Proper Flock'd: What This Cop Did Raises Major Red Flags...
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A Naperville police officer turned a statewide camera grid into a personal tracking app, ran a man's plate about 150 times, and then retired like the file never existed.
The story serves as yet another example of how the burgeoning mass surveillance grid is being abused on a regular basis.
Patrick Dowhen was not a suspect. He was the ex. After Officer Oscar Maldonado started a relationship with Dowhen's fiancée, Flock became the shortcut. No warrant. No case number that mattered. Just a badge, a login, and a national lattice of plate readers that can reconstruct where you went, when you went, and how often you go there.
"Anywhere I went in the country, I was being tracked," Dowhen told ABC7 Chicago's I-Team. "It was scary, it was really scary."
Internal records obtained by the I-Team show the pattern started after Maldonado's relationship with Dowhen's then-fiancée began. Investigators found evidence he searched Flock for Dowhen's vehicle approximately 150 times over a three-month stretch last year.
Chicago Tribune reporting, from a separate FOIA haul, put the plate runs between June 18 and Sept. 15, 2025, and said Maldonado tracked plates for non-police reasons hundreds of times.
Dowhen said the surveillance was not abstract. "My ex-fiancée would tell me where I was at, or what I was doing, and he [Maldonado] was feeding her information," he said. "He's an officer, feeding a civilian, you know, inside information." He tore his truck apart looking for a tracker. Then he went to Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres. That complaint opened the internal case last September.
Maldonado's story to interrogators was protection: the woman, himself, his family. Naperville investigators did not buy it. They wrote that the "evidence contradicts Maldonado's explanation that he only used Flock for the safety of himself, his family," and Dowhen's ex-fiancée.
The report also concluded there was "a preponderance of the evidence that shows Maldonado did commit the crime of Official Misconduct," adding that he "admitted to using FLOCK for personal reasons."
Then on May 1, 2026, Maldonado retired. Department spokesman Rick Krakow said the internal case was complete but not closed because discipline had not been imposed. "However, the officer resigned before his disciplinary meeting with the chief, which essentially closed the case."
No arrest. No plate charges. A referral to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Will County prosecutors would not confirm or deny a criminal review. Dowhen later obtained a stalking no-contact order that noted Maldonado "was tracking my plate since 06/2025." That order was dropped after both men agreed to a two-year mutual no-contact deal.
"He could very well get a job as a police officer again and have, you know, all these same electronic things available to him at any time and stalk anybody you want," Dowhen said, "because at this point he has no criminal record."
ABC7 chief legal analyst Gil Soffer laid out the gap that let a 150-search campaign end in a retirement party. "It's not enough to say that a police officer violated internal laws, you'd have to show that a police officer knowingly violated a law, a statute, a constitutional provision," he said.
He added, "An official misconduct statute in Illinois won't necessarily cover the simple situation where a police officer accesses license plate information for an improper purpose."
Maldonado's own lawyer, Jeff Tomczak, made the same point from the other side of the table. "I'm a defense attorney. It should be a crime. It should absolutely be a crime. The legislature should act, create the crime of misuse of Flock. Don't require the state's attorneys to be creative."
A private company sold cities a warrantless movement database. Departments wrote policy memos. The statute book never caught up. When an officer treated the grid like a jealous-ex app, the fallback was an employee manual and a quiet exit.
The I-Team says this is not one suburban rogue. It identified 14 Chicago-area cases of officers accused of misusing Flock, with at least five sent to prosecutors. Berwyn's mayor, Robert Lovero, issued an executive order this week suspending the city's cameras.
On Capitol Hill the same day, Sen. Josh Hawley noted who did not show up: "You know who you won't hear from? Flock CEO." Sen. Dick Durbin added, "I think they're afraid to be on camera."
Nationally, a Washington Post investigation found at least 50 documented cases of officers charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems. In 26 of those cases, officers used the technology to spy on wives, girlfriends, former partners, or their exes' new partners.
Flock's system appeared in 46 of the 50. Chicago privacy researcher Matt Chapman, of Lucy Parsons Lab, put the constitutional problem in one line: "It seems that these tools are used as a means of circumventing Fourth Amendment rights."
This is the same architecture that already wrecked an innocent Florida woman's life.
Lindsey Brooke Isaacs, 23, spent 13 days in a Volusia County jail facing life after Florida troopers treated a Flock ping like a confession. Her black Dodge Durango had no collision damage. A 911 caller described a maroon SUV and a partial plate that was not hers. The camera still became the case.
"They just picked up my car off a camera and called it the end of the day. We got her," she said. Prosecutors later dropped every charge and arrested another driver whose maroon Durango and plate matched the original call.
Flock's line was corporate and tidy: "Flock cameras provide investigative leads; they do not identify perpetrators, determine guilt, or make arrest decisions."
Florida's governor had already seen enough of the dragnet. At DeSantis's direction, FDOT revoked every permit for Flock units and other automated plate readers in state highway right-of-way and put agencies on a 30-day clock. Miss it, and state crews pull the poles.
"I think these cameras, the license plate readers, I think it's out of control," DeSantis said. "I'm all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable... But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state."
He used the most Florida example available: a drive to Buc-ee's. "It's really none of the government's damn business if you're doing that, right?" He also named the stalking pattern now repeating in Naperville: "When I see, like, a police officer using this to track, like, an ex-girlfriend, I'm like, you know, what the hell's going on with this?"
Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs - the former WWE star Kane - cut the same cord after he realized the product was not a passive hot-list ping. It is an active system that photographs every car, then builds what Flock calls a "vehicular fingerprint": make, model, color, roof racks, bumper stickers.
"The lack of transparency surrounding Flock's rollout is one of the most troubling aspects about all this," Jacobs wrote. "It's sure seems like there was a sprint towards a fait accompli before the public took notice."
The company has since shortened default retention, promised mandatory audits, and told cities they can wall off some outside searches. Semafor reported this week that Flock is now weighing a sale, with preliminary talks involving outside advisers. A spokesperson declined to comment.
Software patches after the poles are already in the ground do not rewrite the architecture: a searchable history of lawful travel, available to whoever has a login, with "audit" as the after-the-fact alibi.
Americans were sold stolen-car alerts and Amber Alerts. What got bolted to the intersection is a movement dossier with no judge on the front end and, in Illinois, no reliable felony on the back end.
Maldonado searched a man who was not charged with anything, roughly 150 times, then left with his record clean enough to wear a badge somewhere else. That is not a glitch in the camera. That is the product working as designed - until voters and governors start ripping the poles down.
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 08:05
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A Naperville police officer turned a statewide camera grid into a personal tracking app, ran a man's plate about 150 times, and then retired like the file never existed.
The story serves as yet another example of how the burgeoning mass surveillance grid is being abused on a regular basis.
Patrick Dowhen was not a suspect. He was the ex. After Officer Oscar Maldonado started a relationship with Dowhen's fiancée, Flock became the shortcut. No warrant. No case number that mattered. Just a badge, a login, and a national lattice of plate readers that can reconstruct where you went, when you went, and how often you go there.
"Anywhere I went in the country, I was being tracked," Dowhen told ABC7 Chicago's I-Team. "It was scary, it was really scary."
Internal records obtained by the I-Team show the pattern started after Maldonado's relationship with Dowhen's then-fiancée began. Investigators found evidence he searched Flock for Dowhen's vehicle approximately 150 times over a three-month stretch last year.
Chicago Tribune reporting, from a separate FOIA haul, put the plate runs between June 18 and Sept. 15, 2025, and said Maldonado tracked plates for non-police reasons hundreds of times.
Dowhen said the surveillance was not abstract. "My ex-fiancée would tell me where I was at, or what I was doing, and he [Maldonado] was feeding her information," he said. "He's an officer, feeding a civilian, you know, inside information." He tore his truck apart looking for a tracker. Then he went to Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres. That complaint opened the internal case last September.
Maldonado's story to interrogators was protection: the woman, himself, his family. Naperville investigators did not buy it. They wrote that the "evidence contradicts Maldonado's explanation that he only used Flock for the safety of himself, his family," and Dowhen's ex-fiancée.
The report also concluded there was "a preponderance of the evidence that shows Maldonado did commit the crime of Official Misconduct," adding that he "admitted to using FLOCK for personal reasons."
Then on May 1, 2026, Maldonado retired. Department spokesman Rick Krakow said the internal case was complete but not closed because discipline had not been imposed. "However, the officer resigned before his disciplinary meeting with the chief, which essentially closed the case."
No arrest. No plate charges. A referral to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Will County prosecutors would not confirm or deny a criminal review. Dowhen later obtained a stalking no-contact order that noted Maldonado "was tracking my plate since 06/2025." That order was dropped after both men agreed to a two-year mutual no-contact deal.
"He could very well get a job as a police officer again and have, you know, all these same electronic things available to him at any time and stalk anybody you want," Dowhen said, "because at this point he has no criminal record."
ABC7 chief legal analyst Gil Soffer laid out the gap that let a 150-search campaign end in a retirement party. "It's not enough to say that a police officer violated internal laws, you'd have to show that a police officer knowingly violated a law, a statute, a constitutional provision," he said.
He added, "An official misconduct statute in Illinois won't necessarily cover the simple situation where a police officer accesses license plate information for an improper purpose."
Maldonado's own lawyer, Jeff Tomczak, made the same point from the other side of the table. "I'm a defense attorney. It should be a crime. It should absolutely be a crime. The legislature should act, create the crime of misuse of Flock. Don't require the state's attorneys to be creative."
A private company sold cities a warrantless movement database. Departments wrote policy memos. The statute book never caught up. When an officer treated the grid like a jealous-ex app, the fallback was an employee manual and a quiet exit.
The I-Team says this is not one suburban rogue. It identified 14 Chicago-area cases of officers accused of misusing Flock, with at least five sent to prosecutors. Berwyn's mayor, Robert Lovero, issued an executive order this week suspending the city's cameras.
On Capitol Hill the same day, Sen. Josh Hawley noted who did not show up: "You know who you won't hear from? Flock CEO." Sen. Dick Durbin added, "I think they're afraid to be on camera."
Nationally, a Washington Post investigation found at least 50 documented cases of officers charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems. In 26 of those cases, officers used the technology to spy on wives, girlfriends, former partners, or their exes' new partners.
Flock's system appeared in 46 of the 50. Chicago privacy researcher Matt Chapman, of Lucy Parsons Lab, put the constitutional problem in one line: "It seems that these tools are used as a means of circumventing Fourth Amendment rights."
This is the same architecture that already wrecked an innocent Florida woman's life.
Lindsey Brooke Isaacs, 23, spent 13 days in a Volusia County jail facing life after Florida troopers treated a Flock ping like a confession. Her black Dodge Durango had no collision damage. A 911 caller described a maroon SUV and a partial plate that was not hers. The camera still became the case.
"They just picked up my car off a camera and called it the end of the day. We got her," she said. Prosecutors later dropped every charge and arrested another driver whose maroon Durango and plate matched the original call.
Flock's line was corporate and tidy: "Flock cameras provide investigative leads; they do not identify perpetrators, determine guilt, or make arrest decisions."
Florida's governor had already seen enough of the dragnet. At DeSantis's direction, FDOT revoked every permit for Flock units and other automated plate readers in state highway right-of-way and put agencies on a 30-day clock. Miss it, and state crews pull the poles.
"I think these cameras, the license plate readers, I think it's out of control," DeSantis said. "I'm all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable... But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state."
He used the most Florida example available: a drive to Buc-ee's. "It's really none of the government's damn business if you're doing that, right?" He also named the stalking pattern now repeating in Naperville: "When I see, like, a police officer using this to track, like, an ex-girlfriend, I'm like, you know, what the hell's going on with this?"
Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs - the former WWE star Kane - cut the same cord after he realized the product was not a passive hot-list ping. It is an active system that photographs every car, then builds what Flock calls a "vehicular fingerprint": make, model, color, roof racks, bumper stickers.
"The lack of transparency surrounding Flock's rollout is one of the most troubling aspects about all this," Jacobs wrote. "It's sure seems like there was a sprint towards a fait accompli before the public took notice."
The company has since shortened default retention, promised mandatory audits, and told cities they can wall off some outside searches. Semafor reported this week that Flock is now weighing a sale, with preliminary talks involving outside advisers. A spokesperson declined to comment.
Software patches after the poles are already in the ground do not rewrite the architecture: a searchable history of lawful travel, available to whoever has a login, with "audit" as the after-the-fact alibi.
Americans were sold stolen-car alerts and Amber Alerts. What got bolted to the intersection is a movement dossier with no judge on the front end and, in Illinois, no reliable felony on the back end.
Maldonado searched a man who was not charged with anything, roughly 150 times, then left with his record clean enough to wear a badge somewhere else. That is not a glitch in the camera. That is the product working as designed - until voters and governors start ripping the poles down.
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 08:05
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
