Documents show Fort Bend County sheriff's lieutenant misused Flock cameras 189 times, suspended two days

ABC13 reported on July 17, 2026, that internal affairs documents it obtained show a Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office lieutenant used the department's Flock license-plate-reader network to search one license plate 41 times and another 148 times between January 2022 and December 2025. According to those documents, the lieutenant admitted the searches were not related to official law enforcement work.

The searches surfaced after a resident filed a complaint alleging the lieutenant was "stalking" them and feared for their family's safety. The internal affairs file shows the lieutenant claimed concern that the two drivers were "lurking" near their home and family, and describes at least one of the drivers as having a "very contentious familial relationship" with the lieutenant. The lieutenant claimed not to have done anything with the retrieved information and said it was not shared with anyone else.

An internal affairs investigation found the lieutenant violated the department's general orders and imposed a two-day suspension. ABC13 is not naming the lieutenant because no criminal charges have been filed. The outlet reported it had reached out to the lieutenant and to the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office and was awaiting a response.

The case is part of a broader pattern this archive tracks under alpr-personal-misuse-by-officers: officers around the country using standing access to Flock's license-plate database, granted for law-enforcement purposes, to track people for personal reasons instead. As in prior cases, nothing in the system stopped the searches at the time — the misuse was caught only after an outside complaint prompted a review of the search logs, years after it began.