Brunswick County sheriff’s employee resigns amid alleged misuse of Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to WWAY News for digging into this one, because these stories almost never surface on their own. A sheriff's office employee resigns "amid" misuse of Flock Safety cameras, and the public gets a vague statement instead of a real accounting of what was searched, who was looked up, and why. That's the pattern with ALPR scandals nationwide: the violation gets handled as a quiet personnel matter, not a public trust issue that it actually is.

This is exactly the failure mode we keep warning about. Flock's pitch is that the system is auditable and restricted to legitimate investigations, but an audit log only matters if someone is actually reviewing it and willing to go public when it's abused. A resignation with no detailed disclosure means residents never learn whether this was a jealous ex, a personal grudge, or something worse — and that ambiguity is itself the problem. Every camera added to this network is another point where someone with a badge and a login can turn public infrastructure into a personal tracking tool.

Brunswick County isn't unique here, it's just the one that got caught. If you want to know how many of these cameras are watching your own roads, check our map, and if you think your town shouldn't be writing Flock a blank check, see what you can do on our take-action page.