Former Savannah, Georgia civilian police employee Calandic Thomas charged in Flock camera misuse case

On August 21, 2026, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested and charged former Savannah Police Department community service specialist Calandic Thomas, 34, of Pooler, with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system. Unlike the three sworn officers charged in the same case, Thomas was not additionally charged with violation of oath of office, consistent with her status as a civilian employee rather than a sworn officer. She was booked into Chatham County Jail.

Thomas 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 Thomas and three others -- Marquis Dillard, Donald Phillips, and Matthew Rich -- 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.