Atlanta, GA, May 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Atlanta, GA, May 5, 2021 -- In furtherance of its mission to eliminate crime, Flock Safety today announced an official distribution partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the private non-profit whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child exploitation, and prevent child victimization. As part of the new collaboration, Flock Safety will engage its nationwide network of Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras to broadcast time-sensitive AMBER Alerts to local law enforcement.
Flock Safety currently operates in 40 states and 1000+ cities, and works with over 600 local law enforcement agencies. Prior to this alliance, Flock Safety has manually activated its system to help law enforcement solve seven AMBER Alerts in cities such as Atlanta, GA, Wichita, KS, and Memphis, TN, including a stranger abduction in which a one-year-old was successfully returned to her mother unharmed.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s AMBER Alert program, which began in 1996, is designed to notify as many organizations and people as possible about urgent child abductions, including the FBI, TSA, U.S. Marshall’s Service, Customers and Border Protection, and the DEA, along with state and local law enforcement agencies. NCMEC is the administrator of the AMBER Alert Secondary Dissemination System, a voluntary partnership between law enforcement, broadcasters, and private companies to use technology to alert the community of the most urgent child abduction cases.
Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) network will now be enabled to alert law enforcement around the country to any AMBER Alerts in their area. Within a few minutes of an AMBER Alert activation, all law enforcement agencies on the Flock Safety network can receive the Alert through Flock’s Hotlist feature.
“The partnership with the NCMEC will only increase our capacity to help solve these urgent life-or-death cases,” said Garrett Langley, Flock Safety’s co-founder and CEO. “In 2019 and 2020, we witnessed the power of our technology to help locate and return a one-year-old girl and separately a one-year-old boy, who were both the subjects of an AMBER Alert right here in our home state of Georgia. Joining the AMBER Alert Secondary Dissemination System scales our ability to empower local law enforcement with the latest in machine learning-powered ALPR technology and computer vision insights to bring these children home to their families safely.”
As of December 15, 2020, over 1,000 children have been successfully recovered as a result of the AMBER Alert program, which operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Indian country, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 27 other countries.
“During an Amber Alert, time is the enemy. It is imperative for us to utilize every tool possible to reach the community and search for a missing child,” said John Bischoff, Vice President of NCMEC’s Missing Children Division. “The relationship with Flock Safety will allow us to take that search a step further and search active roadways, as well.”
The AMBER Alert integration is being managed by Flock Safety’s co-founder and CTO Matt Feury, who also oversees the security of the Flock system.
“Privacy and security are at the core of everything we do at Flock Safety,” said Feury. “For example, our unique opt-in approach to data sharing allows private customers, like neighborhoods and business owners, to participate in the AMBER Alert program while restricting full access to all of their footage. Our end-to-end data encryption, automatic deletion of data, and strict security protocols ensure that our network can help protect the most vulnerable members of society — children — while protecting citizen privacy and safeguarding sensitive data.”
For more information on Flock Safety and its safety-as-a-service technology for private citizens, business owners, and law enforcement, visit www.flocksafety.com.
ABOUT FLOCK SAFETY
Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 1000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by over 70 percent. Flock Safety serves 1000 cities in 40+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN (NCMEC)
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. NCMEC works with families, victims, private industry, law enforcement, and the public to assist with preventing child abductions, recovering missing children, and providing services to deter and combat child sexual exploitation.
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