SBI charges former Wrightsville Beach officer for Flock camera violation

Our Take

Credit to WECT News 6 for digging into this one. A former Wrightsville Beach police officer is now facing charges from the State Bureau of Investigation after an audit caught misuse of the department's Flock camera network. This is exactly the scenario privacy advocates have been warning about for years: these systems aren't just passive traffic cameras, they're a searchable database of where you and your car have been, and the only thing standing between "legitimate law enforcement use" and "officer stalks an ex" is an audit log that someone actually has to check.

The fact that an audit caught this is being spun as proof the system works. We'd argue it's proof of the opposite: it took a flagged search pattern and a formal review to catch what sounds like a clear-cut abuse case, in a department small enough that oversight should be easy. Scale that up to the thousands of agencies now running Flock networks across the country, many with far looser audit practices and vendor agreements, and the math on how much misuse actually gets caught looks grim.

This is why we keep pushing for public accountability before these cameras go up, not after someone gets charged. If your town has Flock cameras, check our camera map to see what's watching your streets, and use our take-action resources to push your local council for real audit transparency, not just a promise to "look into it" after the damage is done.