Recent firing of a Lee County deputy for misuse of camera data adds local urgency to a national debate over privacy, access and oversight
BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
THE OBSERVER
LEE COUNTY — When a gunman killed two students at Brown University last December, the break that ended a six-day manhunt came not from a witness or confession, but from pole-mounted cameras.
After a tipster described the suspect’s car, investigators found a Flock Safety license plate reader in Providence, Rhode Island, had photographed the gray Nissan 14 times in the weeks and hours before the shooting.
They tracked the car to the home of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was gunned down at his apartment, and eventually to New Hampshire, where the suspect was found dead.
Prosecutors said the same technology tied both killings together and closed both cases. Eight months later, a very different Flock story was unfolding in Georgia.
State investigators arrested a former 911 director accused of tapping the same network not to chase a suspect, but for reasons unconnected to any crime, allegedly accessing the readers over a thousand times in ways unrelated to official law enforcement.
The two episodes capture the uneasy balance America faces with one of the fastest-spreading surveillance tools in the country.
A national dragnet
Founded in Atlanta in 2017, Flock has grown into what is effectively a private surveillance company serving thousands of police agencies, which typically pay for annual subscriptions using tax dollars.
Records requests show subscriptions cost $2,500 to $3,000, though specialized equipment like mobile camera trailers and audio sensors can add $25,000 or more per year.
Flock cameras feed data into one searchable system across 49 states, recording a passing vehicle’s plate, make, model and color, letting police reconstruct where a car has been and when.
The readers now blanket roads in virtually every state, and officials describe them as one of the most valuable investigative tools they have.
In Ohio last month, a Lucas County Sheriff’s deputy located a missing girl in under half an hour by entering a suspect’s plate and spotting where the vehicle kept appearing, then intercepted the car and found the child inside with an armed 18-year-old.
Flock claims its cameras helped locate more than 10,000 missing persons in 2025, over 27 a day, and a company-funded 2023 study estimated the technology touches roughly 10% of all reported U.S. crimes.
Yet the same tools that help find abducted children and murder suspects have repeatedly been turned to stalking, snooping and warrantless tracking.
An emerging pattern of abuse
While the crime-fighting record appears real, so does the pattern of abuse, and it’s not limited to a handful of bad actors.
A Washington Post investigation in August found that of the 50-plus officers charged with or accused of misusing their access to Flock and related systems, more than half involved surveilling romantic partners.
In one of the most disturbing accounts, Marci Bakely told the Post she and her teenage daughter were tracked for months by her ex-boyfriend — Braselton, Georgia, police chief Michael Steffman — and couldn’t understand how he always knew her whereabouts.
Such allegations hit close to home two weeks ago. On Sept. 1, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said it dismissed a deputy for misusing the technology after an internal audit revealed multiple policy violations.
The office said it had implemented guidelines years ago restricting any license plate reader information to legitimate law enforcement purposes only.
“The deputy’s dismissal is an example of our commitment and previously stated public position to hold personnel accountable for violations of policies in place to protect the public,” the press release added.
Civil liberties groups point to institutional misuse beyond individual officers’ actions. The American Civil Liberties Union cited police in Lexena, Kansas, allegedly using the readers to pursue a man who wrote an op-ed critical of the department, and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas using the network to locate a woman connected to a self-managed abortion.
Flock cameras in Lee County
Lee County has 102 Flock cameras within or at the edge of its borders, with 90 of them in or near Auburn and Opelika alone.
Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones acknowledged residents’ concerns and stressed that any technology can be abused, making it incumbent on leadership to prevent misuse through strong policies. He said LCSO already conducts self-audits, requires any use of plate data to be tied to a specific criminal case and imposes sanctions when information is misused.
On warrants, Jones said arrests typically begin with checking a suspect’s known address, and camera data mainly helps locate hard-to-find individuals after a warrant is obtained and the person identified.
“People are right in that any technology can be abused. The opportunity is there. But it’s up to us, and I’m speaking about leadership in law enforcement, to ensure we do everything we can to prevent that from happening,” Jones said.
Auburn Police Chief Michael Harris said ALPR technology gives the Auburn Police Department (APD) an important investigative tool when properly used. He added the department has used it for roughly 14 years consistently helping officers locate vehicles tied to violent crimes, generate leads, improve officer safety and direct resources more effectively.
Harris said responsible use requires an equally strong commitment to civil liberties, and that APD has policies incorporating best practices from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
“We’ll continue weighing the public safety benefits of ALPRs and the continued advancement of law enforcement technology against our foundational commitments to constitutional policing, individual privacy, civil liberties, accountability and the concerns of the Auburn community,” Harris said.
Of the four current or future Lee County law enforcement leaders, Opelika Police Chief Johnathan Clifton was perhaps the most pointed.
“The last thing I want as a police chief is for our public trust to be eroded. These are valuable tools for law enforcement, but just like all our other tools, they can be misused, and departments need to be held accountable for misuse,” Clifton said. “I just wish other departments throughout the country would help us out and also do that.”
Clifton said the Opelika Police Department (OPD) operates several cameras and shares information with LCSO and APD. Access is tightly limited to detectives who complete a training program and sign agreements pledging to use the technology only for legitimate purposes, on pain of discipline or termination.
Every search must be tied to a criminal case number and is reviewed every three to four weeks by a command-staff supervisor, a layered approach Clifton framed as central to preserving community trust.
In a social media statement, Lee County Sheriff-elect Cam Hunt said the issue would be on his radar when he takes office in January.
“I understand and share the privacy concerns surrounding Flock cameras and other surveillance technology,” Hunt wrote. “I say that not only as someone who has worked in law enforcement, but as someone who has been on the receiving end of government surveillance.”
Hunt wrote there are “legitimate constitutional questions” that would ultimately need to be resolved by the legal system and Supreme Court, that “accountability isn’t optional,” and that he would evaluate LCSO’s use of Flock cameras, its internal policies and any safeguards against abuse.
The company’s response
Flock CEO Garrett Langley has called officer misuse “completely unacceptable” while defending the technology, arguing guardrails can address surveillance concerns.
Under pressure, the company has rolled out an audit tool flagging unusual searches, made multi-factor authentication mandatory, cut recommended default data retention from 30 days to seven and let local jurisdictions block outside agencies from certain searches.
Still, critics remain unconvinced a system built for mass surveillance can be reformed to safeguard privacy while collecting an estimated 20 billion images a month across the U.S. Some argue the readers amount to the warrantless surveillance the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent, and private citizens have begun protesting, filing records requests and, in some places, cutting cameras down.
Statehouse action on the horizon
As outcry grows, the Alabama legislature is now weighing legislation in the 2027 session to ban Flock cameras along state highways.
The move follows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last week unilaterally banning Flock cameras along Florida highways, with several counties introducing ordinances on the same issue.
