Driving from Savannah’s airport along US 80 to the end of Tybee Island, a vehicle will pass at least 18 Flock Safety license plate readers. Visiting downtown Savannah from Rincon along GA 21 means passing at least six Flock Safety cameras. Strolling through Forsyth Farmer’s Market means pedestrians are tracked by the rotating camera atop a telephone pole near the famous fountain.

The constellation of more than 500 surveillance cameras is part of a network of Flock cameras operated by 18 law enforcement agencies across the seven counties of Coastal Georgia, according to an investigation by The Current GA. 

The Georgia-based company, is one of the most popular makers of automatic license plate readers, so-called ALPRs, and is synonymous with the growing scrutiny and worry among voters and politicians about the powerful nature of surveillance and potential for abuse. These tools can scan and store license plates, the make and model of cars, and track people. The information is kept in a database operated by Flock accessible by the law enforcement agency that runs the camera as well as thousands of other Flock clients.

Savannah Police Department fired six employees over alleged Flock database misuse in August, with offenses ranging from one officer looking up his own vehicle within the system to another sharing her password so that her husband, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer, could monitor hundreds of vehicles.  

As part of a two-month investigation, The Current GA mapped the locations of Flock cameras using publicly available data confirmed with 18 area law enforcement agencies.

ANY COMMUTE, MANY CAMERAS

Flock cameras log each driver multiple times on routes in Chatham County linking places like Tybee and the Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport on US 80, the airport and Savannah on Ga 21, or Savannah and suburbs like Richmond Hill on US 17, according to camera locations provided by local law enforcement agencies.

But data is missing in major jurisdictions like Savannah, Pooler and Port Wentworth, which declined to give the locations of the 203 cameras in their cities.


METHODOLOGY: Most camera locations are approximate: Somewhere at the closest intersection, parking lot or recreation center. Most police agencies gave camera locations as a description, such as “Hwy 80 @ Old Hwy 80 WB.”  We mapped these by dropping a pin in mapping software at that location to extract a latitude and longitude. Several cameras come in pairs, pointing different directions at the same intersection. This map omits 15 cameras that are mobile or that have a location too ambiguous to map, such as “Johnny Mercer Blvd NB.”

Local law enforcement agencies using digital license plate readers, from Tybee Island Police Department to Glynn County Police Department, confirmed that they share data with hundreds of municipalities also connected to the Flock system, both in Georgia and out of state, as well as on the federal level.

Among these agencies, Savannah police operate the most Flock cameras, with at least 50 of its 124 cameras installed through a grant from the Savannah College of Art and Design. As of August 2026, SPD has spent more than $1 million for its Flock Safety network, public records show.

Glynn County police, meanwhile, operate 85 cameras. Effingham County Sheriff’s Office has  49, and Chatham County Police Department has 41 cameras. 

These Flock systems are only a fraction of the digital surveillance tools used by area law enforcement. The Current asked the agencies for a list of all ALPR cameras, including those from Flock competitors such as Axon Enterprise, Inc. and Vigilant by Motorola Solutions, Inc. After six weeks of reporting involving more than 60 public records requests, law enforcement agencies would only confirm the number of Flock cameras, which include ALPRs and other live feed systems. It is unclear how many cameras owned by other surveillance companies are in place in Coastal Georgia.

Information abuse

Public concern about digital surveillance tools and a perceived lack of transparency about how they are used has become a major talking point ahead of the November elections, especially in light of the abuse in Savannah. 

In August, Amber Harpe, a Savannah Police officer was fired after an internal review found that she had shared her Flock login credentials with her husband, an ICE officer. Her husband, Tyler Harpe, used the software to run nearly 1,000 searches related to his federal immigration work over several months, including 788 searches on South Carolina cars that were largely registered to Hispanic owners, according to reporting by WJCL.

The internal departmental investigation concluded that Harpe did not violate state laws, but the department determined that by sharing her login details, she had violated departmental policy and created concerns over data security and public trust, according to WJCL.

Georgia gubernatorial candidates Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson agree on the need to protect privacy, but disagree on what measures should be taken. Bottoms said she would not oppose a moratorium on new cameras. Jackson said restrictions needed to be tightened but that the technology was useful in curbing crime.

Meanwhile, digital surveillance tools have been questioned in federal court. In the U.S. Northern District of Oklahoma, a federal judge referred to ALPR systems as “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.” The police officer in the case used digital surveillance to access 50 vehicle sightings in multiple states without probable cause.

In Coastal Georgia local law enforcement have adopted wildly divergent policies about acceptable use of Flock.

Like other ALPR makers, Flock contracts with individual agencies, meaning each department sets its own internal policies for acceptable use, audits and sharing settings. 

Municipalities can vary widely when it comes to internal policies that govern authorized use and controls, according to Johnny Nhan, professor of criminology at Texas Christian University and reserve officer at the Fort Worth Police Department.

“There are some robust policies that have everything from access control, and only a handful of officers or sworn officers can access this type of information,” he said. “For other departments, anybody in the department can have access to it.”

Patchwork policies

According to The Current’s investigation, local law enforcement policies overseeing Flock systems range from a single page to 26 pages. The agencies also differ over the search protocols and procedures, and prohibited uses.

The lack of a standardized policy or best practices is something that U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat from Savannah, says could foster abuse. He advocates for federal guardrails and monitoring of police surveillance technology. 

“This can’t be a patchwork system,” he said on a September press call with reporters. “People [are] addressing this state by state, municipality by municipality. The DOJ has a unique set of tools and I’m calling on them to use those tools to bring some sanity to this system.”

In Coastal Georgia, the Bryan and McIntosh County Sheriff’s Offices have revised their policies in response to Flock misuse stories. 

“We started immediately when we started seeing some of the other things that were going on in other jurisdictions,” McIntosh County Chief Deputy Gary Taylor said. “Naturally we started looking at ourselves.”

Taylor noted that the process of revision involved speaking with community members, Darien City Council and McIntosh County commissioners. McIntosh County has 20 Flock cameras, five of which are ALPRs. 

Now, his office has a new transparency portal provided by Flock and added guardrails, including an automatic flag for suspicious searches. 

For McIntosh County, which has a population of almost 12,000, Flock helps provide investigative details when eyewitnesses are not readily available, he said. 

“We don’t have a heavy population, so we don’t have the eyewitnesses and stuff of that nature that you do when other crimes are committed in other communities,” Taylor said. “This is a tool that helps us with that.” 

Savannah Police misuse

Among Coastal Georgia law enforcement agencies, neither Richmond Hill Police Department nor Savannah Police Department have an ALPR-specific policy. 

Savannah police, which installed its first Flock camera in 2020, has a growing reliance on Flock over the last six years. 

In an email to The Current,  Open Records Supervisor J. Brian Dale said that SPD’s Flock administrators estimate that this year they have averaged “2 million lines of search results per month.” The department did not respond to questions about what those searches entailed.  

Unlike smaller agencies in the region, SPD does not have a specific policy for Flock use. Instead, it uses a 23-page document called the General Order for Information Management.

The document obtained in a public record request does not address specific surveillance policing tools, and instead includes guidelines for access to criminal justice information. 

SPD’s public information office told The Current that all employees must sign a statement certifying their awareness of the issue as mandated by the Georgia Crime Information Center. 

SPD appears to have tried earlier this year to strengthen its ALPR protocols.

Between June and July an SPD working group met for five weeks to draft a Flock policy, according to emails obtained in a public record request. The group disbanded on July 22, according to one email addressed to officials from the department’s internal regional intelligence center, community response team and violent crimes task force.

On July 27, SPD launched an internal investigation about the alleged abuse of Flock by four officers and two civilian employees, according to an SPD press release. 

The six employees were subsequently fired, but five have appealed their terminations to the Civil Service Board, Savannah’s board that hears appeals from city employees. Four of those cases have moved forward to the city manager.

As part of the appeal, some officers are citing the fact that SPD does not provide users with Flock training protocols. 

According to SPD disciplinary records obtained by The Current, the department has investigated abuse of the surveillance network as far back as 2024. In one case from that year, a police officer used Flock to stalk two of his fellow police officers. He was later terminated and arrested.

One of the stalked police officers also admitted to using Flock to search her partner’s license plates. SPD recommended a “written reprimand” given her lack of disciplinary history and immediate admission of wrongdoing. 

Earlier this year, a community service specialist was accused of using Flock Safety to search for his own vehicle while he was out of town. The issue was initially flagged by Flock Safety’s audit system. SPD fired the officer, who had no previous disciplinary history. He appealed, saying he was never trained on what was the appropriate policy, but his appeal was denied. 

SPD’s public information office told The Current that it is currently working on a policy, which they will release alongside a Flock Transparency Portal. As of publication, the department has yet to release an updated policy for ALPR use. 

As of Oct. 14, SPD told The Current it has no open files related to Flock misuse, and declined an interview.

Privacy concerns

Despite the well-publicized cases of abuse, many law enforcement officials who spoke to The Current said Flock and other digital surveillance tools are key to public safety.

Officials from six agencies responded to The Current’s request for comment: Chatham County Police Department, McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office, Tybee Island Police Department, Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, Richmond Hill Police Department and the Springfield Police Department. They said Flock was a useful investigative tool, and said they were committed to public trust, transparency and privacy protections. 12 other agencies declined to respond or did not respond to a request for comment.

McIntosh County’s Flock Transparency Portal notes that the ability to track location history proved an important investigative detail in a missing person’s case. By inputting the individual’s license plate into Flock Safety, the Sheriff’s Office found that they had traveled to the West Coast. 

“Deputies were able to help locate the individual and provide his family with confirmation that their loved one was safe,” according to the agency’s website.

Such benefits do not outweigh the risks of abuse, according to Ethan Watters of Flock Out Sav. 

Watters, the head of the local anti-Flock advocacy group, said that the surveillance restricts individual freedom of movement, and violates Constitutional rights. 

“It’s too much power for the government to have,” he said. “The best way I’ve heard of it is [to] think of your worst enemy, would you want them to have this power? The answer is no.”

“This has been proven across the country, that it’s not right in any hands,” he added.

Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley stands by Flock as a valuable tool and believes his department’s auditing policies are robust enough to flag wrongdoers. 

Chatham County audits every 30 days and requires officers to enter a police report or a computer automated number and a reason every time they run a search. 

“Are we going to be able to prevent every single human being that may have access to it? We’re dealing with human beings. We’re dealing with human behavior. But I believe our protocols are strong. We’ve had a policy in place since 2020,” Hadley said.

Watters, however, is not satisfied. There’s not enough information, he says, to understand the full extent of surveillance.

“We don’t have a full accounting of every single search that’s been performed since 2020,” he said. “I think we’ll have a lot more reports of abuse if we had all that data.”