Georgia Police Busted For Love-Tracking

In just a few months, nearly two dozen Georgia cops have been busted for using a vast car-tracking system like their own private spy tool.

Story Snapshot

At least 18 Georgia law enforcement officers have been arrested for misusing Flock license plate camera data for personal reasons.
Internal audits, helped by new Flock Safety tools, are catching officers who track romantic partners, acquaintances, or other private targets.
Cases stretch from Albany and Cherokee County to DeKalb County and Conyers, showing a pattern, not a one-off mistake.
The same surveillance system sold as “ethical” crime-fighting now raises deep questions about government power, privacy, and who watches the watchers.

Wave of Misuse Cases Hits Georgia Police Departments

Georgia has seen a surge of police misconduct cases tied to Flock Safety license plate cameras, with at least 18 officers arrested in just months for misusing the system. These cameras sit along roads and snap photos of passing cars, logging license plates into a searchable database used by many departments across the state. According to reporting, arrests include five officers in Albany, four in Richmond County, three in Fayetteville, three in Cherokee County, one in Greene County, and a DeKalb County sergeant.

These officers are not accused of simple paperwork mistakes. Investigators say they used this powerful tracking tool for personal reasons, like checking on friends, enemies, or romantic partners, with no real police case involved. In Albany, an internal audit found officers accessed stored license plate data many times for non-law-enforcement purposes, triggering a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe and criminal charges for misuse of license plate data and violating their oath of office. Similar audits and reviews have exposed misuse in Cherokee and Greene Counties.

How Audits Exposed Personal Spying in the Flock System

The turning point came when Flock Safety rolled out a new “Audit Assistance” feature that tracks how officers search the system. Albany’s police department used that feature to review past searches and found multiple officers had “utilized the retained license plate data for non-law-enforcement purposes,” according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. That audit led to the firing and charging of five officers and was cited by Flock as the first confirmed case where its audit tool helped identify police misconduct.

Other departments followed with their own reviews. In Cherokee County, two supervisors and a deputy were arrested after an internal audit showed they used the license plate reader system to stalk vehicles outside official business. In Greene County, Deputy Quin’sha Goss was fired and charged for personal use of the system over three months. A supervisor in Conyers was later accused of running more than 30 searches on her domestic partner’s car between April and July, turning a crime-fighting database into a private tracking service.

DeKalb’s $19 Million Surveillance Bet Meets a Misuse Scandal

DeKalb County offers a sharp view of the broader problem. The county committed about $19 million for a ten-year, no-bid contract that put drivers under near-constant watch as they pass through a network of Flock cameras. Less than ten months into that deal, an internal review found longtime Sheriff’s Sergeant Kabiru Salawu had run license plate queries “for reasons unrelated to his job.” He was fired, arrested, and charged with both misusing license plate data and violating his oath of office.

A Conyers police supervisor just got arrested for using her official access to stalk her boyfriend 30 times.

Paige Forte, 30, worked as a dispatch supervisor inside the Conyers Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center.

She had privileged access to the Flock license plate… pic.twitter.com/EqQi5o5h4a

— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) July 27, 2026

Prosecutors went beyond the state’s license plate misuse law in Salawu’s case, using a felony “violation of oath of office” charge that carries up to five years in prison. That move shows how serious officials say this behavior is: using government surveillance tools for private spying is being treated as a direct betrayal of public trust. Yet even here, investigators have not said exactly what he searched for, leaving citizens to wonder how often similar misuse goes unseen.

Privacy Fears, Broken Trust, and the Deep State Feeling

Local reporters have tracked at least twenty Georgia cases in the past year where officers were disciplined or criminally charged for personal use of Flock’s system, including accusations of stalking and harassment. These incidents feed a growing concern shared by many conservatives and liberals alike: the tools of government meant to protect people can easily be turned against them. When officers can quietly track where you drive, day after day, it starts to look less like community safety and more like state surveillance.

For residents already frustrated with crime, inflation, and distant “elite” decision-makers, these stories hit a nerve. Taxpayers are paying millions for mass surveillance networks sold as “ethical” and “transparent,” yet it takes special audit software and criminal charges to discover that some officers used them as personal search engines. Supporters of strong policing worry this abuse undermines respect for law enforcement. Civil libertarians see proof that powerful databases almost invite misuse unless strict, independent oversight is built in from the start.

What Comes Next: Oversight or More Abuse?

Flock Safety now points to these Georgia cases as proof that its auditing tools can “separate good and bad policing,” since misuse left digital fingerprints investigators could follow. But the fact that more than a dozen officers across multiple agencies were caught in a matter of weeks suggests deeper cultural issues around how police view access to data. The same logs that reveal misconduct only help if departments regularly review them and are willing to act on what they find.

Advocates are pushing city leaders to set tougher rules on license plate readers, including limits on data sharing, shorter retention times, and clear punishments when officers snoop on private lives. Some communities are debating whether to keep Flock cameras at all, arguing that the risk of abuse outweighs promised benefits. At a time when many Americans feel both unsafe on the streets and unsafe from the state, the Georgia Flock scandals raise a hard question: can a government that struggles to police its own officers be trusted with tools that watch everyone else?