Brevard Florida Deputy Of The Year Quits The Day He Was Set To Be Fired
The short version: A decorated Brevard County deputy quit before being fired after an internal affairs probe found, among other misconduct, that he ran his ex-girlfriend's plate through Flock's ALPR network and logged it as 'official business.'
Our Take
Credit to OhDangReally for digging into the News 6 records on this one, because buried under the racial slurs and the other ugly stuff is the detail that should worry every resident of Brevard County: a sheriff's deputy used a Flock Safety license plate reader to track his ex-girlfriend's car, then papered over it with the magic words 'official business.' No case number, no warrant, no real explanation — just a badge and a database.
This is the problem with ALPR networks in a nutshell. These systems are sold to city councils as tools for catching stolen cars and Amber Alert suspects, but they are, in practice, a searchable log of where everyone drives, available to anyone with a login and a thin excuse. Audits are supposed to catch this. They usually don't, until an ex-girlfriend emails the sheriff and a reporter files a public records request. Multiply this by the thousands of agencies running Flock cameras nationwide and ask yourself how many searches like this one never get caught.
'Deputy of the Year' is not a character reference, it's a press release. If you want to know how many of these cameras are watching your own neighborhood, check our map, and if you'd rather your city not hand out this kind of power without oversight, see what you can do on our take-action page.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of OhDangReally, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.