Florida Wildlife Agency Ran Critics' Driver Records Through Police Database, Records Show

An Agency Meant to Protect Wildlife Turned Its Tools on People Who Complained About It

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission secretly ran the driving records of more than a dozen of its critics through a state law enforcement database, according to reporting from the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald published over the past week.

The database in question, called DAVID, short for Driver and Vehicle Information Database, is restricted to legitimate law enforcement purposes. It contains addresses, signatures, and other sensitive personal information. Access is supposed to be logged and justified.

According to the Herald and reporting from Florida Phoenix columnist Craig Pittman, republished by The Apopka Voice, the FWC's own search logs listed the reason for many of these lookups as "Criminal Investigation." An FWC spokesperson has since acknowledged the people targeted were not, in fact, under active criminal investigation, per Florida Phoenix.

Who Got Searched, and When

Documentary filmmaker Brent Fannin, who has accused the FWC of failing to protect endangered gopher tortoises, discovered two FWC employees pulled his driving records seven times in April and June of 2025, according to Reason. Fannin says he only found out because an anonymous tipster warned him he was being tracked, prompting him to file a public records request with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Katrina Shadix, founder of Bear Warriors United, had her records pulled 17 times between 2023 and 2025, according to the Miami Herald. Shadix has fought the FWC's bear hunt policy and led a successful lawsuit against the state over a pollution-linked manatee die-off in the Indian River Lagoon.

"We found out that they were illegally accessing our information, and it was these people who have spoken out against their policy and practices," Shadix told reporters, according to Reason. "They're breaking a federal law to strip us of our constitutional rights, which is crazy."

The Sentinel reported that many of the searches lined up with dates shortly after individuals posted online or spoke out publicly against the agency. Pittman reported that 16 environmental activists have so far learned their driving records were accessed. Not all of them fit the activist mold: one is an elected Republican property appraiser who is now suing the FWC for violations of civil rights and federal privacy laws, according to Reason.

The Flock Camera Question

The Sentinel raised a further concern that hasn't been confirmed: that FWC may have used the driving records in combination with Flock license-plate cameras positioned along Florida highways to track critics' movements and monitor who they were meeting with, according to reporting cited by The Apopka Voice. No source in this record establishes that the camera data was actually cross-referenced.

The Agency's Defense

An FWC spokesperson told Reason the Herald and Sentinel stories "mischaracterized the FWC Division of Law Enforcement" and that "claims that the FWC misuses or weaponizes its law enforcement authority are false." The agency said its Division of Law Enforcement does not access DAVID records "for all attendees before public meetings."

That statement leaves room for the agency to have accessed records for some attendees, which is consistent with what the Sentinel and Herald reported. The FWC's own statement also included this line, according to Reason: "threats concerning the harming of officers, staff and Commissioners are taken seriously and is why it's imperative that law enforcement works to ensure public safety by monitoring, preventing, and assessing potential security risks to maintain safe public spaces."

Public officials and the officers who protect them do face genuine threats, and agencies have a duty to take those seriously. If any of the 16 people whose records were pulled had actually made threats against FWC staff, that would be a defensible reason for law enforcement scrutiny. The agency has not identified any specific threat tied to Shadix, Fannin, or the other named targets, and its own spokesperson has acknowledged the individuals were not under active criminal investigation despite the searches being logged that way. That gap between the stated justification and the actual paperwork is the crux of the story.

What's Unresolved

No criminal charges or state investigation into the FWC's use of DAVID have been announced. The Republican property appraiser's federal lawsuit against the agency, alleging civil rights and privacy law violations, is pending. Whether Florida's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which administers DAVID access, will audit or restrict FWC's access to the database has not been addressed by either agency in the reporting so far.

Misuse of DAVID can carry criminal penalties under Florida law and the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which is the legal hook cited in Shadix's complaints. Whether any FWC employee faces referral for prosecution, or whether FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto's leadership faces any accountability from Governor Ron DeSantis or the state legislature, remains an open question.