Article URL: https://ipvm.com/reports/police-chiefs-track Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634694 Points: 123 # Comments: 16

While Flock claims its system tracks vehicles, not people, the documented record of police chiefs stalking ex-partners through Flock shows otherwise. When the most experienced, highest-ranking officers in law enforcement, the people most responsible for enforcing the rules, demonstrate ongoing abuses, the answer is the same courts have given for each generation of powerful tracking technology: require a warrant first. The police chief of Holiday Hills, Illinois, and a part-time officer at Prairie Grove Police Department, was arrested June 18, 2026, and charged with two counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony. Prosecutors alleged he used Prairie Grove's Flock license plate reader system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database to track six people he knew personally. Three of those people were women the chief had been in romantic relationships with, according to prosecutors at his arraignment. He also tracked an ex-boyfriend of one of those women, running that man's plate 140 times over several months, a figure the protective order petition put at 178, with 86 of those searches conducted while off duty. In September 2025, the chief called the man and left a voicemail on his police phone, per a petition for a no-contact order the man later filed: The misconduct spanned 18 months, from February 26, 2024, to November 5, 2025. A judge denied the man's protective order petition in February 2026. The chief was arrested on a criminal warrant four months later, still listed as the Holiday Hills police official. The village said it was "surprised" by the charges. The chief's arrest extends a documented pattern of Flock LPR being used by law enforcement to track romantic partners and rivals. The Institute for Justice, pursuing a constitutional challenge to Flock's system, counted at least 18 such cases nationwide as of mid-2026, describing the total as "almost certainly an undercount." Among the highest-profile recent cases: Braselton, Georgia police chief was arrested in November 2025 following a GBI audit log review, after the abuse had already occurred, not before. A Jerome County, Idaho, Sheriff ran his wife's plate more than 700 times in three months, labeling each search "test," before retiring. Sedgwick, Kansas police chief ran his ex-girlfriend's plate 164 times and her new boyfriend's 64 times before resigning.