Major Robbie Silas Arrested By GBI As Officials Hid His Face With Blankets
The short version: A high-ranking Richmond County deputy who ran Special Operations was shielded by blankets during his own arrest on sex-crime charges, exposing the double standard baked into police power.
Our Take
Credit to OhDangReally for catching what the local press conference wouldn't say out loud: when a regular citizen gets perp-walked, cameras get an unobstructed shot. When a Major who commanded the Special Operations Division — the unit that typically oversees surveillance tools like ALPR networks, intelligence sharing, and tactical units — gets arrested, suddenly jail staff materialize with blankets to protect his privacy. That's not procedure, that's professional courtesy among people who police the rest of us.
This is exactly the kind of story that should make you uneasy about handing local law enforcement ever-expanding surveillance powers with zero independent oversight. The officials who decide how Flock cameras get deployed, who gets flagged, and who gets a pass are the same institutions that just demonstrated they'll bend the rules to protect their own image when one of their own gets booked on pandering and solicitation charges. If they'll shield a Major's face from a mugshot photographer, what corners get cut when nobody's watching how they use a license plate reader database?
Accountability has to run in both directions. If you want to see what kind of surveillance infrastructure your own local department is running, start with our camera map, and if you think your city council needs to hear from constituents before approving more of this tech, our take-action page has the tools to make that happen.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of OhDangReally, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.