An officer with the Porter County Sheriff’s Department who misused the county’s license plate reader system did so three times and did not commit a crime, Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann said Tuesday.
Despite the Porter County officer’s violation and the growing scrutiny over the use of Flock cameras nationwide because of privacy concerns, Germann and Sheriff Jeff Balon both said the cameras can be an important tool for law enforcement when used appropriately.
The cameras, Germann said in a Tuesday release, are intended to be used to serve the public interest and ensure public safety, “but they were never intended to be used for private purposes.”
Likewise, Balon has said that License Plate Readers are a valuable tool for fighting crime and helping citizens in need. “However, as with any law enforcement tool, if they are used inappropriately, we will hold our Officers accountable for their misuse,” Balon said.
Flock Safety, which makes the cameras, announced last month that it is making changes to its platform intended to quell privacy concerns and address documented abuses of its system by some members of law enforcement, according to the Associated Press.
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The company operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day. Thousands of law enforcement agencies in 49 states can search and share Flock’s data across jurisdictions to aid their investigations, according to the AP’s reporting.
Police have credited the technology as an important crime-fighting innovation that has helped locate missing people and track suspects in violent crimes, according to the Associated Press. But some critics say its pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance.
Dozens of cities and agencies have nixed their relationships with Flock amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking, after a flurry of examples surfaced of law enforcement officers misusing the technology for personal searches, according to the AP’s reporting.
Balon disclosed the misuse of the Flock License Plate Reader system by an officer in an Aug. 28 release and said the officer, who used the database to search for a specific license plate, had been demoted, suspended without pay, received an indefinite suspension from the use of Flock, and remedial ethics training.
Germann, in his release, said “a full and fair” internal investigation by Balon revealed the officer logged in as himself three times over a period of several months.
“While a relatively minor violation, the conduct of the officer was still a mistake,” Germann said, adding that as a result, the officer was disciplined by Balon accordingly. “However, in this case no crime was committed by this officer.”
Germann went on to point out that the Porter County case had “little or no similarity” to a case in Jackson County involving a former sheriff’s deputy, Skylar Thompson, who reportedly used the Flock database more than 2,000 times and justified the searches by fraudulently alleging the purpose was related to “City Planning/Traffic Analysis.”
While no crime was committed in the Porter County case, Germann said, his office will continue to review and evaluate each case on an individual basis.
The Porter County case came to light after the sheriff’s department received a complaint from a citizen who discovered that their license plate had been run by the department through the Flock License Plate Reader system for a reason that was not consistent with department policy, according to an Aug. 28 release from Balon.
“I immediately ordered an internal affairs investigation, and the outcome of the investigation confirmed that an Officer did enter the citizen’s license plate into the Flock LPR system. The reason for the entry violated our policy,” Balon said in the release.
Balon said in the release that the sheriff’s department doesn’t normally comment on internal affairs investigations, but “in light of the national focus on the issues surrounding License Plate Readers, I want to comment on a recent investigation involving our agency.”
A spokesman with the sheriff’s department declined to release additional information, including the officer’s rank, how long he had been with the department and when misuse of the system was discovered, because that information was part of the internal affairs investigation.
The policy violation occurred under a previous version of the department’s Flock policy, Balon said in the release. The officer’s actions violated the policy in effect at the time.
“Since then, we have further strengthened our policy and implemented additional safeguards governing the use of the Flock system,” Balon said.
A case number and reason for the search are now required for all Flock searches conducted by any member of the department, Balon said. “We are also utilizing Flock’s Audit system, which uses Artificial Intelligence to identify searches that may be suspicious or otherwise raise concerns.”
Those searches are then flagged for review by the department. The additional safeguards, Balon has said, provide another level of oversight and accountability for use of the Flock system.
The Associated Press contributed.