Seth Elliott, a 25-year-old Charlotte, N.C., police officer, ran one license plate through the Flock Safety network and a state criminal justice database on June 16, 2026, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The State Bureau of Investigation arrested him July 29 on a charge of illegally accessing a government computer, which CMPD’s release calls a Class 1 misdemeanor. The CMPD Flock investigation then grew well past the lookup: state agents working the case pulled data from Elliott’s phone and found a group text thread that CMPD has tied to six other officers.
Six of the seven officers, Elliott included, have resigned, five of them between Oct. 11 and Oct. 19 in lieu of termination, according to CMPD’s release of their personnel records. The seventh remains suspended without pay pending a Civil Service Board review. Elliott has not been convicted of anything, and none of the reporting I reviewed says any of the six others has been criminally charged over the texts.
The warrant: one plate, two systems, one Snapchat reply
Warrants reviewed by the Watauga Democrat start with a Watauga County Sheriff’s Office drug investigation. An undercover detective made three purchases from a target between April 27 and June 16. After the June 16 sale, the target questioned the detective’s identity on Telegram and cited the name of the registered owner of the undercover car, which he said he had gotten through the DMV. He also said the car had been photographed once in the past week, which investigators read as a sign he had access to Flock. Flock records then showed that an account named Seth Elliott had queried the plate on June 16…