February, where officers drew guns and allegedly detained a couple with their 1.5-month-old baby after a Flock ALPR camera misread their plate.
In the bodycam footage shared by Giggling Ganon on X, the officer can be seen asking, “Hey, driver. Hey, put your hands up and walk back to me. Yeah, anybody else in the car?”
The father steps out of the vehicle and can be seen informing officers about the occupants of the car. The officer tells the father, “The reason I’m stopping you is your plate’s stolen. It’s coming back stolen… your license plate.”
He then handcuffed the father of the one-month-old in the police cruiser.
The officers also asked the girlfriend to step out of the car and put her in handcuffs while confirming, “You said a month and a half hold in the car?”
The officer did not check whether the car was actually stolen or incorrectly flagged by the system. The backup officer at the scene figured out what was wrong.
Meanwhile, the couple was cooperative and provided the registration and license of the vehicle. The woman also noted she just had new tyres put in as the car was wrecked.
The officer told the mother, “The first five are correct; the last digits are the only ones that are off.” She responded, “Okay, I got you.” He explained why they had to stop their vehicle: “You flagged one of our cameras, and so that’s why we stopped you because we thought it was the other plate.”
You people do know the cop didn’t type in anything prior to the stop right? Plate reader cameras run automatically. He explained what happened at the end.
— Anti-Hero Savage (@underverse_lord) August 20, 2026
According to the data, a vehicle with license plate number APX55Y was reportedly stolen. The couple’s vehicle with APX55X number had triggered the alert system due to one number being misread.
At the end, the police officer explained, “Those cameras are placed everywhere, and they hit license plates, and they’ll flag. But I’m not gonna say they’re completely perfect because you know, that’s one of our technologies.” He also claimed it may have been “AI or whatever.”
He appreciated them for “being cool” while being handcuffed. The officers took off the handcuffs from the parents of the one-month-old. The bodycam video of the incident has received immense attention online.
It has gained massive criticism as the officer did not investigate the car license plate number and handcuffed innocent people.
Moreover, the modern Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR / Flock) camera technology is still new.
The level of reaching this cop was doing😂 ‘Is your license good?’ And basically saying ‘ y’know, modern technology🙄🫤 what can you do?’ If I was that family I would definitely be trying to get a case started against them
— Darren Wattson (@DWattson90197) August 20, 2026
The cameras sometimes read the plates at different angles, and that may result in unreliable data. In another similar incident, an Arkansas family was pulled over by the police and held at gunpoint in Texas. In this case, the officer mistyped AZ instead of AR and ended up handcuffing them.
The victim of the incident, Demetria Heard, told reporters, “I had to say something for my son. I could not… I could not live with that knowing that I did not say something because this was just going to get brushed under the rug like all the other instances. There are so many people that have shared a story similar to ours. And I thank God that we’re still here to tell it.”
Their family was traumatized after the incident and demanded justice. They hadn’t filed a lawsuit yet but were planning to hold the department responsible.
Disclaimer: The Inquisitr could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.
