Avondale Estates Police Chief Harry Haas stood before residents at a public meeting and walked through exactly how his department locks down access to its Flock Safety license plate cameras, addressing a topic that has become a statewide headache for Georgia law enforcement. The presentation came as multiple Georgia officers face charges for misusing the same surveillance system, according to police.
Haas explained how the Avondale Estates Police Department restricts who can search the city’s camera network and for what reasons, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The presentation landed at a moment when the technology’s reputation is taking a beating across the state, with more than 40 law enforcement personnel across at least 17 Georgia agencies arrested, fired, placed under investigation, or disciplined for allegedly misusing Flock license plate reader data for personal reasons, according to WSB-TV.
A Statewide Pattern of Misuse Charges
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested four former Savannah Police Department employees this month, charging three former officers and a civilian staff member with misusing the city’s Flock system after an internal audit, per CBS News. Three of those individuals face misdemeanor misuse of an ALPR system alongside a felony violation of oath of office. In July, five former Albany Police Department officers were fired and charged by the GBI after an internal audit found they had repeatedly accessed retained Flock data for non-law-enforcement purposes, according to a report from Police1.
The wave of cases traces back to a specific technical shift. Flock Safety deployed a new automated audit assistance tool in mid-2026 that flags irregular search patterns, prompting local departments statewide to run self-audits and refer violations to the GBI, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That tool is largely why so many misuse cases and public department reviews surfaced within such a short window this summer.
What Georgia Law Says About Misuse
Under Georgia law, using license plate reader data for non-official purposes is classified as a high and aggravated misdemeanor under O.C.G.A. § 35-1-22, and officers who commit the infraction are frequently also charged with felony violation of oath of office under O.C.G.A. § 16-10-1, a charge that carries a potential sentence of one to five years in prison, per a report cited by The Times of India. Georgia passed statutory restrictions on automated license plate readers back in 2018 specifically to limit data access to law enforcement purposes…