Charlotte Officer Charged With Tipping Off Drug Suspect Using Flock Camera Database, Newsweek Count Puts Misuse Cases in 12 States

A Newsweek review published this week found police in at least 12 states have faced allegations of misusing Flock Safety's license plate reader system, and the newest case shows exactly how far that misuse can go.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Seth Daniel Elliot, 25, was arrested by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation on July 29 and charged with illegally accessing a government computer, a Class 1 misdemeanor. He'd been on the job since February 2024.

An arrest affidavit obtained by WBTV and reported by Police1 lays out what allegedly happened. In July, a person described in the document as a "drug target" contacted Elliot and asked him to search for a license plate registration. That plate belonged to a vehicle being used by an undercover officer. Elliot allegedly ran the plate through the Flock Safety database and through North Carolina's Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services portal, then passed the information along to the person under investigation.

In plain terms: a cop allegedly helped a drug suspect figure out whether he was being watched by police.

CMPD Chief Estella Patterson didn't soften it. "The public expects and deserves the highest level of integrity from every officer who wears the CMPD badge," Patterson said in a statement. "Misusing law enforcement technology or accessing confidential information for non-law enforcement purposes is a betrayal of the public's trust and a violation of everything this profession stands for. We will not tolerate that kind of misconduct, and anyone who violates that trust will be held fully accountable."

CMPD said it doesn't own or operate its own Flock cameras, but has a memorandum of understanding with neighboring jurisdictions that do, giving CMPD officers database access. Elliot is on unpaid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. It's unclear whether he has retained an attorney, and he could not be reached for comment.

A pattern, not an isolated incident

Newsweek's review found allegations spanning Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. The complaints range from officers tracking romantic partners and relatives to allegedly feeding investigative data to the very person being investigated.

Georgia keeps producing the largest cluster of cases. Newsweek identified agency-level cases in Albany, Cherokee County, DeKalb County, Greene County and Fayetteville. DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox announced the arrest of former Sgt. Kabiru Salawu after an internal probe into unauthorized Flock access. "The misuse of law enforcement technology or confidential information for any unauthorized purpose is a serious breach of the public's trust and will not be tolerated," Maddox said.

In Kansas, former Kechi Police Lt. Victor Heiar was convicted after authorities said he used Flock technology to track his estranged wife. Current Kechi Police Chief Braden Moore, who wasn't with the department at the time, told Newsweek: "The system should have never been used in that capacity." Moore added that while the agency no longer has access to Flock systems, "Flock is an amazing tool for law enforcement to catch and track the criminal element, but I also believe that there is great responsibility for agencies that use the system."

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley, whose company's cameras and estimated 6,000-community footprint across 49 states are at the center of every one of these stories, didn't try to spin the numbers away. "It's a disappointing story when I see it, but I also go, look, this is working," Langley told Newsweek. "This is showing that if you use a tool like Flock or other tools, you should be held accountable, regardless of whether you have a badge or you don't."

Every case Newsweek documented came to light because the system logged who searched what, and that log trail is what got these officers caught. A network with zero audit capability would produce zero arrests, not zero misconduct. Flock's defenders argue the alternative, officers pulling plates with no record at all, is worse.

But the counter-argument has merit. Civil liberties advocates and Republican lawmakers pushing for tighter restrictions on automated license plate reader systems aren't just worried about detection after the fact. They're worried about the sheer volume of searchable movement data sitting in a database that any officer with credentials can query, for good reasons or bad, before anyone notices. An audit trail catches misuse eventually. It doesn't prevent an undercover officer's cover from being blown to a drug suspect in the moment it happens.

What's unresolved

North Carolina prosecutors haven't said whether Elliot will face additional charges tied to the alleged tip-off itself, separate from the database-access misdemeanor. CMPD's internal investigation is still open, and Elliot remains unpaid pending its outcome. Whether the undercover officer's operation or safety was compromised as a result has not been addressed in any statement from CMPD or the SBI so far.