Former Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy Skylar Thompson is accused of turning a Flock camera network into a personal stalking service, and the numbers are grotesque enough to make any sensible person’s head spin.
According to prosecutors, Thompson searched his girlfriend’s license plate 2,055 times between December 31, 2025, and August 2, 2026. That amounts to eight or nine searches a day for more than seven months. Not a single emergency. Not a single legitimate investigation. None of it accidental. It was a repeated, deliberate effort to pinpoint where a private citizen had been seen.
And how did he justify it? Court records show Thompson labeled every one of those searches “city planning/traffic analysis,” even though he’d never been assigned city planning or traffic analysis duties.
This abuse of power came to light only because of a routine system audit. Thompson reportedly resigned the day he was confronted and now faces a Level 6 felony charge of official misconduct and a misdemeanor fraud charge. As of now, these are just allegations and the case still has to proceed through the court system, but the reported search volume alone should make every community using flock technology stop and ask some tough questions.
Flock cameras are marketed as public safety. But former Jackson County Deputy Skylar Thompson is now charged after using the system to search his girlfriend’s license plate 2,055 times in just over seven months. That’s not public safety. That’s technological stalking with a badge, a login, and a surveillance network paid for or installed in the name of “security.”
Give power to the wrong person, or to a person who thinks a badge puts them above the law, and it becomes a stalking and retaliation tool, and a legal cover to invisibly and illegally spy on an ex, intimate partner, neighbor, activist, or anyone else who catches the attention of someone with access.
And no, existing “policies” aren’t enough. Policies didn’t prevent these searches from taking place to begin with. A routine audit found them only after more than two thousand queries.
If communities insist on not fighting to have them all removed, at the very least, they need to push for strict limits, independent audits, meaningful penalties, short data retention periods, full transparency about who can access these systems, and a real public say before another surveillance network gets planted across their streets.
A system that can be used to stalk someone thousands of times isn’t simply a crime fighting tool. It’s a power system. And power without real accountability will always be abused by those with ill-intent.
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