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A Savannah officer was fired after her Flock Safety login was used by her ICE agent husband to search for immigration enforcement targets Paul Goyette/Wikimedia Commons

Savannah Police fired officer Amber Harpe after an internal audit found her Flock Safety account had been used for 983 searches on 97 licence plates across six states, most of them linked to Hispanic vehicle owners, according to records obtained by WJCL.

Investigators concluded Harpe had given her login to her husband, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Tyler Harpe, even though the force does not share its Flock data with ICE.

Savannah police do not share their Flock data with ICE. Tyler Harpe lacked a Flock account through the Department of Homeland Security and used credentials supplied by his wife to search for people his agency wanted to locate.

Flock Safety Audit Exposed Hundreds of Searches

Auditors identified 983 search entries covering 97 licence plates across six states. South Carolina accounted for 788 searches, and investigators found most registered vehicle owners associated with that group were Hispanic.

Those figures cover activity on Amber Harpe's account. In a 27 July interview, she told investigators she did not recognise many of the names and that her husband had conducted most of the searches.

Tyler acknowledged requesting her credentials during a 3 August interview, according to audio obtained by WJCL. He said access would help locate people his agency had identified in target packages and who had arrest warrants. 'Every name that I ever ran was an ICE target,' he told investigators.

Records obtained by WJCL showed Savannah shared Flock data with more than 1,700 agencies. ICE was not among them.

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Why Flock Safety Access Cost Harpe Her Job

Investigators did not find that Amber Harpe breached Georgia's automated licence plate reader law. The statute permits law enforcement agencies, including federal agencies, to share captured licence plate data for law enforcement purposes.

Her dismissal instead concerned a departmental policy prohibiting unauthorised access to city or police software. Interim Major Max Nowinsky cited the state law when recommending a one-day suspension. Harpe accepted responsibility but challenged the severity of her punishment.

'The violation occurred because I gave my husband, who is a certified law enforcement officer with the Department of Homeland Security, access to my Flock account,' she wrote in her appeal. 'Every search he conducted was for law enforcement use only and not for personal gain.'

Assistant Police Chief Robert Gavin denied her appeal in August. Harpe was not charged. The mayor's office and police department said in a joint statement to WJCL that an outside agency's investigative purpose did not itself authorise access to Savannah's system.

'Unauthorized access to police technology by anyone is a breach of Savannah Police Department policy and public trust,' they said.

Flock Safety Faces Questions Beyond Savannah

Harpe was among six Savannah police employees dismissed following audits that included Flock's Audit Assist tool. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation later arrested four of the other former employees, who were accused of conducting searches for personal reasons.

Flock has pointed to its permanent audit logs as a means of holding officers accountable for misuse. Chief executive Garrett Langley defended that approach in an earlier company blog post, which described publicly reported misuse cases as rare among its more than 6,000 agency customers.

The immigration enforcement concerns predate the Savannah case. In May 2025, 404 Media reported that local police were conducting Flock searches for ICE, which had no contract with the company. ICE has confirmed it is investigating Tyler Harpe's involvement in the Savannah case.

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