Former Ksheriff’s deputy accused of misusing license plate reader to track fellow deputy

Our Take

Credit to TMJ4 News for digging into this one, because it's exactly the kind of story Flock Safety and police departments hope never makes local news. A sheriff's deputy allegedly used license plate reader access not to solve crimes, but to track the movements of a romantic partner who also happened to be a fellow deputy. This is the nightmare scenario privacy advocates have been warning about since these cameras started going up on every corner: a vast surveillance network built on the promise that only 'authorized personnel' will ever misuse it.

The fact that this was caught by an internal audit is being framed as the system working. We'd argue it's the opposite. An audit after the fact doesn't undo the tracking that already happened — it just means someone eventually got caught. Nationwide, audit logs are inconsistent, oversight is often self-policed, and most departments won't tell the public how often these databases get searched for personal, not investigative, reasons. One felony case in Wisconsin is not an outlier; it's a data point in a much bigger pattern of ALPR misuse that keeps surfacing whenever anyone bothers to look.

If a badge isn't a guarantee against stalking your own coworker with a license plate database, it's definitely not a guarantee against misuse of the data collected on you. Check our map to see how much of this surveillance infrastructure already surrounds your daily commute, and visit our take-action page to push your local government for real transparency and audit requirements before the next abuse story breaks.