Some cops can’t help but misuse Flock cameras by using the license plate readers to track their partners. This time, a deputy in Indiana was caught accessing the Flock Safety camera system over 2,000 times over the course of about seven months to follow his girlfriend’s location. This is just one of over 100 cases of license plate readers being misused by law enforcement across the country.
Deputy allegedly confessed what he did to his girlfriend
On Monday, August 31, 31-year-old Skylar Thompson of Brownstown was arrested after the former deputy was caught accessing the Flock camera system to track his girlfriend, in a report by local outlet FOX 8.
According to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, Thompson conducted 2,055 searches of his girlfriend’s license plate while he was still employed as a sheriff’s deputy. These searches were performed from December 31, 2025, to August 2, 2026.
The prosecutor’s office announced official charges, specifically one count of official misconduct as a Level 6 felony and one misdemeanor count of fraud, against Thompson on Monday. He was taken into custody later that day.
The sheriff’s department had uncovered the alleged misuse during a routine audit of the Flock camera system. Thompson filed the searches of his girlfriend’s license plate as being related to “city planning/traffic analysis,” though he was not assigned those duties. Upon discovering the misuse, the department alerted Indiana State Police.
According to court documents, Thompson was confronted for his misconduct and resigned from the position. He then allegedly drove to the home of his girlfriend and confessed what he did. The report suggests that Thompson and the girlfriend are no longer in a relationship.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that police are not above the law when it comes to using investigative tools, like the Flock camera system. It said, “Law enforcement officers are entrusted with access to sensitive information and investigative tools, and that access must be used responsibly and only for legitimate law enforcement purposes. No person is above the law, including those entrusted with enforcing it.”
In August, the Institute of Justice reported that it had identified “well over 100 incidents” of automated license plate reader abuse. It cites a case in Florida where a woman was stalked by a sheriff’s deputy who saw her at a TV shoot and a case in Georgia where a police chief tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter over 600 times.
The IJ says that while its report has “the most comprehensive list publicly available, it may just be the tip of the iceberg.” They find that officers “rarely enter specific reasons” when they search through ALPR databases and that it’s difficult to figure out if an officer’s justifications for the search are true due to how vague they tend to be.
