Holiday Hills, Illinois police chief charged with felony misconduct for using Flock, LEADS data to track six people he knew

On June 18, 2026, McHenry County, Illinois prosecutors charged William C. Copp, 54, chief of the Holiday Hills Police Department and a part-time Prairie Grove police officer, with two counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony. An investigation found Copp used Prairie Grove's Flock automated license-plate-reader system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database, both on and off duty, to search for and track six people he had personal relationships with rather than for any law-enforcement purpose. Prairie Grove police obtained the arrest warrant, and Copp resigned as Holiday Hills chief the same day.

Court records describe searches spanning February 2024 to November 2025 — roughly 250 unauthorized Flock queries and 31 unauthorized LEADS queries. Three of the people Copp tracked were women he had dated; a fourth was one woman's ex-boyfriend, whose plate Copp searched in the Flock system about 140 times, most of it while off duty, and whom Copp called twice from a department phone to warn against contacting the woman. A McHenry County judge had already denied an emergency stalking no-contact-order petition against Copp in February 2026 — months before the criminal charges were filed — brought by a man prosecutors later said was among the six people Copp tracked.

The case fits a recurring pattern this archive tracks: officers using their standing personal access to Flock's license-plate network, or similar law-enforcement databases, to surveil people they have a private interest in rather than any official purpose. As in prior cases, the searches were logged and later recoverable, but nothing in the system stopped them at the time — the misuse surfaced only after a complaint and criminal investigation.

Updates

2026-07-18 — Charges against Copp expanded to 12 counts of official misconduct [3, 4]

By mid-July 2026, court records showed prosecutors had expanded the case against Copp from two to 12 counts of official misconduct. Copp was released from custody on pretrial conditions barring him from working as a police officer, possessing firearms, and contacting five individuals, three of whom had separately sought protective orders against him; he had not yet entered a plea. Holiday Hills' village trustees, meanwhile, arranged a temporary policing agreement with the McHenry County Sheriff's Office while deciding whether to hire an interim chief or disband the six-officer department.