Flock Camera Misuse Leads to Firings in GA, MA Cases

Two Departments, One Surveillance Problem

Police departments in Savannah, Georgia and New Bedford, Massachusetts are grappling with fallout from officers allegedly misusing Flock Safety's automated license plate reader (ALPR) system for personal reasons rather than legitimate law enforcement work. Note: these are two separate incidents in different states, not a single event, despite some references conflating them.

Savannah: Six Employees Terminated

Savannah Police Department (SPD) launched an internal investigation on July 27 after a proactive review flagged Flock searches unrelated to legitimate police activity. By August 7, SPD had terminated six employees — four sworn officers and two civilian staff — following the probe.

Investigators reportedly found employees running searches on personal acquaintances and family members. In one case, an officer allegedly gave someone from an outside law enforcement agency unauthorized access to the Flock system. All six cases are now under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). Names of the terminated employees are being withheld while the GBI investigation and an appeals process continue.

In response, SPD has implemented recurring weekly audits through its Office of Professional Standards.

New Bedford: Stalking Allegations Against an Officer

In Massachusetts, New Bedford officer Emily Pacheco has been accused by an ex-girlfriend of using the city's 20 Flock cameras to track and follow her. According to the timeline, Pacheco's Flock search activity spiked sharply after the breakup in April — from 18 searches in April to 259 in May and 220 in June.

A judge found Pacheco poses a credible threat to her ex-girlfriend's safety, ordering her to surrender firearms and suspending her license to carry, and she was served an abuse prevention order. New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody has temporarily suspended the department's Flock system pending a review of past use, opened internal investigations, and placed one officer on administrative leave. The New Bedford City Council is scheduled to hear motions on the Flock system on August 20.

Notably, New Bedford had recently enabled Flock's "Audit Assistance feature," designed to flag anomalies like repeated searches of the same license plate — the same feature referenced as becoming available in April, around the time Pacheco's search spike reportedly began.

A Broader Pattern

Both cases echo a wider concern: nationwide reports of officers abusing Flock technology to stalk, harass, or monitor ex-partners. ACLU technologist Gideon Epstein warned that Flock gives police "an unprecedented ability to track all drivers, regardless of whether drivers are suspected of any wrongdoing."

What's Still Unknown

Several key questions remain unanswered in both cases: Pacheco's current employment status, the specific outcomes of New Bedford's internal review, whether criminal charges will be filed against the six terminated Savannah employees, and the identity of the outside party given unauthorized system access in Savannah. It's also unclear how widespread Flock misuse is nationally beyond these two reported incidents, and whether city councils or state regulators will pursue formal oversight changes.

Why Founders Should Care

These incidents likely signal that surveillance and location-tracking products sold to law enforcement or enterprise clients carry meaningful reputational and legal exposure if misuse isn't caught early. A few implications founders may want to weigh:

Companies building monitoring or tracking tools could face growing pressure to embed audit and anomaly-detection features by default, not as an add-on.
The public attention on Flock's own audit tooling suggests there may be a real opportunity for startups offering compliance, transparency, or access-logging SaaS products tailored to public safety vendors.
Any startup handling sensitive location or personal data should probably assume that weak access controls and usage logging could become a liability driver, both legally and reputationally, if misuse surfaces publicly.
Given that both departments only caught the issues through proactive or third-party review, founders in this space might reasonably bet that demand for automated audit infrastructure will increase as more agencies face similar scrutiny.

Sources differ in how these two incidents are framed — some references treat them as a single "Georgia" story, but the facts point to two distinct cases in two states, each with its own investigation, timeline, and outcome so far.