Highland Heights, Ohio police dispatcher misused Flock license-plate cameras in 20,292 unauthorized searches, resigned

On August 20, 2026, a part-time Highland Heights, Ohio police dispatcher resigned after Police Chief Dennis Matejcic found she had repeatedly searched the department's Flock automated license-plate-reader system with no connection to any Highland Heights case. Records obtained by the public-records tracker HaveIBeenFlocked and shared with WOIO (19 News) showed a single Flock user account within the Highland Heights Police Department carried out 20,292 searches between October 24, 2024 and November 22, 2025, including more than 5,000 searches on one license plate and more than 1,000 each on six others. Matejcic said the dispatcher continued running the same unauthorized searches in the 30 days before he discovered them.

Matejcic told News 5 Cleveland that the Washington Post had alerted him to the unauthorized searches on August 17, 2026, prompting the internal investigation that led to the dispatcher's resignation three days later. Highland Heights has used Flock's license-plate-reader cameras since 2021 under a six-camera contract, but Matejcic said the department had never audited Flock use before this month and had no dedicated license-plate-reader policy beyond general rules on privileged information, equipment use, and ethics.

Matejcic said the dispatcher would have been terminated had she not resigned, for violating department policies on misuse of equipment, systems, and agency values, and that the searches were not tied to any traffic stop or case-report number. The Highland Heights city prosecutor is reviewing the case for possible criminal charges. Matejcic said he reviewed every other employee with Flock access and found no other misuse.

Starting the Friday after the resignation, Highland Heights adopted a policy requiring mandatory monthly Flock audits for every officer and dispatcher with system access. The case adds a non-sworn civilian employee to a recurring pattern this archive tracks under alpr-personal-misuse-by-officers: personnel across multiple states using standing access to license-plate databases for reasons unrelated to any official duty, caught only after an outside audit or referral rather than by any control built into the system itself.