Up to date Aug. 28, 2026, 1:27 p.m. ET
A minimum of 19 police and sheriff’s workplace workers in 5 states had been arrested, fired, placed on administrative go away or positioned underneath investigation during the last two months for utilizing Flock Security’s huge community of license plate reader cameras to trace automobiles’ areas for doubtlessly improper or unlawful functions.
Nevertheless it wasn’t their police supervisors who noticed their irregular search exercise. It was USA TODAY reporters.
In Dallas, Georgia, state investigators arrested a 911 director who searched greater than 2,500 occasions for automobiles belonging to her estranged husband and his new girlfriend.
In Sarasota, Florida, an officer who tracked an ex-girlfriend’s automobile at the very least 335 occasions over two months was fired and arrested.
The Lufkin Police Division in Texas suspended all Flock use after Rangers arrested an officer who had repeatedly tracked seven license plates, yet another than 3,400 occasions. He’s charged with at the very least 100 felonies.
In every of these instances and greater than a dozen others, USA TODAY flagged their patterns of questionable searches earlier than their very own companies did. Solely after reporters contacted their employers did the companies spring into motion.
Their instances illustrate a dynamic that’s enjoying out in communities throughout the nation. As Flock and different manufacturers of automated license plate readers develop into ubiquitous in almost each state, many regulation enforcement companies have finished little to observe how their very own workers use them.
A few of that work as a substitute has fallen on journalists, activists and others involved that anybody with entry to the corporate’s non-public digicam networks can comply with just about any driver’s actions with a question as easy as a Google search.
Should you can’t see the Flock Search Historical past device beneath, click on right here.
But in direct response to rising public scrutiny over abuse of its know-how, Flock in December 2025 modified its methods to make officers’ misuse exponentially tougher for the general public to unearth.
To disclose the officers’ surveillance, USA TODAY analyzed greater than 75 million searches of Flock license plate reader information spanning three-and-a-half years and greater than 6,300 companies – a fraction of the entire variety of searches by Flock customers throughout that interval.
The evaluation recognized tons of of examples of regulation enforcement personnel looking single license plates tons of and even 1000’s of occasions over extended durations, whereas justifying a lot of their searches with imprecise or nonsensical causes, equivalent to “SUS,” “TRAFFIC,” “INQUIRY,” “INVESTIGATION,” “TEST,” or a single letter of the alphabet, like “A,” “B” or “Z.” The place reporters may decide the focused automobiles’ house owners, they discovered a number of registered to the looking officers’ ex-partners, co-workers, members of the family and different individuals they knew personally.
Altogether, USA TODAY’s evaluation surfaced 240 Flock customers whose frequent and protracted searches stood out from extra informal customers. Reporters contacted the police companies that employed 67 of them. In about half these instances, the companies confirmed or launched investigations for potential misuse. The companies didn’t reply in 1 / 4 of the instances. For the opposite quarter, the companies mentioned they lacked enough info or the makes use of appeared professional.
Flock blacks out key information
USA TODAY’s evaluation was attainable as a result of till December, Flock prospects may entry month-to-month utilization audits that confirmed the initials of every one who searched the corporate’s digicam information, the tags they’d searched and their said causes for looking. In lots of states, these audits are public information that present transparency into how officers use the system.
However Flock modified its software program in December to black out most officer initials, license plate numbers and causes from these logs, which can make large-scale analyses like USA TODAY’s just about unimaginable sooner or later.
Flock declined to reply detailed questions from USA TODAY, offering solely an emailed assertion.
“Any officer abuse of our system is totally unacceptable, and the people who abuse our system ought to completely be held accountable,” mentioned the assertion from Paris Lewbell, Flock’s public relations supervisor. “We’re dedicated to setting a baseline for the place safeguards and transparency for our business ought to be, and welcome additional conversations and laws from native communities in regards to the guidelines of the street that they need to set for public security know-how.”
Lewbell mentioned that Flock started redacting key particulars from audit logs due to a “sample of individuals utilizing publicly launched audit information to determine undercover officers by title – publishing their contact info alongside particulars of lively investigations.” When pressed by USA TODAY for particular examples, Flock didn’t present any.
Amid a spate of headlines and police-officer arrests over abuse of its know-how, Flock in January rolled out a brand new device that helps their prospects – 1000’s of police companies, owners associations and personal corporations – flag individuals who abuse the system.
The corporate says the function will detect officers’ irregular search exercise and shut off their entry till an company administrator can evaluation it. As well as, Flock began requiring customers to enter particular case numbers and offense varieties related to every search.
That device, nonetheless, permits companies to audit their officers’ search exercise solely relationship again to January 2026. And Flock gained’t require companies to undertake it till subsequent 12 months.
These limitations had been on show in a case in Covington, Georgia, the place police in July fired a detective after discovering with the assistance of Flock’s device that he had tracked a feminine co-worker 41 occasions since January, an inner affairs report reveals. The girl was shocked to study from a USA TODAY reporter weeks later, nonetheless, the complete extent of the detective’s surveillance of her automobile: 2,890 searches over greater than two years.
Requested why the general public ought to belief inner auditing as an enough substitute for public oversight, provided that many companies allowed their very own officers’ conduct to go unchecked for years, Flock didn’t reply.
Flock’s redactions are “catastrophic” each for transparency and companies’ skill to identify improper searches by outdoors officers, mentioned Dave Maass, director of investigations on the Digital Frontier Basis, a nonprofit whose mission is to make sure that know-how helps freedom, justice and civil liberties.
“Flock encourages companies to share their information nationwide, and now it is making it unimaginable for companies to audit their information when it comes from an exterior entity,” he mentioned. “Flock is doing it solely to cowl its butt. It needs to chop down on the reporting about abusive searches.”
The change displays the stance that Flock chief communications officer Joshua Thomas took one 12 months in the past in response to issues about officers abusing its know-how.
“It’s not Flock’s job,” he mentioned, “to police the police.”
‘It’s an invasion of privateness’
Flock’s current reforms provided little solace to Billy Taylor and Leandra Higgenbottom, whose automobiles Heidi Taylor is accused of improperly monitoring for months whereas she was the 911 director for the police division in Dallas, Georgia.
Billy and Heidi Taylor separated round November 2024 after 27 years collectively, Billy Taylor, an electrician his associates name “Sparky,” instructed USA TODAY. He and Higgenbottom began relationship quickly after, when he mounted the wiring in her residence.
Within the months after, they mentioned Heidi Taylor repeatedly confirmed up unannounced on the eating places the place they ate, the hospital the place Higgenbottom works and even on the rural, 100-acre Alabama property they often go to.
“Typically she would simply sit there, and as we might stroll out to her, then she’d haul buggy and be gone,” Higgenbottom mentioned. “I believe she needed us to know she was there.”
Heidi Taylor didn’t reply to calls or emails searching for remark. Billy Taylor mentioned they’d a quick dialogue when she known as him from jail to ask for her son’s telephone quantity. In accordance with him, when he requested her why she tracked him and Higgenbottom, she replied: “You already know why.”
USA TODAY’s evaluation reveals that Heidi Taylor used Flock to search for Billy Taylor’s and Higgenbottom’s license plates virtually day by day from July 2024 to Could 2025 – as many as 39 occasions in sooner or later, generally simply seconds aside. Greater than half her searches of these automobiles occurred between 7 p.m. and three a.m.
USA TODAY contacted the Dallas Police Division about Heidi Taylor’s Flock exercise on July 6. A subsequent press launch reveals the division requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to analyze her the following day.
Should you can’t see a graphic beneath, click on right here.
Arrested on Aug. 12 on two misdemeanor counts of misusing a license plate reader, Heidi Taylor has not been charged in court docket. A 14-year division veteran who not works for the company, she had garnered reward in efficiency evaluations, her personnel file reveals, for operating background checks with out being requested.
Billy Taylor and Higgenbottom dislike Flock, they instructed USA TODAY, and the big energy it locations within the palms of individuals like Heidi Taylor, who will not be a sworn officer. They stay quiet lives and don’t need to be tracked wherever they go.
Higgenbottom mentioned she fears for her security. She filed a petition for a restraining order towards Heidi Taylor on Aug. 20, court docket information present, citing her frequent Flock searches.
“It’s an invasion of privateness,” Billy Taylor mentioned. “Who gave y’all permission to search for me whereas I used to be taking place the street? I am not a needed fugitive. I am not a toddler molester. I am not a thief.
“Why had been y’all taking a look at me?”
Flurry of arrests, firings and investigations
Nearly instantly after USA TODAY reporters requested about their officers’ irregular Flock utilization, at the very least a dozen regulation enforcement companies launched inner investigations.
Though some companies mentioned the officers’ Flock searches seemed to be related to professional narcotics investigations or coaching workouts, many took swift disciplinary motion. Over the following few days, cops, sheriff’s deputies and regulation enforcement personnel throughout the nation had been arrested, referred to outdoors companies for felony investigations, positioned on go away or fired.
In Georgia, officer Sierra Carroll used Flock to search for a single license plate greater than 4,000 occasions over a 16-month span whereas employed by the Perry Police Division, USA TODAY’s evaluation discovered. That was one among six license plates she repeatedly searched: Two of them had been registered to automobiles owned by her co-workers; one other belonged to her daughter’s father.
“Previous to your inquiry, Perry Police Division was not conscious of the frequency with which Sierra Carroll was utilizing Flock to go looking the particular license plates recognized in your e-mail,” Chief Alan Everidge instructed USA TODAY in an Aug. 19 e-mail, 5 days after a reporter contacted him. “After receiving your inquiry, we instantly started reviewing Carroll’s Flock exercise.”
Carroll left the Perry Police Division in April 2025 to work for Georgia’s Houston County Sheriff’s Workplace as a college useful resource officer at an area highschool. She continued making searches from her Perry police-issued Flock account for at the very least 4 months after she left, audit logs present.
The Houston County Sheriff’s Workplace suspended her with out pay on Aug. 17, Sheriff Matt Moulton instructed USA TODAY. She was arrested two days in a while prices of misusing a license plate reader system.
Carroll declined to remark when reached by USA TODAY. A plea has not been entered in her case.
In Texas, officer Zachary Klein of the Lufkin Police Division used Flock to repeatedly search seven license plates, USA TODAY’s evaluation discovered, together with yet another than 3,400 occasions over 10 months. His said purpose for every search was merely, “INVESTIGATION.”
On Aug. 20, six days after USA TODAY requested Lufkin police about Klein’s Flock use, Texas Rangers arrested Klein, an 11-year veteran of the division, on felony prices of abuse of official capability and tampering with a authorities file. Lufkin police additionally launched a department-wide audit, suspended using Flock cameras throughout the division and positioned a second officer on administrative go away.
“The division just lately turned conscious of potential points and instantly started an audit into using the know-how,” public info officer Jackie Zimmerman mentioned in an Aug. 20 press launch. She added in an e-mail to USA TODAY, “we recognize you bringing your issues to our consideration.”
Klein, who faces at the very least 100 felony prices, based on court docket information, didn’t reply to calls or emails from USA TODAY. He has not entered a plea.
The Sarasota Police Division in Florida fired officer Cory Waiters and arrested him on two felony counts and one misdemeanor rely of misusing laptop methods and official misconduct on Aug. 19 – two weeks after a reporter requested the company about his 335 Flock searches of his ex-partner’s automobile. Waiters, who didn’t reply to calls or emails from USA TODAY, has not entered a plea.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Workplace in Georgia on Aug. 19 fired and arrested deputy Jerry Shellhouse, who searched one tag at the very least 840 occasions. The workplace had beforehand arrested and fired three deputies for abusing Flock however missed Shellhouse till contacted on Aug. 14 by a USA TODAY reporter. Shellhouse, who has not entered a plea in his court docket case, didn’t reply to messages from USA TODAY.
The St. Charles County Police Division in Missouri suspended an worker and discontinued the division’s Flock utilization, and the Harris County Sheriff’s Workplace in Texas suspended three deputies’ Flock entry pending an inner investigation – all in response to questions from USA TODAY.
A minimum of six extra companies – together with the Houston Police Division in Texas, Eastpointe Police Division in Michigan and Georgia’s Butts County Sheriff’s Workplace, LaGrange Police Division, Milton Police Division and Richmond County Sheriff’s Workplace – launched felony or administrative investigations into officers due to USA TODAY’s reporting.
Their investigations proceed.
Public scrutiny prompts Flock to clamp down
Flock started as three faculty associates’ pipe dream to “get rid of crime.”
However after cops had been more and more publicly uncovered for utilizing Flock to commit crimes, the corporate mobilized, instituting consequential modifications that inhibit the general public’s skill to carry rogue officers accountable.
As instructed by firm CEO Garrett Langley in a collection of newspaper and podcast interviews and public speeches, he turned annoyed by Atlanta police’s failure to unravel most murders and property crimes.
So he and fellow Georgia Tech alumni Paige Todd and Matt Feury in 2017 put an Android telephone in a water-proof field and deployed it of their neighborhood. It took footage of passing automobiles and uploaded particulars about them – license plate quantity, make, mannequin, coloration and different traits like physique injury and bumper stickers – to an internet database.
License plate readers had existed for years. However Langley and his associates quickly developed a product extra inexpensive than its opponents, he instructed The Atlanta Enterprise Chronicle’s On Management podcast in 2023, and marketed it aggressively to police.
Backed by at the very least $650 million in enterprise capital funding, Flock now captures and analyzes greater than a billion photographs, sounds and movies a day with greater than 100,000 cameras put in throughout the U.S. The corporate says it helps resolve one million crimes a 12 months.
Legislation enforcement officers nationally praised Flock as a sport changer for serving to crack stolen-vehicle, missing-person and murder instances. However as officers had been outed for tapping into native Flock digicam networks to stalk exes, monitor a lady her husband suspected of getting an abortion and implement federal immigration legal guidelines, activists began harnessing Flock’s energy towards it.
A number of anti-Flock web sites and muckrakers used open information legal guidelines to gather and publish tons of of police companies’ audit logs – inner information detailing every time an officer searched Flock for a particular tag. HaveIBeenFlocked.com created a public, searchable database that enabled anybody to enter their very own license plate and test if a cop had used Flock to trace their whereabouts.
That was when Flock – which achieved a $7.5 billion valuation on the premise that taking photographs in public locations is truthful sport – obscured its information to dam it from public view.
As first reported in a publish on HaveIBeenFlocked.com’s weblog, Flock vice chairman Chris Colwell in a collection of December 2025 emails knowledgeable prospects the corporate was taking motion to completely conceal cops’ search exercise.
“Not too long ago, a third-party web site started aggregating search info that seems to have been launched by means of these public-records processes,” learn the emails. “We acknowledge that seeing investigative search exercise displayed publicly can increase comprehensible issues about officer security, investigative integrity, neighborhood notion and compliance with state regulation.”
Colwell on Dec. 9 introduced Flock’s answer: The audit logs that HaveIBeenFlocked.com and so many different information retailers and civilians had obtained would not embrace most officers’ initials, the tags they searched, and their said causes.
Flock would start redacting these particulars in order that companies may see solely the identities of their very own officers. Particulars of statewide or nationwide searches run by outdoors officers on their networks – the majority of all searches – can be hid, Colwell’s Dec. 9 e-mail mentioned, “to guard lively investigations and guarantee officer security.”
From that time ahead, companies themselves couldn’t see which outdoors officers had been accessing their information, and for what causes. When members of the general public requested these logs, most officers’ initials and the plates they searched had been changed with “REDACTED” or just “***.”
Retracing officers’ steps
Flock’s modifications make it a lot tougher for the general public to root out future abuse. Nevertheless it was too late to cowl up what was already out.
Earlier than the modifications took impact, many information organizations and civilians had uploaded companies’ audit logs to Muckrock.com, a nonprofit newsroom and useful resource hub the place journalists and others incessantly share authorities paperwork and information obtained by means of public information requests.
From there, a USA TODAY reporter downloaded audit logs launched by greater than 120 police companies in 24 states and obtained much more logs by means of extra information requests. Collectively, the logs include information of greater than 75 million license plate searches performed from January 2023 to July 2026 by officers from 6,300 companies – a couple of third of all regulation enforcement companies within the U.S.
As a result of so many officers who seemed up license plates ran their searches throughout not solely their very own companies’ digicam networks, however tons of or 1000’s of others’, their searches nonetheless confirmed up within the information even when their very own companies refused to launch it. That allowed USA TODAY to create an image of at the very least 208,000 officers’ Flock utilization.
USA TODAY’s evaluation resulted in an inventory of lots of the nation’s most prolific Flock customers, a lot of whom had used the service to repeatedly search single tags. In lots of instances, they entered nebulous and implausible causes for his or her searches, together with “PLATE,” “TAG,” “POLICE” or “BOB.” A lot of their searches spiked within the wee hours of the night time.
These customers characterize solely those USA TODAY is aware of about. Of the 75 million particular person search information USA TODAY obtained, simply 14 million had been totally unredacted.
As a result of a lot of the unredacted logs listed solely the officers’ initials, reporters spent weeks scouring companies’ web sites, metropolis workers directories, statewide badge registries and information articles to disclose the officers’ identities.
In some instances, USA TODAY recognized the particular individuals officers had monitored by matching their license plates to parking or rushing tickets. When contacted by reporters, a number of of these individuals mentioned they’d been completely unaware that officers had used Flock to trace them.
Most of the companies the officers labored for mentioned they, too, had been unaware.
Latest Flock reforms go solely to this point
The extra companies USA TODAY reporters contacted, the extra obvious it turned that many weren’t conducting routine audits of their officers’ Flock use.
USA TODAY submitted public information requests to 30 police companies that employed prolific Flock customers for any inner audits, investigations or opinions they’d performed of their officers’ Flock actions since January 2023.
Of the 14 that responded, 4 – the Eastpointe Police Division in Michigan, Albany County Sheriff’s Workplace in New York, Gurnee Police Division in Illinois and Mentor Police Division in Ohio – mentioned they’d no responsive information. 5 denied the requests, saying that the information had been a part of pending investigations or disciplinary instances, that the request was too broad or that any such audits are exempt underneath legal guidelines governing the disclosure of license plate reader information.
The opposite 5 companies – the Newton County Sheriff’s Workplace in Indiana, Braintree Police Division in Massachusetts, Lufkin Police Division in Texas and Georgia’s Braselton and Norcross police departments – offered information indicating that they’d begun conducting audits solely this 12 months, when Flock launched its “Audit Help” function, which the corporate says is meant to assist companies detect uncommon search exercise.
Flock made that function elective. A few third of companies that use Flock had turned it on voluntarily as of early August, April Sigona, a Flock strategic communications guide, instructed USA TODAY. However amid an onslaught of officer arrests and unfavorable press protection over misuse, Flock in August mentioned it can make the function obligatory for all law-enforcement prospects by the tip of 2026.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Flock CEO Langley declined to say what particular standards meet Flock’s inner threshold for uncommon exercise. He mentioned that the function typically is designed to flag repeated searches of a single plate and late-night queries.
Chief Garrett Fiveash of the LaGrange Police Division despatched USA TODAY a number of screenshots of the interior audit options Flock gives, which the division began utilizing in January. One reveals an officer who searched one plate 11 occasions, subsequent to the phrases “Wants Assessment.”
As a result of the function doesn’t look at searches earlier than 2026, nonetheless, Fiveash mentioned that Flock didn’t alert him to the irregular exercise of Sergeant Joseph Randazzo, who searched one license plate 781 occasions over two-and-a-half months in 2025 – a median of 10 occasions a day. Fiveash mentioned he first realized about Randazzo’s searches from USA TODAY.
The division positioned Randazzo on administrative go away three days later for what Fiveash known as an “egregious violation.” Randazzo, who has not been charged with against the law, didn’t reply to messages from USA TODAY.
“Suffice to say it was a really, very major problem,” Fiveash instructed USA TODAY. “We really feel positive that it’s going to wind up, greater than doubtless, with him being terminated and prosecuted when it’s all mentioned and finished.”
The LaGrange Police Division is one among a number of companies that just lately applied new safeguards to deal with how its officers use Flock. Officers should now enter a case quantity related to every search, Fiveash mentioned, to make sure every is related to an precise felony case. The company will even conduct a historic audit of its officers’ Flock exercise.
The Richmond County Sheriff’s Workplace in Georgia as of a July 2026 coverage change now requires deputies to submit search requests by means of its Intelligence Unit, which runs the searches on their behalf. The requesting deputies are required to supply their laptop quantity, case quantity and an offense kind.
Flock’s Audit Help function helped a number of Georgia police companies determine rogue workers, whom they referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for felony probes in current weeks. Since July 6, the bureau introduced arrests of 14 of them. A number of extra instances stay ongoing, bureau spokesperson Sara Lue instructed USA TODAY.
Was it 41 searches, or almost 3,000?
For the Covington Police Division, Flock’s audit function introduced solely a small fraction of the complete image.
Michael Canty, a now-former Covington detective, is likely one of the first Georgia officers Flock’s Audit Help function helped internet.
It flagged his extreme Flock exercise in July, prompting Covington police to launch an inner evaluation, copies of which USA TODAY obtained by means of a public information request.
The evaluation reveals that Canty used Flock to go looking the license plate of a lady he used thus far, who additionally works for Covington police, 41 occasions since January 2026. Canty, it reveals, additionally searched the tags of that girl’s new boyfriend – one other Covington detective – and a second ex-dating associate.
The division fired Canty quickly after, referring him to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for an impartial felony investigation. Canty, who didn’t reply to calls or emails from USA TODAY, was charged on Aug. 27 with 5 counts of violation of oath by a public officer and different offenses. He has not entered a plea.
Actually, Canty’s surveillance was much more in depth.
USA TODAY’s evaluation of publicly launched audit logs discovered that Canty searched the primary ex-dating associate’s license plate 2,890 occasions from June 2023 to October 2025. He seemed up her plate almost day by day for 14 months straight, the logs present – as many as 41 occasions in sooner or later, often between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.
That got here as information to the lady he was looking.
The girl, who declined to make use of her title for this story, instructed USA TODAY that she suspected Canty had planted a monitoring machine on her car. He repeatedly confirmed up unannounced, she mentioned, and appeared to know each place she had been, incessantly bringing it up in conversations. As soon as, she observed him parked outdoors of a Waffle Home in his police cruiser whereas she ate late at night time with associates.
The girl, a Covington police worker, mentioned she has seen the worth Flock provides with regards to fixing crimes. However she mentioned there should be much more guardrails round when and which officers can use it.
When a USA TODAY reporter known as her in early August and instructed her the true variety of occasions Canty had searched her plate, she mentioned she was in shock.
“I’m actually scared,” she instructed the reporter. “I’m going to name the police proper now.”
Jeanine Santucci contributed reporting.
Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY. Contact him at kjacoby@usatoday.com.
Austin Quick is an investigative information reporter at USA TODAY. Contact him at afast@usatoday.com.
Jack Lemnus is a TCPalm enterprise reporter. Contact him at jack.lemnus@tcpalm.com, 772-409-1345, or comply with him on X @JackLemnus.
