He was not imagining it
In February 2023, Coweta County deputies arrested Tyler Murkerson in a Newnan gas station parking lot. The stop was over a seatbelt law. His lawyers say that law does not apply on private property.
Prosecutors dismissed every charge that June. In September 2024, Murkerson sued the sheriff and the two arresting deputies.
That case was resolved in August 2026. Then he checked HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a site that publishes Flock audit logs obtained through public records requests.
According to his new complaint, filed October 8 in federal court in Georgia, the logs show five searches of his vehicle by the Coweta County Sheriff's Office. They ran from May through November 2025, while his lawsuit against the sheriff was pending.
Each search reached more than 6,000 agency camera networks nationwide, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges his vehicle was placed on an alert list, which could notify users when a camera spotted it. That goes beyond looking up where someone has been. It creates the ability to watch for where someone goes next.
During the same months, Murkerson says he saw deputies parked near his home on a dead-end road and in his business's lot. He told his wife he thought he was being watched. She suggested he was imagining it. He gave up a six-year business relationship servicing a neighboring police department's vehicles because he no longer felt safe.
The complaint puts it plainly: "He was not imagining it. The audit trail proves it."
Georgia already had the rule
This is not a story about a missing law.
Since 2018, Georgia has restricted police access to captured license plate data to law enforcement purposes. The statute defines that purpose as the investigation of an offense or activity initiated by a law enforcement agency. Misuse is a high and aggravated misdemeanor, charged per offense.
The law is being enforced. Five former Albany officers were charged in July. A Richmond County deputy was arrested after a routine audit caught personal searches. Gwinnett County fired three officers in September; two face plate data misuse charges. The Murkerson complaint counts at least 20 Georgia officials arrested for Flock misuse by mid-2026.
Coweta County ran its own audit this summer. It flagged several employee accounts. Three employees resigned, and the sheriff asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to step in. The complaint does not identify who resigned or connect them to the searches of Murkerson's vehicle.
Georgia had the rule. It had the penalty. It had prosecutions. The alleged searches still happened.
The field that accepted anything
Flock requires an operator to enter a reason before running a search. That sounds like a safeguard.
But the reason field accepted free text. Operators could type anything. The two searches for which Murkerson obtained detailed records listed "info" and "37."
Neither identifies a case, an incident, an offense or a call for service.
The complaint argues that entries like these document no investigation. They document only that someone typed something.
The lawsuit points to 2017 Justice Department guidance calling for a documented law enforcement justification for each license plate reader search. It also points to Flock's own product development.
Flock introduced optional case codes in July 2025. In April 2026, it launched Audit Assistance, a tool designed to help agencies identify operator misuse. That too was offered as an optional feature.
In August 2026, Flock announced that case codes and misuse detection would become mandatory by year's end. It also announced a reduction in default data retention from 30 days to seven for new law enforcement customers. Existing agencies could keep their current retention policies.
The complaint argues that Flock could have built these safeguards sooner. It also alleges that even with case codes, Flock does not verify that a number corresponds to a real investigation.
The problem was not identifying the operator. Flock could do that.
The problem was establishing whether that operator had a legitimate reason to search this particular vehicle.
The system recorded a justification without verifying it. Those are different things.
Even a valid case number would not necessarily prove a search was legitimate. An officer could use a real investigation to justify looking up someone unrelated to it. But requiring a reason that can be checked would at least give an auditor something to examine.
"Info" gives an auditor almost nothing.
Searching the person suing you
Many reported Flock misuse cases follow a familiar pattern. An officer searches for an ex-partner or someone connected to a personal relationship. The alleged motive is personal.
This complaint describes something different.
The person being searched was suing the agency doing the searching.
That changes the legal question. Murkerson alleges unconstitutional searches under the Fourth Amendment. But the complaint also centers on the First Amendment right to petition the government.
He alleges that the vehicle searches and the deputies parked near his home were intended to intimidate him into dropping his lawsuit.
The complaint also names Flock, alleging negligent design, and the sheriff, alleging he failed to restrict searches involving people known to be suing his agency.
A week before the complaint was filed, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled on another Flock case.
In United States v. Kyle, decided October 1, Judge Sara Hill held that a deputy's warrantless search of a driver's travel history through Flock and a second plate reader database violated the Fourth Amendment. She described the network as a form of indiscriminate mass surveillance.
It was a federal district court decision. It does not establish a nationwide rule. Flock disagrees with the ruling and expects it to be overturned.
Oklahoma asked whether police needed a warrant to reconstruct someone's movements.
Georgia raises another question: what happens when police allegedly use that same capability against someone for exercising the right to sue them?
The log is the only witness
These are allegations. No court has ruled on the merits of Murkerson's new lawsuit, and no class has been certified. Flock says it disagrees with the claims and will vigorously defend itself. The sheriff's office said in mid-October that it had not been served and could not comment.
Whatever the outcome, the audit records made the alleged searches visible.
Murkerson says he discovered them through a public website built from records requests. Detailed records for three of the five searches have not been disclosed to him, according to the complaint.
Without those records, he would have had far less evidence of what was happening. There would have been a man who thought he was being followed and was told he was imagining it.
In earlier misuse cases, Flock has said every search is permanently logged and tied to an individual user.
But logging and authorization are not the same thing.
A log can show who searched, when, and what reason they entered.
It cannot establish why they searched. Not when the reason field accepts "info."
A reason nobody checks is not a control. It is a formality.
Sources: Complaint, Murkerson v. Flock Group, Inc. (N.D. Ga., filed Oct. 8, 2026); United States v. Kyle (N.D. Okla., Oct. 1, 2026); O.C.G.A. § 35-1-22; U.S. Department of Justice, automated license plate reader guidance (2017); Georgia Bureau of Investigation, public statements and investigative announcements concerning license plate reader misuse (2026); Flock Safety, product and policy announcements (July 2025, April 2026, Aug. 13, 2026).