Three more deputies charged as police Flock camera misuse allegations grow
Love, lies, and license plates.
A Flock surveillance camera.
- Three Bibb County sheriff’s deputies were arrested in Georgia over alleged misuse of Flock camera data.
- Joseph Marquee Callaway, Coznavian Torsell Stubbs, and Toni Cierra Lewis face stalking-related and oath-of-office charges.
- Officials said the cases were separate and involved people who had personal relationships with the deputies.
- The arrests raise wider concerns that license plate reader systems can be abused to monitor romantic partners.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Three law enforcement officers were arrested in Georgia over the alleged misuse of Flock-related surveillance data.
The arrests involved Bibb County sheriff’s deputies Joseph Marquee Callaway, Coznavian Torsell Stubbs, and Toni Cierra Lewis, with all 3 facing stalking-related allegations alongside charges involving their use of traffic-control technology.
The Sheriff’s Office says the 3 cases were separate and involved people the deputies had personal relationships with. Callaway faces 3 counts of stalking, along with 2 counts of prohibited use of a traffic-control device preemption emitter and violation of oath of office.
Stubbs is charged with stalking, oath-of-office violation, and prohibited use of a traffic-control device preemption emitter.
Lewis faces stalking, oath-of-office, and prohibited-use charges and had already resigned before the latest arrests.
The arrests came shortly after Bibb County officials revealed an internal investigation into Flock camera access.
The sheriff’s office said the investigation followed an audit of how deputies had been using the system, although it initially declined to tell local media whether misuse had actually been discovered.
Bibb County has more than 150 Flock automatic license plate readers positioned around its roads.
How Flock can become a stalking tool
Flock cameras effectively enable officers to search where vehicles have been, similar to an audit trail.
The recent cases of officers using them to monitor ex- or current romantic partners are rather troubling, especially when it reaches obsessive levels of searching for their whereabouts.
One Georgia police chief was reported to have conducted around 600 searches involving his former partner over more than a year, even acknowledging it was on the excessive side when confronted about it.
“Don’t worry, I’m not tracking you or some weird stalker shit,” he reportedly wrote – despite allegedly conducting hundreds of searches.
Check if your data has been leaked
Another Kansas police chief reportedly used Flock to track down his ex-partner and even approached her while she was with another man.
Flock told the Washington Post it would announce new controls, suggesting the company recognizes that simply investigating suspicious searches after the fact may not be enough.
They did reaffirm, however, that these abuse cases only reflect a small fraction of their user base.
