Texas police officer pleads guilty to 100 counts after using Flock cameras to monitor ex-girlfriend

Our Take

This is the nightmare scenario every ALPR skeptic has been pointing to for years, and now it has a mugshot and a sentencing date. According to KETK NBC, an East Texas police officer pleaded guilty to 100 counts after using Flock Safety's camera network to stalk an ex-girlfriend. He got five years. Flock sells these systems to departments with promises of audit logs and 'justified search' requirements, but those safeguards only work if someone is actually watching the watchers — and in this case, nobody was, until it was criminal.

We keep hearing that ALPR data is reserved for solving crimes, not settling personal scores. But a badge and a login are all it takes to turn a public-safety tool into a personal surveillance weapon against an ex, a neighbor, a journalist, or anyone else an officer decides to track. Audit trails that get reviewed only after a victim reports stalking aren't oversight, they're a paper trail for prosecutors after the damage is done. Credit to KETK NBC for covering a story that too many outlets would bury as a local crime blotter item — this is exactly the kind of systemic failure that deserves wider attention.

If there's a Flock camera reading plates in your town, you deserve to know who has access to that data and how often misuse like this actually gets caught versus quietly ignored. Check our camera map to see what's watching your streets, and head to our take-action page if you want to push your local council for real accountability instead of another vendor promise.