FROM POLICE CHIEFS TO PATROL OFFICERS, THE ABUSE KEEPS SURFACING

Here's something worth sitting with. This isn't just a handful of bad apples somewhere far away. It's a pattern that keeps repeating, and it goes back further than most people realize.

The Institute for Justice has tracked at least 22 cases since 2024 of police officers, and even police chiefs, using Flock cameras to track people for personal reasons that had nothing to do with actual police work, and that count keeps climbing every few weeks as new cases break. That's just what's made it into public records. Flock itself and outside researchers both say the real number is almost certainly higher.

A few of these stick with you:

• Orange City, Florida (2024): an officer ran his ex-girlfriend's plate 69 times, her mom's 24 times, and her dad's 15, then pulled up video of her car from his work laptop.
• Sedgwick, Kansas (2024): the police chief tracked his ex 164 times and her new boyfriend 64 times over four months, and later admitted it was jealousy.
• Jerome County, Idaho: a sheriff checked his own wife's plate more than 700 times.
• Braselton, Georgia (2025): a police chief used the system to stalk and harass multiple people.
• McHenry County, Illinois (June 2026): the police chief tracked six people he knew, including his ex's new boyfriend 140 times, and left the man a threatening voicemail.

This summer hit, and it got worse fast. In just six weeks, at least 19 more officers across Georgia, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Texas were arrested, fired, or put under investigation. Five Albany officers were let go together, two Milwaukee officers were charged months apart, and a DeKalb County sergeant was arrested just last week.

Notice what none of these cases have in common. None of them were caught by anyone actively watching for abuse. A victim had to report being stalked, a reporter had to file records requests, or Flock's own software happened to flag it after the fact. Flock says it knows of at least 15 abuse cases and points to its own audit tools as proof the system works, but that's cold comfort if it takes months of tracking before anyone notices.

If the only way we find out a camera network is being abused is after someone's already been stalked or harassed, that's not oversight; it's a warning light that comes on after the crash. And right now, Dare County has 48 of these same cameras running on our roads with that exact same setup.