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Former Savannah, Georgia police officer Donald Phillips charged in Flock camera misuse case

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested and charged former Savannah, Georgia police officer Donald Phillips, 23, of Fleming, on August 21, 2026, with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office. Phillips was one of six Savannah Police Department employees fired on or about August 7, 2026 after an internal audit found they had used the department's Flock automated license-plate-reader system to search on personal acquaintances and family members unrelated to any case; the GBI's independent criminal review has since charged Phillips and three others of the six individually. Phillips was booked into Chatham County Jail.

Part of: Police Using License-Plate Camera Networks to Stalk

Jurisdiction
Georgia
Location
Savannah, Georgia

Abuses documented

Actors

  • Donald Phillips (former Police Officer, Savannah Police Department)

On August 21, 2026, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested and charged former Savannah, Georgia police officer Donald Phillips, 23, of Fleming, with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office. He was booked into Chatham County Jail.

Phillips was one of six Savannah Police Department employees -- four sworn officers and two civilians -- terminated on or about August 7, 2026, after an internal investigation found they had used the department's Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader system to run searches on personal acquaintances and family members unrelated to legitimate law-enforcement activity. The misuse was identified through SPD's audit of Flock Safety activity, including the vendor's Audit Assist tool; the department flagged 127 of roughly 39,000 searches conducted in 2026 for manual review and found 34 unjustified, implicating the six employees. All six cases were referred to the GBI for an independent criminal review, which has since charged Phillips and three others -- Marquis Dillard, Matthew Rich, and Calandic Thomas -- individually; each is recorded as its own entry, since each independently misused the system rather than acting together. Two of the six original employees remain unnamed and uncharged as of this recording.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the city self-reported the misconduct rather than it surfacing through outside discovery. Following the terminations, SPD implemented recurring weekly audits by its Office of Professional Standards.

Why we recorded this

Access to a government license-plate surveillance network is authorized for law-enforcement purposes, not personal ones, and an officer's duty to enforce that limit applies equally to himself. Former Savannah, Georgia police officer Donald Phillips was charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office after a department audit found he had misused the Flock license-plate-reader system for personal searches. This archive records the event as one of four employees independently charged following the same internal audit, each recorded separately because each committed his or her own instance of the misuse.

Sources

  1. 'There is no excuse for breaking that trust': GBI arrests 4 former Savannah PD employees in Flock misuse case — WTOC primary accessed September 4, 2026
  2. Savannah Police Department Terminates Six Employees Following Investigation into Misuse of Flock Safety System — Savannah Police Department primary accessed September 4, 2026
  3. Savannah Police Department fires 6 employees over Flock Safety System misuse — WTOC primary accessed September 4, 2026

See also