Ohio Police Chief Says No One Checked Who Searched the Cameras

Searches of a police vehicle-camera database in one Ohio city fell by more than 95 percent in a month, according to a news report ^[2]. The most revealing fact is not the fall. It is that the police chief says he had not audited Flock use before the misconduct came to light ^[1].

My view is simple. A control that switches on only after someone has abused the system is not a control. It is a clean-up. Any city that has bought a network of these cameras should be asking who searches it, how often, and who reads the record afterward.

What happened in Highland Heights

Flock sells automated license plate readers. The cameras photograph passing cars and log plates and other vehicle details, and police can later search that archive during investigations ^[2]. Highland Heights is a city in northeast Ohio, and its police department uses the network.

WKYC reported that the department recorded 130 searches in the first month after a dispatcher resigned, more than 95 percent fewer than in April ^[2]. Police Chief Dennis Matejcic said the dispatcher had used the system to track people she knew for personal reasons ^[2]. He said the department was looking into potential charges ^[1]. No charges have been reported so far.

The department now requires monthly audits of every officer and dispatcher with access ^[1][2]. Before that, by the chief's own account, nobody was auditing.

What the number does and does not say

The 95 percent figure is a news report's comparison of one month against April. It does not show that every earlier search was improper, and it does not show that legitimate police demand should fall by the same amount. The underlying monthly counts have not been published.

The chief's defense of the cameras deserves a hearing too. Matejcic told Cleveland 19 they help in shoplifting cases when suspects flee in vehicles ^[1]. That is a real use. Nobody sensible wants police to lose the means to trace a fleeing shoplifter's car.

But the concession cuts the other way as well. If most of those searches were legitimate, a drop that steep means the department's legitimate use is far smaller than what it had been running. If many were not, the system was being used for more than police work. Neither reading flatters the old arrangement, and without an audit the chief has no way to say which it was.

The size of one user

There is a second number, and it comes from a different source. HaveIBeenFlocked, a site that tracks Flock use through public-records requests, shared data with Cleveland 19 attributing 20,292 searches to a single Highland Heights user between October 24, 2024, and November 22, 2025 ^[1]. That is 394 days, an average of about 51 searches a day.

The two counts measure different things over different periods, and the data does not say how many of those searches were improper. Still, set them side by side. One user was credited with roughly 1,500 searches a month on average. In the month after the dispatcher left, the whole department made 130.

Logs are not oversight

Flock's answer, as the company gave it to Cleveland 19, is that audit logs have long been built into its system and that its Audit Assistance feature, which flags searches for possible review, is becoming mandatory ^[1].

Take the first claim at face value. The logs existed. Every search was written down, which is how a records-request site could count them.

A record that nobody reads is not oversight, though. It is a diary in a locked drawer, accurate and useless until the day someone opens it.

The second claim is more interesting. A feature that is only now becoming mandatory was, on Flock's own wording, not required before. That is my reading of the phrase, and the company has not said more.

That is the pattern I mean by luck. Access to the database was protected by low demand and by the assumption that employees would behave.

When one employee did not, the chief's account is that no audit was there to stand in the way. The misconduct came to light, and only then did the monthly audits begin.

Who pays for the lapse

The cost does not land on the department. It lands on drivers. Kelly Sanders, a Highland Heights driver, told WKYC that learning about the misuse damaged her trust in the police, though the new oversight steps gave her some hope ^[2]. Hope is the right word. Nothing reported so far says she, or anyone else outside the department, will be able to see what the audits find.

I do not want to be unfair to the monthly audits. They are the correct first move, and the department deserves credit for making them. But a policy adopted after misuse is not evidence that oversight worked beforehand. It is evidence that it did not.

The reported drop followed the dispatcher's departure. Nothing in the reporting ties it to the audits, which came later. Whether they will change anything is a question for the months ahead.

What a city should ask

Highland Heights is a small test of a large idea, that a camera network is only as trustworthy as the people checking who uses it. If your town runs a Flock network, you can ask five plain questions at a public meeting. How many searches did your police make last month? Who is allowed to run them, and for what stated reasons? Who reviews them, how often, and are the reviews kept? Will the results be made public? And what happened the last time a review found something?

A department that can answer all five before a scandal has a control. One that can answer only after has a recovery plan. In Highland Heights, by the chief's account, the audits began after the misconduct was found.