- A Milwaukee police officer resigned after using automated license plate reader technology to track a woman he was dating nearly 180 times in two months, shedding light on a larger issue of vehicle surveillance misuse.
A Milwaukee police officer resigned after investigators found he had used automated license plate reader technology to track a woman he was dating nearly 180 times in the span of two months. What looked at first like a single ugly misconduct case is now pulling back the curtain on a much larger problem with how vehicle surveillance gets used in this country. For anyone who drives, this one lands fast and it lands hard.
License plate readers were pitched to the public with a clean story. They were supposed to catch stolen cars, find dangerous suspects, and help solve serious crimes. Instead, a growing pile of documented cases shows officers pointing those same systems at ex-partners, romantic interests, and private citizens with a frequency that should make every driver uneasy.
How the searches came to light
The Milwaukee case surfaced because the woman did something most drivers never think to do. She checked a public website called Have I Been Flocked, a transparency tool that lets people see whether automated plate readers have scanned their vehicle. What she found laid bare just how closely one officer had been watching where she went.
The reported details say the officer ran her plate 179 times over a two-month stretch before he resigned from the department. That number is the part that should stop people cold. This was not one careless lookup buried in a giant database or a single mistake. Investigators determined the searches happened over and over again across weeks, and each one was reportedly logged as part of an investigation even though the searches allegedly had nothing to do with real criminal activity…