MACON — Three Bibb County sheriff’s deputies were arrested Monday, accused of misusing their department’s access to the Flock license plate-reading system for “personal” purposes to monitor people they knew.
The deputies, two men and a woman, have been charged with stalking, prohibited use of a traffic control device and violation of their oaths of office. All three have resigned.
Law enforcement officers in Georgia and across the country have come under scrutiny for alleged improper use of the now widely available, automobile-tracking networks. In at least some instances in Georgia and elsewhere, the officers implicated were said to have been using Flock to spy on or follow the movements of romantic partners or spouses.
The system relies largely on an array of roadside cameras that record license plates of passing automobiles to build a mappable database that can show where those vehicles have been.
The deputies jailed Monday were: Joseph Marquee Callaway, 37, a K-9 handler; Toni Cierra Lewis, 32, a patrol officer; and Coznavian Torsell Stubbs, 45, a patrol officer.
In a news release, sheriff’s officials described the deputies’ actions as separate incidents that “involved individuals with whom each deputy had a personal relationship at the time.”
Bibb Sheriff David Davis declined to divulge specifics of the cases involving his deputies, but told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “they weren’t chasing burglars and robbers. … It all had a personal nexus.”
It was unclear if any of the people allegedly stalked by the deputies were aware they might have been being monitored.
Word of the alleged Flock violations in Bibb County circulated on social media earlier this month, prompting an emailed statement sent to news outlets last week in which sheriff’s officials said they were looking into “three separate queries that were flagged by Flock’s internal auditing algorithm. The Internal Affairs Unit is conducting a thorough review of each matter to determine whether any policy violations occurred.”
At that point, no deputies had been fired or put on administrative leave as part of the probe, the statement noted, adding, “the deputies under investigation have been denied access to the Flock system.”
In Georgia, recent arrests or disciplinary actions involving law enforcement officers stemming from Flock-misuse allegations have come to light in the wake of audits similar to the one that led to Monday’s charges involving the Macon-area deputies.
Speaking in general of reported misuse of the Flock system by law enforcement officers, Davis, the Bibb sheriff, said: “The Flock program is a very good tool for law enforcement, and used correctly and in the right way it can make all the difference in the world. And it’s sad and it’s troubling that so many officers have decided to use it for personal reasons. … They’ve misused it, and they’ll pay the price.”
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