Five Indianapolis officers charged over alleged misuse of Flock license-plate cameras

"Nationwide, at least 100 police department employees have been charged with or accused of misusing license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes," reports the Washington Post. They cite their past investigations "based on thousands of pages of police and court records," which found that "In many of these cases, officers used Flock's roadside cameras to track the location of romantic partners and exes." In fact, five Indianapolis police officers were just criminally charged Wednesday with fraud and misconduct. "One has also been charged with stalking," the police department said in a statement, noting that one office had already resigned, "while the four other officers have been suspended and recommended for termination. County prosecutor Ryan Mears admitted "A lot of this was initiated by The Washington Post." And the Post published a new investigation Wednesday: Using publicly available information, The Post found that...one of the officers charged Wednesday, appeared to have relied on Flock cameras to track vehicles used by his wife and two close personal acquaintances, searching the plates 3,759 times over a 10-month period — an average of about 12 lookups per day. At the time, Police Chief Tanya Terry said she suspended one officer while the department conducted an investigation into possible misuse and a systemwide audit of the city's 301-camera Flock system. That audit led to the discovery of more widespread abuse, [County prosecutor Ryan] Mears said Wednesday. Mears said the department's findings highlight the vast power Flock cameras give police officers and raise questions about whether the government should be doing more to prevent the misuse of that power. "Many of the proposed guardrails and the things that have been proposed would not have prevented the behaviors and actions we see here today," Mears said. "Does there need to be independent oversight? Does there need to be judicial oversight of the Flock camera system?" One of the Indianapolis officers, Schultz, an 18-year veteran of the police department, was accused of using Flock to track his ex-wife and women he met while on duty or out in public. He was charged with multiple counts of official misconduct as well as two counts of stalking. Schultz told one woman he was an FBI agent, according to prosecutors, and began texting her and showing up at places she frequented, including at her gym and at a school function with her daughter. Prosecutors said he arrived at her gym within an hour of her at least nine times between June 12 and Aug. 1 of this year... Another woman met Schultz after her car was stolen from a mall parking lot, and he began texting her flirty messages later that night. The two dated briefly, and Schultz later looked up where the woman went on dates with another man. Schultz searched the plates of a third woman 178 times and also frequently showed up where she was, including her gym, a Smoothie King and a Walmart earlier this month... A third officer, Binford, told investigators he had used the log-in credentials of another officer who had logged in to Binford's laptop during a field training exercise. Binford searched the plate of his ex-wife more than 1,000 times between April 2024 and April 2025. Indianapolis police had no regular practice of auditing officers' Flock searches until recently, [Police Chief] Terry said in an interview last month. The department's investigation into the tool's misuse has been "a learning process for us," she said at the time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Concerns are growing over the potential misuse of automated license plate readers. Five police officers in Indianapolis are the latest to face criminal charges for allegedly using Flock cameras to track romantic partners and others.