Four former Savannah Police Department employees including three officers were arrested Friday following a Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) probe into misuse of the department’s flock camera system.
WTOC 11 reports that the four employees, Marquis Dillard, Donald Phillips, Matthew Rich, and Calandic Thomas, were among six Savannah Police Department employees fired on August 7, two weeks before the arrests. Dillard, Phillips and Rich held officer rank; Thomas worked as a community service specialist. All four face charges of misuse of the Flock license plate reader system, and the three officers face an additional charge of violation of oath of office.
Investigators accuse the group of running searches through the Flock license plate reader system on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer is also accused of giving an outside agency unauthorized access to the Flock system. The GBI confirmed Monday that a second investigation is now underway into that outside agency, though it has not released the agency’s name.
An audit of the department’s Flock searches found that of roughly 39,000 conducted so far this year, 127 were flagged for review. Of those, 34 were determined to be unjustified.
Georgia has the second-most Flock cameras of any state in the country. Savannah alone has 106 of the devices.
Mayor Van Johnson addressed the situation before the arrests were announced. “To be totally honest, I’m disappointed, I’m pissed off about it,” he said. “We entrusted these individuals with advanced technology, and even more importantly, with the public’s trust. Nobody is above the law, and everyone trusted with public confidence is accountable.”
Police Chief Lenny Gunther struck a similar note, defending the rest of the force. “The actions of a few do not reflect the dedication and professionalism of the men and women who honorably serve our community every day,” he said.
Gunther is now working on a formal policy governing how officers use Flock cameras. The department also plans to roll out an audit-assist tool that will run weekly inspections, meant to catch misuse earlier than the current system does.
Breitbart News previously reported that the new “Have I Been Flocked” website allows users to see if police officials have searched for their license plate, along with learning about how their town’s police force is using the camera system:
If a person’s license plate appears in the database, it means not only that the plate was photographed, but that someone using the Flock system actively searched the database for that plate, according to the site. Included in the audit log is the stated reason someone in law enforcement gave for looking up the plate.
The site notes several limits to what its records show. The database does not reveal when or whether a vehicle passed one of the Flock Safety cameras. Those searching Flock databases are not necessarily police officers, and appearing on the site does not mean a person was under investigation.
The database of audit logs was built through FOIA public records requests filed with 6,586 different agencies across the country. Organizers caution that some information may be outdated or incomplete.
Read more at WTOC 11 here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.