Description: From January 2022 through December 2025, a Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office lieutenant in Texas reportedly used Flock Safety's license-plate reader system to search two vehicle plates 189 times and admitted the searches were unrelated to official law-enforcement work. A resident alleged stalking and feared for their family's safety. Internal affairs found department-order violations and imposed a two-day suspension.
Editor Notes: (1) 01/2022–12/2025: the period during which the reported misuse occurred; (2) 07/17/2026: ABC13 reported internal-affairs records showing the misuse and a two-day suspension for violations of department orders; (3) The incident ID date 01/01/2022 is an approximation; the ID itself was created 09/16/2026.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Surveillance technology developers , Flock Safety and Automated license plate reader (ALPR) developers developed an AI system deployed by Law enforcement , Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office (Texas) and Stalkers, which harmed Privacy and Individuals whose license plate data were accessed for non-law-enforcement purposes.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Surveillance technology , Law enforcement databases , Flock Safety automated license plate reader system and Automated license plate readers (ALPR)
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1689
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2022-01-01
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- Documents obtained by ABC13 show a Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office lieutenant used Flock cameras to look up one license plate 41 times and another plate 148 times from January 2022 through December 2025.
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Three Houston area law-enforcement agencies conducted internal investigations this summer over officers' alleged abuse of the Flock license plate surveillance database.
Although law enforcement agencies statewide have repeatedly emphasize…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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