Charles Brownlee is using a federal appeal to challenge his 60-year armed robbery sentence, arguing that police should not have been able to use Flock cameras to reconstruct his travel around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The case could become a major test of whether AI-powered license plate readers have advanced faster than Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
Here’s what to know
According to The Texas Tribune, investigators connected Brownlee to five 2024 armed robberies in North Texas by using Flock data to assemble what his lawyers described as a “pattern of life.” His attorneys say this kind of after-the-fact tracking should require a judge-signed warrant.
At an Oct. 5 hearing, Brownlee’s lawyer, Matthew Wright, told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Flock system gives officers surveillance capabilities beyond anything earlier policing tools offered…