Pt 3: To Flock or Deflock: Interview With Licensed Investigator on the Future of ALPR Technology

And to start this episode off, I'm going to start with a story.

About 20 years ago, I had the worst day of my entire life.

There was a tip that was called in where I worked.

I was working at the Wisconsin State Fair.

The local scrapyard called in to the State Fair police and informed them that somebody had dropped off a load of wire at the scrapyard.

Which did in fact happen.

I dropped off a load of wire at the scrapyard.

And the reason why they were calling in that tip is because copper prices, scrap prices were going up.

And they wanted to ensure that what they received, what the scrapyard received, was not stolen.

Instead of the police going and investigating what occurred, they assumed automatically that I... was the individual who stole the wire and was attempting to profit off of whatever it is that I just sold.

Even though I got the check made out to the Wisconsin State Fair and I dropped it off in a state fair truck with my state fair ID, they assumed that I was up to a nefarious task and that I should be arrested.

So they went and meandered down to where I was in the middle of the Wisconsin State Fair.

And before I knew it, I had my face up against a wall with 15 cops surrounding me, yelling at me, swearing at me.

An 18-year-old boy who literally, the worst thing, I mean, I had a speeding ticket.

Other than that, it was really just a lack of following up a tip and ensuring that the tip was right.

Not long after that, they had me in a cell and once again were swearing at me, yelling at me, telling me how horrible of a human being I was.

But I was really blessed.

I was really lucky because on the other side, I heard my dad and my dad was yelling even louder.

And before long, my dad was able to get me out of there and get it all cleared up.

I was a lucky one.

I was the one that was able to get out of that situation before it got worse.

But it could have ended much worse.

But that's something that I live with to this day.

And to this day, I'm still scared of cops.

When I get pulled over, I've gotten pulled over once where I literally just started shaking because at that point in time, you feel that helplessness again of, you know, having your agency taken away from you, not being able to do anything.