To The Surprise Of No One, Cops Are Using ALPR Cameras To Stalk Their Exes

from the worst-people-have-the-most-power dept

The cops never change. Only the tech toys do.

That’s the upshot of this report from the Institute for Justice, which has been tracking what cops have been tracking now that they have always-on access to massive networks of security cameras, including Flock Safety’s controversial offerings, which also include automatic license plate readers (ALPR).

The proliferation of police surveillance has led to repeated abuse. One shockingly common form: police officers using ALPR camera networks to keep tabs on their romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers who unwittingly caught their eye in public. 

An Institute for Justice review of media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024.

This is the same stuff that cops have been doing for years. Access to criminal databases, drivers license info, and anything else swept up by government entities has resulted in numerous cases of abuse.

A common thread that runs through most of these cases are the targets of this abusive surveillance, which are almost exclusively women. In some cases, officers are targeting random women to pursue as sexual conquests or, just as disturbingly, utilize a wealth of personal info to gain access to their online accounts for the sole purpose of obtaining sexually explicit content.

If there’s an upside, it’s this:

Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired. 

Now, if you’re the sort of person who sees a quarter-full glass and assumes it’s on its way to being half-full, you might come away with the impression that this is not only rare, but routinely punished when it’s discovered.

If you’ve read anything linked in the above paragraphs, the glass is still a quarter-full but is likely to continue evaporating as time goes on. There’s a reason most of these cases have surfaced during the last two years and it has everything to do with private surveillance tech companies like Ring and Flock aggressively courting cops and giving them easy access to recordings and live feeds generated by privately-owned cameras.

Even if the truth is somewhere in the middle of these two views, it’s not good news by any stretch of the imagination. As the Margaret Atwood quote goes: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Now, take that and add the massive power imbalance that increases as cops move past cops v. everyone to cops v. women.

And that’s all it is. Its law enforcement officers targeting women. They’re tracking their mistresses. They’re spying on their exes and their current partners. They’re using this tech to stalk women they’re interested in for reasons that have nothing to do with their law enforcement jobs.

Don’t believe me? You must be a cop.

• Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 2021: Officer Michael McSherry pleaded guilty to stalking charges after using readers to track his estranged wife and other family members. 
• Kechi, Kansas, 2023: Kechi Lieutenant Victor Heiar pleaded guilty to computer crime and stalking after using Flock cameras to track his estranged wife. 
• Sedgwick, Kansas, 2023: Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend more than 200 times over several months. 
• Costa Mesa, California, 2023: Officer Robert Josett used a Flock camera system to track his mistress and her other romantic interests. Josett pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in April 2026. 
• Riverside County, California, 2024: After being arrested for kidnapping his ex-fiancée, Deputy Alexander Vanny allegedly used the department’s Flock system to track one of her friends. In December 2025 he was convicted of multiple charges in a jury trial. 
• Orange City, Florida, 2024: Officer Jarmarus Brown allegedly used ALPRs to stalk his girlfriend and her family members more than 100 times over seven months. Brown was arrested and charged in 2025. 
• Shelby County, Tennessee, 2024: Deputy Thadius Gordon was relieved of duty after allegedly using an ALPR database to track his ex-wife’s location more than 100 times. 
• Louisville, Kentucky, 2025: Officer Roberto Cedeno was charged with multiple felonies after allegedly using the city’s ALPR system to track an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times over two months. 
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2025: Officer Josue Ayala allegedly used the department’s network of Flock ALPRs to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner nearly 180 times over a two-month period. Ayala resigned in 2026 after being charged with misconduct in public office. 
• Jerome County, Idaho, 2025: Sheriff George Oppedyk used a Flock system to search for his wife’s vehicle hundreds of times. Idaho’s Attorney General concluded that no crime was committed, but Oppedyk retired in April 2026, two years before his term of office ended. 
• Kenosha County, Wisconsin, 2025: Sheriff’s Deputy Frank McGrath resigned with severance pay after internal investigators found he used the department’s Flock system to keep tabs on another deputy with whom he was romantically involved. 
• Menasha, Wisconsin, 2025: Officer Cristian Morales was placed on leave and charged with misconduct in office after his ex-girlfriend filed a complaint alleging that he used a Flock system to track her. 
• Bonner Springs, Kansas, 2025: Detective Kyle Rector allegedly used license plate readers to track his estranged wife and two men he suspected were her new romantic partners. He was charged with multiple crimes in March 2026.
• Monroe County, Florida, 2026: Sheriff’s Deputy Lamar Roman allegedly used an ALPR system to track and eventually pull over a woman he had met while providing security on a TV set. Roman was arrested and charged with accessing a computer or electronic device without authorization.

These are just the cases in which allegations were sustained or criminal charges were brought. In six of these 14 cases, officers resigned, retired or were simply taken off active duty, which means they’ve never faced justice for their actions. They’re probably not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. As the IJ points out, most incidents like these come to light due to complaints filed by victims, rather than by internal reviews of database/recording access by officers given access to these systems.

Any system like this will be abused. But this report shows few, if any, law enforcement agencies are willing to engage in the kind of rigorous oversight needed to deter this sort of behavior. This abuse is far more pervasive than this short list of 14 officers would seemingly indicate. The only thing separating these cops from the hundreds or thousands of others on that side of the Thin Blue Line is that they got caught.

To be sure, this list will get longer as time goes on. But until cop shops and the companies providing this tech actually care enough about anyone else to do literally anything to deter this, the people with the most power will continue to abuse their access to hunt and haunt the people they’re pretty sure they can get away with abusing.

Filed Under: acab, ai, alpr, florida, misogyny, police misconduct, stalking, surveillance, surveillance abuse, wisconsin

Companies: flock safety