The St. Charles County Police Department is discontinuing its use of Flock Safety license plate readers after it said a former civilian employee abused system data. The department made the announcement Thursday, saying it discovered “an abnormal pattern of searches” from the former worker. Police Chief Kurt Frisz was made aware of the searches two days after Flock representatives told him about an audit tool that allows law enforcement to check the system’s usage and automatically scan questionable patterns.
“This employee’s egregious misuse of the data system may be limited to a personal matter, but I am committed to ensuring that every use of the tools law enforcement have are audited, from my own access to the newest recruit,” Frisz said in a statement. “And then we ensure we audit the auditors.”
Police did not provide the former worker’s name, saying it’s a personnel matter.
“This is a good example of a high degree of accountability,” Frisz said. “We detected it, we took action on it, and and we’re letting the public know that ‘Hey, we found an issue, we fixed it, and we’re making some changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.'”
Frisz said the department alerted Flock that it’s discontinued service. He said that the cameras have since been covered with black bags, and that the company will eventually retrieve its equipment. There are 28 Flock cameras across the county, 20 within county parks and eight across various streets.
“We make 30 to 50 felony arrests a year, on average, through the license plate reader,” Frisz said. “We’ve caught people wanted for homicide running around our county, and within 24 hours, got them in custody because of the license plate reader.”
