Former Dallas, Ga. 911 director charged with misusing Flock license-plate reader system

On August 12, 2026, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested former Dallas Police Department 911 director Heidi Taylor, 52, and charged her with two misdemeanor counts of misuse of a license plate reader system. She was booked into the Paulding County Jail. The Dallas Police Department had asked the GBI on July 7, 2026 to investigate allegations of misuse involving its Flock Safety system; the GBI's preliminary findings indicate Taylor accessed the system for reasons unrelated to law enforcement between 2024 and 2025, while she served as the department's 911 director. What specific information she accessed was not disclosed, and the investigation remains active.

Flock Safety's automated license-plate-reader network lets officers and other credentialed department personnel search a running log of vehicle movements. As in other cases this archive has documented, the system logged every query but did nothing to stop a search before it happened — the misuse surfaced only through a department-initiated review, months after it is alleged to have occurred. Taylor's case extends a pattern the archive has otherwise recorded almost entirely among sworn officers and deputies across Georgia and other states to a civilian communications-center administrator, underscoring that Flock access and its potential for abuse reach well beyond patrol personnel.