Skylar Thompson allegedly ran over 2,000 Flock camera searches on his girlfriend's license plate, falsely listing them as city planning duties.
Page A2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 September 2026
Florida removes Flock cameras from highways as ex-deputy charged for using Flock cameras to stalk girlfriend
As it ran on the front
I've got the notebook open to two pages this morning, and I'll be honest with you, I've been flipping between them since breakfast. I lit one of my cigars over it — the dollar kind, my one vice that comes with a receipt — and it didn't help.
Page one is a memo out of the Florida Department of Transportation. Florida is ordering the automated license plate readers — the Flock cameras — off its state highways, citing surveillance concerns, and, in a memo to local law enforcement, calling a halt to issuing new ones. That's the state's own paper. I wrote down the date: September the first.…
…(cont) Page two is a charging document out of Indiana. An ex-deputy, charged with a felony, for allegedly using those same Flock cameras — same brand, same tool — to run their girlfriend's license plate. And here is the part I keep coming back to. Two thousand searches. A little over two thousand, the report says, but let's not haggle. Two thousand.
Now bear with me, because I want to show you something from my garage. My car — and I apologize for the car, it needs a fan belt and it knows it — has a mileage log in the glovebox. Little paper book. The outfit I used to drive for made everybody keep one: every trip, you write the miles, and you write the reason. And here's the thing about that little book. The reason line takes whatever you put on it. You could write "parts run" every day for a year and the book would never argue, because a log doesn't check anything. A log is paper that agrees with the last man holding the pencil. Somebody has to open the book and squint at it, or the book is a ritual you perform at the glovebox.
According to the charging document, the deputy's searches were logged. Every one of them. The reason entered: city planning duties. Two thousand times. The girlfriend's plate, and next to it, city planning, city planning, city planning. The system accepted that answer two thousand times, the way my little book accepts "parts run."
Now, Florida — different state, same cameras, same week — looks at the machines on its highways and orders them down. I'm not going to tell you the one caused the other. That's not in my notes, and I only get to read you my notes. What's in my notes is the pair, sitting on facing pages: a state deciding the cameras watching everybody's plates are a concern, and a charging sheet showing what one set of hands allegedly did with them, two thousand times, while the paperwork said city planning.
The brochure calls the camera a public safety tool. I wrote that down too — "public safety" — right above the two thousand. The two lines look funny together on the page. Maybe it's my handwriting.
Ah — excuse me, I know you're on your way out, this will only take a second. The search screen has a little box where the officer types the purpose. That box got filled in two thousand times before anybody read it once. So — and forgive me, I'm sure there's a simple answer — what is the box for?
“They install surveillance, then yank it when the wrong badge gets caught using it for personal business. The tool stays in place until someone in uniform gets greedy—the rest of us don’t get a say.”
“Flock cameras are just about public safety, and Florida’s removal is a sign of responsible oversight. The ex-deputy’s case is rare—did I say rare? I mean, it’s not typical. The system works, unless it doesn’t.”
The receipts
Florida is halting the use of automated license plate readers (LPRs), including Flock Safety's controversial cameras, on state highways, its transportation department announced Monday. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) said in a memo to local law enforcement agencies that they should “cease the issuance of all future…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.