DeKalb deputy charged with Flock camera misuse; more Georgia officers fired

https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/07/3-more-georgia-police-officers-fired-over-alleged-flock-camera-misuse/

by pir8life4me • 3 days ago

81 40 3 days ago

At least seven other Georgia law enforcement officers were fired this month and charged with misusing the technology.

That includes a Henry County police officer who was fired and arrested last week following an investigation into his access of the Flock network, authorities there said.

striking• 3 days ago

https://archive.is/KPans

NetworkPerson• 3 days ago

I'm not sure what to think here. Legitimate misuse, sure. But the article says at least one person only looked up their own license plate. I feel like that should be considered acceptable. It's not law enforcement usage specifically, but can't I grant myself the right to see information on my own vehicle?

Yes, devil's advocate could say if standard citizens can't, no one can. Just seems so minor it's not worth losing a job over. All other cases (including plates of family which you don't directly own), yes, investigate fully and apply appropriate actions.

BigTTYGothGF2• 3 days ago

I feel like that should be considered acceptable

Not if they're married and their spouse also drives the vehicle.

jagged-chisel2• 3 days ago

Ethics aside, I don’t think there’s a legal issue with obtaining data on one’s spouse.

samrus2• 3 days ago

It basically shows a lack of respect for the gravity of these tools. If a cop was fucking around with a gun, youd want them held accountable for that so there is a standard of care in using these things. We need that because these can be very dangerous if misused, even unintentionally. The next thing this cop might do with alpr data is look up their friend to play a prank on them or something. Its gotta be nipped in the bud

jackb4040• 3 days ago

It's misuse precisely because any civilian can't use the same tool. Despite how they act, cops do not have a separate set of legal rights that extend to their off-duty lives.

If a cop was checking to make sure they got away with drunk driving, it removes factors that might deter them from continuing that behavior.

sroussey• 3 days ago

It’s a test with a good excuse. If caught, it’s only their own data, right? If not caught, then time to abuse the system.

fhdkweig• 3 days ago

In the state of Georgia, https://eservices.drives.ga.gov/_/ gives access to the following information based on license plate or VIN:

Look-up Information Look-up the status of your title, insurance, or registration. Also view available prestige plates or license plates, vehicle history, or search for ELT lienholders.

  Check Title Status
  Check Insurance Status
  Check Registration Status
  Check Prestige License Plate Availability
  View License Plates
  Search ELT Lienholder
  Vehicle History Lookup
  Check on My Purchase from a Dealer

I don't think there is any website that will tell you where a car has been and when it was last spotted, and I assume that was the kind of information that Flock would be gathering.

rolph• 3 days ago

im not sure if anyone saw me, was my presence noted on camera at the time and locale of a crime?

thats why looking up your own marker, should be suspicious, its reconaissance, investigating the investigation.

when someone queries the police for status of info, or tries to be overly helpful its a checkmark toward reasonable suspicion.

roncesvalles• 3 days ago

In a way, new companies like Flock entering such domains are a boon because they probably maintain tight audit logs and alerting mechanisms.

Traditional look-up software is probably being misused by cops all the time (à la the old noir trope of a PI having "a buddy in the department" who can look up anything for him).

etdznots• 3 days ago

The same exact thing happens with Flock, the only cases we hear about are because the tool empowers such easy abuse of liberty that people make no efforts to hide what they’re doing

themaninthedark• 3 days ago

This news and the timing of it seems like it is trying to elicit your response. Flock has been getting a lot of bad press recently.

The first batch of firing that happened in GA was not because of Flock safeguards, it was because an internal auditor said let's look at your new system.

If they cared about privacy, they would have had such a system in place not something that is just being rolled out.

Second, these people are getting caught because “The activity identified during the audit revealed that the employees searched their own license plates or those of a family member/acquaintance, and not random members of the public,”

A fair reading of that says it is ok to look up information on random members of the public. I feel better already.

If the bar is set at random people, a friend of a friend looking up the info and getting it back to you would get around the safeguards, back to the old buddy in the department.

jareklupinski• 3 days ago

i always hoped the "buddy" would be the lever that goes "no, that's crossing the line between friendship and ethics, please rethink your request"

something an artificial buddy will happily do anyway when you promise that your grandmother is on the line

FireBeyond• 3 days ago

No.

My father worked as what would be (roughly) equivalent to the US Marshal service in Australia.

One day in 2001 one of his coworkers was fired because he saw what he thought was a cute girl in a newspaper article who had won a car in a lottery, and her new license plate was visible. He looked her up.

He didn't interact with her, communicate with her, drive by her home, call her. He looked her up out of sheer bored curiosity, and within 2 months, auditing of the warrants he was working couldn't find a correlation as to why he'd queried this license plate, and he was asked to explain, and couldn't.

Please don't conflate Flock with responsible use of technology. The CEO is on record as saying he says a false positive is better than a false negative. And Flock itself won't turn off data sharing options that are illegal in a state to an agency of that state. They'll happily give training on how to use that data sharing to that agency. They've stated that it's not their policy to tell agencies how to abide by data sharing laws.

readthenotes1• 3 days ago

Flock: You thought we put the cameras up to spy on you. Haha on the police who buy them and rat themselves out!

arkhiver• 3 days ago

archived: https://nonogra.ph/3-more-georgia-police-officers-fired-over...

ChrisArchitect• 3 days ago

this isn't an archive. This is copied text onto a page, possibly modified.

Please use one of the standard archive.today sites or wayback machine to offer mirrors.

seventytwo• 3 days ago

Gosh, no one could have predicted this.

tclancy3• 3 days ago

Just going to leave this here. I grew up in Rhode Island in the Eighties and if a cop got turfed from the cops in Rhode Island, you pretty much know they did something right. https://youtu.be/f1P-g3Hkvjg?is=d-00G7YND4OJrUY3

jwsteigerwalt• 3 days ago

If you want a bit of irony, look up the Flock CEO’s home address (not terribly difficult). You will see it’s blurred out on Google Maps Street View

trogdor• 2 days ago

Anyone can request their residence be blurred on Street View. I did it myself about six years ago.

therealpygon• 2 days ago

I’d have a lot less heartburn with these types of systems if the system prevented mass data exfiltration by organizations (so they can’t simply retain the non-evidence themselves), and limited ALL non-anonymized data retention to the prior 30 days unless there is a signed court order. To me, that is a perfectly reasonable compromise between safety and privacy. No articulated suspicion to a judge means your data evaporates after 30 days.

DeKalb deputy charged with Flock camera misuse; more Georgia officers fired

Related Stories