Three more police officers have been arrested after using Automatic License Plate Readers supplied by the surveillance company Flock for non-law enforcement purposes.
In Savannah, Georgia, four police department workers were hauled into custody last Friday, when an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation uncovered they’d been abusing their city’s Flock system to track personal acquaintances and family members, WTOC reported.
Three of them were active police officers, while one of them was employed as a community service specialist. Two more employees had been fired weeks ago for similar offenses, WTOC notes, though they haven’t been arrested, and it’s not clear if an investigation is ongoing.
The incident has become a huge scandal for Savannah over the past few weeks, turning the historic Georgia city into a poster child for police abuse of AI-powered surveillance. Local officials aren’t happy, to put it lightly.
“To be totally honest, I’m disappointed,” Savannah mayor Van Johnson said, calling it a sad and sobering day for the city. “I’m p*ssed off about it.”
“We entrusted these individuals with advanced technology — and even more importantly — with the public’s trust,” Johnson told WTOC. “Nobody is above the law, and everyone trusted with public confidence is accountable.”
It remains to be seen what exactly these four were using the Flock system for, but the fact that they were arrested suggests a major breach of trust.
According to the Institute for Justice Database of ALPR Abuse, well over 170 incidents of ALPR misuse have been recorded in the US so far. The offenses range from non-law enforcement uses like stalking ex-partners to abusive policing tactics like aggressively following people across state lines to justify traffic stops.
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