Oak Ridge, Tenn. police officer misused Flock cameras and law enforcement databases for personal use, fired

On April 24, 2025, the Oak Ridge Police Department in Oak Ridge, Tennessee fired officer Zachary Gauthier after an internal investigation found he had used his mobile data terminal and the department's access to the Accurint records system, Tennessee's State Link System, and the Flock Safety license-plate-reader network for personal purposes unrelated to his police duties. The allegations surfaced through complaints within the department; Chief Robin Smith said the department requested an independent investigation from the Anderson County District Attorney's office as soon as the allegations came to light and that the department took "prompt and appropriate action." According to the subsequent indictment, Gauthier had accessed the systems for personal use in March and early April 2025.

Flock's automated license-plate-reader network and law-enforcement records systems such as Accurint and the State Link System give officers broad, on-demand access to track vehicles and pull personal information on people who are not the subject of any investigation. That access depends on officers using it only for legitimate law-enforcement purposes, since little in the systems themselves prevents an officer from running a search for private reasons; Gauthier's firing came only after the department's own internal review caught the pattern, not through any safeguard that stopped the misuse while it was happening.

This entry documents the misuse that led to Gauthier's firing; his subsequent indictment and guilty plea are recorded below.

Updates

2025-07-02 — Anderson County grand jury indicted Gauthier on 23 counts of official misconduct [2, 3]

District Attorney General Dave Clark announced that a grand jury had indicted Gauthier on 23 counts of official misconduct tied to his access of the mobile data terminal, Accurint, State Link System, and Flock. Gauthier was booked into the Anderson County Detention Facility on $50,000 bond.

2026-03-23 — Gauthier pleaded guilty to all 23 counts and was sentenced [4]

Gauthier pleaded guilty to all 23 counts of official misconduct. He was sentenced to a two-year term on each count with most of it suspended to supervised probation, 48 hours of incarceration to be served locally, surrender of his POST law-enforcement certification, a court-ordered mental-health assessment, and no contact with victims or witnesses, with eligibility for judicial diversion and record expungement on completion of probation.