Police officers across the United States are facing arrests, firings and investigations for allegedly misusing Flock Safety's automated license plate reader system to track people for personal reasons, including romantic partners, former partners and colleagues.
Flock operates more than 120,000 cameras across over 6,000 US communities, with the system recording around 20 billion license plate scans each month. The cameras are designed to help law enforcement locate stolen vehicles, identify vehicles connected to investigations and assist in finding missing people. However, their growing deployment has raised concerns about how much vehicle-movement data police can access and whether agencies are adequately monitoring that access.
A Washington Post analysis found that at least 50 law enforcement officers had been accused or charged with using license plate readers for unauthorized purposes. Flock systems were involved in 46 of those cases, while 26 involved officers allegedly using the technology to monitor women, including current or former romantic partners. The Institute for Justice has separately documented dozens of similar cases nationwide, with many occurring since 2024.
One of the most prominent cases involved former Braselton, Georgia, Police Chief Michael Steffman. According to The Washington Post, Steffman used Flock searches to monitor the movements of his former girlfriend and her daughter roughly 600 times. He was arrested on stalking, harassment and license-plate-reader misuse charges but died before his case went to trial.
Georgia has continued to see cases involving alleged misuse. Habersham County Deputy Christian Brewer was fired and arrested after an internal audit reportedly found that he had used Flock data to track someone with whom he had a personal relationship. A second Habersham County investigator, Jonathan Thomas, was arrested this week following another internal investigation into alleged misuse of the system.
The problem is not limited to Georgia. In Texas, former Lufkin police officer Zachary Anthony Klein was indicted on 100 felony counts after allegedly conducting more than 45,000 Flock searches over approximately 200 days. One license plate was reportedly searched nearly 3,500 times. The department subsequently suspended its use of Flock while investigations continued.
The Institute for Justice's database has continued adding cases in 2026, including allegations involving officers in Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Texas and other states. The database records incidents involving stalking, unauthorized searches and other non-law-enforcement uses of automated license plate reader data.
Flock says its platform records every search and provides audit tools intended to identify unusual activity. The company has also introduced additional safeguards, including mandatory case codes, stronger audit mechanisms and a recommended reduction in data retention from 30 days to seven days.
Critics argue that logging searches is only useful if police departments actually review those records and investigate suspicious activity. In several documented cases, alleged misuse was discovered only after victims or outside investigators identified unusual searches.
The issue has now expanded beyond individual officers. At least 69 alleged misuse incidents have been identified nationwide, while communities are increasingly questioning whether extensive vehicle surveillance can be deployed without stronger controls over retention, access and data sharing.
Residents have also begun investigating the system themselves. Have I Been Flocked allows users to check whether their license plate appears in publicly obtained Flock search records. The service has reportedly compiled more than 242 million recorded searches from audit logs obtained through public-records requests.
As Flock's network continues expanding, the controversy is shifting from whether automated license plate readers can help police solve crimes to a more difficult question: who watches the people given access to the surveillance system?