Wow! These flock cameras are working so well! I keep reading about arrest after arrest of terrible criminals, all of them police! Keep it up!
Yeah who would of thought flock would make a great honeypot for pedo’s and cops.
If only everyone didn’t see this coming a mile away
Two Florida deputies arrested after TCPalm’s query of Flock, ALPR use Story by Jack Lemnus, Treasure Coast Newspapers
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office announced Sept. 30 it arrested two deputies following allegations of misusing automated license plate reading cameras.
The agency said it conducts regular audits of its license plate reader systems, it didn’t start investigating until TCPalm asked Aug. 20 about these deputies’ use of Flock Safety cameras. The deputies joined a growing list of now 27 law enforcement officials who have been placed on leave, fired or arrested because of a TCPalm-USA TODAY joint investigation into license plate readers.
One was Deputy Travis Stanton, 33, who ran the plates of a 17-year-old girl he was romantically interested in, said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri at a Sept. 30 news conference.
He used license plate readers and other databases to find out where the girl lived and would frequently show up at her high school and the fast food restaurant where she worked, Gualtieri said.
Even though she told Stanton that she was a minor, he continued to hit on her, officials said.
Stanton accidentally recorded one of these encounters at the restaurant where he acknowledged she was a minor. He asked her if she wanted to see a picture of a dead body, which she declined. He then told her he received a “hit” on her vehicle from the Sheriff’s Office’s license plate reader system alerting him that her license was suspended for truancy.
This was a lie, the sheriff said.
After TCPalm inquired about his abnormal searches using Flock cameras, Stanton was questioned by supervisors.
“Curiosity got the better of me," he told them.
Stanton was subsequently placed on administrative leave and arrested on Sept. 30.
The second deputy was Carl Gwinn, 57, who the sheriff said used license plate readers, including Flock, to track a “woman he was interested in dating.”
Gwinn searched her plate 300 times, 207 of which were off duty, the sheriff said.
“This high number of queries for this license plate was brought to our attention through a media inquiry,” Gualtieri said.
Supervisors found he had arrested the 35-year-old woman in 2010. He bought her jewelry and even put her and her mother up at a place in Indian Rocks Beach, the sheriff said. But she wanted to remain friends.
When supervisors asked Gwinn about his searches, he said it was “official use.”
He was arrested Sept. 30 and charged with four counts of misusing computer systems.
TCPalm’s original inquiry stemmed from searches made a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office employee called “S ACC.” The user searched two distinct license plates a combined 670 times between February and September 2025. In the “reason” field on the Flock audit log, the user explained each search as “FLOCK API SEARCH.”
There are no staff at the Sheriff’s Office with the initials “S ACC,” according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement master employee rolls.
“S ACC” stands for “Service Account,” a special program the agency created to search license plate readers across its three vendors: Flock, Vigilant Solutions and Axon Enterprises, a spokesperson said.
A spokesperson originally told TCPalm on Sept. 21 the surveillance was “related to ongoing investigations, and all queries were valid.” When a reporter asked Gualtieri at a Sept. 2 news conference if there were any active investigations into Flock misuse, he said no.
On Sept. 30, the Sheriff’s Office informed TCPalm it had changed course.
"As a result of your original inquiry and after further research into our additional ALPR vendors, we did identify a misuse,” a spokesperson said Sept. 30, referring to automated license plate readers.
TCPalm and USA TODAY analyzed over 75 million searches of Flock license plate reader data spanning 3½ years and over 6,300 agencies. While this is a fraction of the total number of searches by Flock users, the analysis did not find anything similar to the Sheriff’s Office’s service account.
Flock records typically show information such as officer initials, case numbers and license plates. That helped reporters detect signs of potential misuse, such as an officer searching for a single person repeatedly over months.
Because the Sheriff’s Office’s service account is shared by multiple users, it is impossible for the public to know who is using it. Ensuring the technology is used appropriately is effectively left in the hands of the agency.
“We are able see the user on our end and can verify if the queries are valid, which they are,” a spokesperson said Sept. 21 before the announcement of the two deputies’ arrests.
Four other law enforcement personnel in Florida have been investigated or arrested since August because of TCPalm and USA TODAY’s analysis.
In Sarasota, Officer Cory Waiters was fired, arrested and charged with tracking an ex-girlfriend’s car at least 335 times over two months.
The Fort Pierce Police Department arrested former officer Josepher Crutchfield and charged him with using Flock cameras to stalk his ex-girlfriend.
Crutchfield was previously suspended two days in 2022 for inappropriate sexual comments and other behavior, according to an internal investigation. That included sniffing hair, touching the back of necks, tickling hands, caressing arms, showing videos of animals having sex, and twisting an officer’s engagement ring while petting her hand, according to the report.
He continued to work with the department until he resigned during the Flock investigation in September.
A week after Crutchfield’s resignation, the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office informed TCPalm it had placed Sgt. John Finnegan on paid administrative leave as it investigated his Flock use. A screenshot of an internal search audit after Flock Safety redacted most information used by the public to know how the technology is being used by police. Flock network audits used to include information like officer initials, case numbers and license plates.
Four days later, the Vero Beach Police Department announced it had placed Officer Chayse Allen Hatfield on administrative leave. Officials said he searched a vehicle connected to his household 107 times.
“The Vero Beach Police Department was recently contacted by a news organization regarding allegations involving the potential misuse of the Flock Safety system by a department member,” the Police Department announced on its Facebook, one day after TCPalm reached out about Hatfield’s Flock use. “The department takes these allegations seriously and has initiated a formal investigation into the matter.”
Thanks, I couldn’t get past the paywall
ACAB.
Not really, no.
Great that society is protected by ‘TCPalm’, whatever that is…
Treasure Coast Newspapers publishes three daily print newspapers: the Indian River Press Journal, St. Lucie News Tribune and Stuart News. An exact digital replica of the printed newspapers can be found in the eNewspaper.
TCPalm is the combined digital brand for the news organization, where content is continually published and updated throughout the day.
