Police Surveillance Abuse Exposed as Officers Face Allegations of Using Licence Plate Data to Stalk Exes, Strangers

A growing pattern of police officers abusing automated licence plate reader systems to track romantic interests has prompted a nationwide legal campaign challenging the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance databases.

A review by the Institute for Justice has identified at least 14 cases across the United States in which officers allegedly weaponised automated licence plate reader (ALPR) data to monitor current partners, ex-partners, and strangers they wished to pursue romantically. The incidents, the bulk of which occurred since 2024, have resulted in criminal charges and job losses in multiple states.

Flock Safety, one of the dominant vendors supplying ALPR technology to police departments nationwide, now faces mounting scrutiny as abuse cases surface through civilian watchdog tools rather than internal police oversight.

Officers Recorded Tracking Intimate Partners Hundreds of Times via Flock Safety Systems

In February 2026, Milwaukee Police Officer Josue Ayala was charged with attempted misconduct in public office after prosecutors alleged he searched Flock licence plate readers 179 times to track a woman he was dating and her former partner over a two-month period. On each occasion, Ayala logged his justification in the system as 'investigation,' despite no active investigation tied to either plate, according to charging documents.

The case came to light not through internal review, but after one of the victims checked her plate number on HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a publicly accessible site that publishes Flock audit logs obtained through open records requests.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman subsequently directed the Internal Affairs Division to open a criminal investigation and placed Ayala on full suspension. In a public statement, Norman said: 'I cannot guarantee as an executive leader that no one will ever push the envelope, cross the line. But I am saying to our public, because I understand privacy is a huge situation of trust for us, that we need to ensure we are going to hold them accountable when they violate that trust.'

The ACLU of Wisconsin, responding to the case, noted that Milwaukee police logged the word 'investigation' as a search reason more than 1,000 times across the department in 2025 alone, making it impossible to distinguish lawful queries from abuse.

The Milwaukee case sits within a broader national pattern. In Sedgwick, Kansas, former Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after allegedly using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner more than 200 times over several months, and in Kechi, Kansas, Lieutenant Victor Heiar pleaded guilty to computer crime and stalking after using the system to monitor his estranged wife. In Riverside County, California, Deputy Alexander Vanny, already facing kidnapping charges related to his ex-fiancee, allegedly used his department's Flock system to track one of her friends; he was convicted in a jury trial in December 2025.

A Florida Deputy, a TV Set, and a Surveillance Database Used for Personal Pursuits

The most striking case documented in the Institute for Justice review involves the deliberate targeting of a complete stranger. On 3 February 2026, Monroe County Sheriff's Office Deputy Lamar Eliseo Roman, 28, was working a security detail on the set of 'Bad Monkey,' an Apple TV production filming its second season in the Florida Keys. When a group of women arrived by bus as background extras on Long Beach Road in Big Pine Key, Roman allegedly directed his attention toward one of them. She told him she had a boyfriend.

Roman subsequently accessed Florida's Driver and Vehicle Information Database and the Florida Crime Information Centre/National Crime Information Centre databases, according to a warrant report obtained by Local 10 News, and entered the woman's licence plate number into an ALPR hotlist to receive an automatic alert when her vehicle was detected.

On 19 February, her plate pinged. Dashcam footage showed Roman exceeding 70 mph on U.S. 1, passing vehicles in a no-passing zone and forcing an oncoming truck to veer off the road to avoid a head-on collision, before pulling the woman over in a turning lane. He never logged the traffic stop.

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay confirmed the arrest on 10 March, stating he was 'committed to keeping this community informed of significant events that occur in this agency, good and bad.' Roman, who had joined the sheriff's office less than a year before his termination, was charged with misuse of law enforcement computers, computer networks, and electronic devices. During a subsequent interview with investigators, he admitted accessing the databases without legal justification, saying: 'I didn't need to, but I don't know, I knew right when I did that.' He acknowledged the traffic stop was indefensible, telling detectives: 'Yeah, I know it's stupid.'

Warrantless Access and the Constitutional Challenge Facing ALPR Systems

The abuse cases have intensified a long-standing constitutional argument: that the absence of a warrant requirement for ALPR searches creates conditions in which misconduct is not exceptional but predictable. The Institute for Justice has filed federal lawsuits challenging warrantless ALPR use in Norfolk, Virginia, and San Jose, California, as part of its Plate Privacy Project. IJ attorney Michael Soyfer has stated: 'The fundamental problem with these systems is that they place private information about people's movements over time in the hands of every officer. Without the constitutional safeguard of a warrant requirement, that predictably allows officers to abuse their access to these systems for things like stalking romantic partners.'

In San Jose, city audit records show the ALPR database was searched an average of 15,000 times per day in the second half of 2025, none of which required a warrant, probable cause, or prior supervisor approval, according to IJ's case documentation. In Norfolk, a federal judge ruled in favour of the city in a constitutional challenge; residents and their IJ attorneys have said they will appeal the decision.

The Institute for Justice has noted that the 14 cases it identified almost certainly represent an undercount, as officers frequently log vague reasons for their searches and most incidents surface only after victims report the behaviour themselves.

Until binding legal standards govern who can search these databases, why, and when, the technology will remain a tool that polices the public while shielding its abusers.