Kenosha County deputy charged with felony misconduct for using Flock and Polaris databases to track a coworker

On August 19, 2026, Kenosha County District Attorney Xavier Solis's office formally charged former Kenosha County Sheriff's Deputy Frank McGrath with two Class I felony counts of misconduct in public office, each carrying up to three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. On March 6, 2026, Kenosha County Eye publisher Kevin Mathewson had filed a John Doe petition in Kenosha County Circuit Court asking a judge to open a criminal investigation into McGrath. The petition alleged that a Kenosha County Sheriff's Office internal investigation had already found McGrath conducted roughly 16 to 17 searches of the FLOCK automated license-plate-reader network in a four-hour window on September 30, 2025, and logged into the Sheriff's Office Polaris squad-tracking system roughly 40 times between July and October 2025, all while off duty, to determine the location of a fellow deputy with whom he had a personal relationship. Despite those internal findings, McGrath was permitted to resign under a negotiated separation agreement effective December 12, 2025, and the matter had never been referred to the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office for criminal review. Solis's office did not act by the John Doe process's own 90-day deadline, saying it would first review an outside investigation by the Racine County Sheriff's Office.

The criminal complaint stated McGrath left the FLOCK searches' case-number field blank and labeled them "Suspicious," and that McGrath had texted the coworker he was tracking her exact location, telling her "I know everything." Text messages cited in the complaint show McGrath acknowledging his conduct had "got out of hand" and that he had "lost control." McGrath's initial court appearance was scheduled for September 17, 2026.