An Indiana man who regularly criticizes his local government says he became suspicious after noticing police officers appearing around him with unusual frequency, only to later discover records showing that his license plate had been searched dozens of times through a nationwide network of automated cameras.
Atlanta News First investigative reporter Brendan Keefe examined the case of Bob Sklar, a resident of North Manchester, Indiana, who speaks at town council meetings, records police activity and openly challenges local officials over spending and department conduct.
Sklar said he began wondering whether officers were tracking his movements after repeatedly seeing the same police presence around town, and that suspicion eventually led him to the Flock Safety automated license plate reader system.
What he found surprised him: according to data Sklar reviewed and records independently confirmed by Keefe’s investigation, his plate had been searched again and again over a period of at least a year.
“I was shocked, emotionally distraught when I saw the level of surveillance that that data revealed,” Sklar said.
Sklar Says Police Seemed To Know Where He Was
North Manchester is a small Indiana community, but the license plate reader network connected to it is anything but small.
Keefe reported that Flock cameras positioned around the area feed into a much larger national network that allows participating law enforcement agencies to search camera data from thousands of locations beyond their own jurisdiction.
Sklar said his concerns started much closer to home.
“I would come into town and all of a sudden he would be there,” he said of one officer he frequently encountered. “It started to be more than a coincidence.”
The officer Sklar said he saw most often was North Manchester Police Officer Griffen Miller.
Sklar, who readily acknowledged that local officials probably consider him a nuisance because of how often he challenges them, said he also began recording officers during traffic stops and confronting them when he believed their conduct deserved scrutiny.
At one point, Keefe asked whether it would be fair to describe him, from the government’s perspective, as the town’s “pain in the ass.”
“I’m definitely one of them,” Sklar replied.
That context matters because the report does not portray him as someone who was quietly going about his life without ever interacting with police. He was actively watching and criticizing local government, which makes the question of why officers were repeatedly searching his plate particularly sensitive.
A Records Request Reveals An Alert
After noticing a Flock camera outside town, Sklar began wondering whether the system could explain how officers seemed to know when he was nearby.
He filed a public records request seeking audit information.
According to Sklar, the town acknowledged that an alert had been placed on his vehicle but declined to tell him which officer had placed it, citing officer safety.
He then found another way to investigate.
Sklar visited a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com, which aggregates information from law enforcement audit logs and other sources and allows motorists to search their own plate numbers.
When he entered his plate, the site showed 63 searches between December 2024 and the end of 2025.
Keefe reported that InvestigateTV independently verified dozens of those searches through records obtained from agencies outside Indiana whose audit logs were still publicly available.
The searches came from multiple North Manchester police officers and Wabash County Sheriff’s deputies.
Sklar said some searches reached enormous portions of the Flock network, with one query involving at least 11,235 devices and another potentially touching nearly 98,000 cameras.
“Almost 100,000 devices around the country,” he said. “That’s scary. That is way scary.”
The Reasons Included “Locate” And Sklar’s Own Name
Flock requires officers to enter a reason when searching its database, but the explanations in Sklar’s case did not make him feel any better.
Keefe reported that entries included Sklar’s last name, the word “PATROL,” and repeated uses of “Locate.”
“Locate isn’t a crime,” Sklar said.
In one recorded confrontation, Sklar questioned Officer Miller about the searches.
Miller told him he would have to speak to someone else and said he did not know what Sklar meant by using Flock “to track” him.
Sklar remained unconvinced, particularly because some searches looked backward through as much as 30 days of travel data.
He also recalled an encounter before he knew how often his plate was being searched in which an officer asked him how his trip to Philadelphia had gone.
“How would you know that I was in Philly?” Sklar remembered wondering.
After seeing the Flock records, he believed he finally had the answer.
“That scares the hell out of me,” he said.
Neither Miller nor the North Manchester police chief agreed to an interview with Keefe, so their fuller explanation of the searches was not included in the report.
Sheriff’s Office Says Its Searches Were Legitimate
The Wabash County Sheriff’s Office did respond.
According to Keefe, the department said every search it conducted on Sklar’s license plate had a legitimate law enforcement purpose and was intended “to ensure officer safety during traffic stops.”
That explanation highlights one of the central issues raised by the investigation: under Indiana law, police generally do not need reasonable suspicion, probable cause or a warrant simply to search the Flock database.
In other words, Keefe reported that many of the searches described in Sklar’s case appear to be legal under current state law even though Sklar considers them invasive.
There is an important difference between proving that an officer broke a law and questioning whether existing rules give officers too much discretion.
Sklar’s experience sits directly inside that gap.
He said he does not object to cameras being used to find someone who is genuinely wanted, but believes the technology becomes dangerous when officers can repeatedly search the movements of someone who has not been charged with any crime.
Investigation Finds More Than 70 Alleged Misuse Cases
Keefe broadened the report beyond Sklar’s experience and said InvestigateTV had identified more than 70 cases around the country in which officers or other law enforcement employees faced investigation, discipline, termination or arrest over alleged misuse of Flock data.
Some cases involved officers allegedly searching for current or former romantic partners, relatives or acquaintances, while others involved accusations of stalking and harassment.
Keefe said the growing number of cases raises questions about how much power should be attached to a system capable of reconstructing where a vehicle has traveled.
Josh Thomas, chief communications officer for Flock Safety, acknowledged that misuse has occurred but argued that the company’s audit tools have also been what exposed wrongdoing in many of those cases.
“These are people also being trusted today with a car, and a gun, tasers,” Thomas said. “They’re being trusted with a lot of very powerful tools.”
He said he wished misuse had never happened, but noted that internal auditing had helped identify officers who were later held accountable.
Thomas also said the company supports lawmakers and local governments creating additional rules if communities want tighter restrictions.
“If there’s some part of this the city doesn’t like, they should just regulate that stuff,” he said. “Outlaw it. Make rules about it. Change it.”
That is a reasonable point in one sense: powerful technology can be useful without being left completely unrestricted. The argument is really about how strong the guardrails should be and whether the public can see enough to know when they are being ignored.
Flock Changes What Its Audit Logs Reveal
The transparency side of that debate became more complicated after Flock changed the information displayed in network audit logs.
Keefe reported that those logs previously helped journalists and citizens identify which officers searched particular license plates across the shared network.
Flock later removed the names of searching officers, plate numbers and open-text search reasons from those external logs.
A company spokesperson told InvestigateTV that the change was made after nearly 200 law enforcement leaders raised concerns that publicly released audit data was being used to identify undercover officers and expose details about ongoing investigations.
Flock said the full information remains available to the originating law enforcement agency.
The company also said local agencies control their own data and establish policies governing which offenses qualify for searches, while every query remains permanently logged and auditable.
That may protect legitimate investigations, but it also creates an obvious accountability problem when the agency being questioned is the same agency holding the only complete record.
Keefe summarized the dilemma bluntly: officers may be able to search a person without a warrant or suspicion, while the person being searched may have increasing difficulty learning who did it and why.
Sklar Now Changes His Route To Avoid Cameras
Sklar said the experience has changed something as basic as the way he drives home.
He now takes a longer route to avoid triggering one of the local cameras.
“A little out of the way,” he said, “but it avoids triggering the camera.”
When Keefe asked whether the Flock system made him feel safer in his community, Sklar said the opposite was true.
“I’ve seen the abuse,” he said. “That doesn’t make me feel safe at all. It actually makes me scared.”
Sklar said he does not plan to leave North Manchester, where his wife’s family has lived for generations, but he wants stronger legislation governing how automated license plate readers are used.
His case does not establish that every search of his plate was improper, and the Wabash County Sheriff’s Office specifically defended its own queries as legitimate.
What the investigation does show, however, is how much location information can be available to officers once a small-town police department is plugged into a national camera network, and how difficult it can be for an ordinary citizen to discover who has been looking.
For Sklar, the unsettling part was not simply finding his license plate in a database. It was realizing that a system he had barely noticed along the roadside could reveal months of movement to agencies far beyond his hometown.
Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.
