Cop Uses Flock Cameras to Track Her Boyfriend’s Ex-Wife

A North Carolina police officer is accused of misusing Flock license plate cameras to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife dozens of times. The case has raised serious concerns about privacy, surveillance, and how easily law enforcement technology can be abused for personal reasons.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:19Derrick Levasseur?

  So today, we are talking about a story that, on its face, sounds almost like some bizarre relationship drama involving a police officer, her boyfriend, and his ex-wife. But the more you dig into it, the more you realize this story is actually part of a much bigger conversation happening right now about surveillance, privacy, and just how much information law enforcement should be able to access about where ordinary people are going. Because a police officer in Mooresville, North Carolina, has now been accused of using something called the Flock Camera System not to track down a murder suspect, not to find a kidnapped child, not to locate a stolen vehicle, but allegedly to track her boyfriend's ex-wife. Her name is Elizabeth Ann Snowman, and according to the Mooresville Police Department, an internal

• 1:03Derrick Levasseur?

  audit discovered that she had accessed their license plate reader system 31 different times for personal reasons. Flock started as technology designed to help neighborhoods and law enforcement fight crime, but the exact same thing that makes the system so effective at finding a dangerous suspect also makes it extremely powerful when it's pointed at someone who hasn't done anything wrong. So today, we're going to be talking about what allegedly happened with Officer Elizabeth Snowman, but we're also going to talk about the bigger question her case raises. At what point does a really effective crime fighting tool become a surveillance system? And who exactly is watching the people who have the power to use it?

• 1:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  I love this kind of stuff. I love really digging into things and looking at what things are created for and then what they evolved to become. And Flock has been a real issue lately. So the officer at the center of it all is 36-year-old Elizabeth Ann Snowman, who worked for the Mooresville Police Department in North Carolina. She was arrested on August 5, 2026, after the department says an internal audit uncovered suspicious searches she had made using its Flock License Plate Reader System. So the police alleged that Snowman was using Flock for personal reasons rather than legitimate police work, specifically to obtain information about and track her boyfriend's ex-wife, who lived in another state. So this is also something where it's like, this isn't even your state. This isn't

• 2:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  even your jurisdiction. This person has committed no crime, and yet you are using a police tool for investigations, for investigatory work.

• 2:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, abusing a police tool.

• 2:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  So according to the Mooresville Police Department, Snowman allegedly accessed the Flock System 31 times in connection with this personal matter. Now, local reporting adds an interesting detail. Chief Ron Camperchiani said there were 29 searches involving a license plate, while the department has described the overall improper access as occurring 31 times. So apparently, two of those alleged accesses occurred while Snowman was off duty, which that adds another layer. The Mooresville Police Department says the activity was uncovered during an audit of its license plate reader system. Investigators then began looking into Snowman's searches. Police also alleged that when Snowman was questioned about why she'd

• 3:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  accessed the system, she was not truthful about her reasons for doing so. So the department's position is essentially that its oversight mechanisms of doing the audit eventually worked, but normal people obviously respond with the fact that this police officer allegedly accessed the system and used it improperly dozens of times before the audit caught the problem, dozens of times.

• 3:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Fair.

• 3:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Chief Camperchiani said Snowman was taken into custody when she arrived for work on August 5. He later remarked that although she technically worked that day, she probably spent most of her shift in jail. She was charged with misdemeanor computer access under North Carolina's law relating to unauthorized access to computers. So Snowman had reportedly been hired by the Mooresville Police in 2025. She was relatively new to the police department, but the department itself had already been using Flock for approximately five years. The chief emphasized that officers are repeatedly told what they may and may not use these databases for, which I believe that they are told they're not supposed to use it for that.

• 4:25Derrick Levasseur?

  For sure.

• 4:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  But they also probably know that there's not a ton of oversight, which is part of this issue.

• 4:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how we learn from this. I will say, I did not have the Flock System when I was a police officer, but we obviously had access to NCIC, which is the ability to run registration plates and run people. And I will tell you that similar conversations happened where you're told, hey, you have this system at your disposal. However, if you're running friends or family members or ex-girlfriends, the FBI monitors this, the state police monitor this, and if you're bound to be using the system improperly, you can be arrested. So those same conversations, even though Flock is way more advanced than NCIC, I remember those conversations as a patrolman.

• 5:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's also not being monitored by the FBI or the state police, right?

• 5:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, that's where, that's where this is a learning opportunity.

• 5:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which these police officers would know. They would know that, and they would know that there's not a huge system in place, right?

• 5:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, there's not an oversight administration looking at this, like an entity like the FBI. Correct.

• 5:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  So get this, it gets even worse, because after this was uncovered, the department said it was examining 10 additional employees for possible misuse of the Flock System. The chief said three of those cases appeared potentially problematic, and he did not rule out additional charges. That is probably, I think, one of the most important facts to mention in this specific story, because suddenly, this isn't necessarily one rogue officer does something stupid. It's one rogue officer gets caught for doing something stupid, and when the department starts looking more closely, it discovers several other rogue officers that may also need explaining, and then that's just in this one police department.

• 5:59Derrick Levasseur?

  I think it would be unreasonable for someone to say, oh, listen, this is an isolated incident, right? This is a much deeper issue. And as you pointed out, just because this one person was caught, it doesn't mean it's isolated to just them. In fact, we know it's not.

• 6:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  We know it's not. So the chief also said, listen, our police department is a heavy Flock user, which is another thing to talk about. And he acknowledged there isn't currently a simple automated warning that would essentially tell supervisors, hey, this police officer in your department has searched the same vehicle 10 times in two weeks, right?

• 6:29Derrick Levasseur?

  No way to trigger some suspicious behavior.

• 6:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Before the suspicious behavior goes on for long enough where it might be an issue, like, oh, maybe she's searching this person. I'm not saying in this case, maybe she's searching this person because she wants to find out what this person lives so that she can kill this person.

• 6:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 6:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right?

• 6:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Or, on the other hand, even if the system triggers it where this person is searching Derrick Levasseur, right, it notifies administrators so that they can ask the officer about it. Now, maybe the officer will come back and say, yeah, Derrick Levasseur's a drug dealer. We're currently tracking his location. Here's the investigation. Like, you can clear it up pretty quickly, but there's no system in place right now to even notify administrators that they're doing it, so you can ask them about it. It's a Wild West.

• 7:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's a Wild West, and it's a very, very massively information gathering tool, a very massively, I would say, privacy invading tool in the hands of normal human beings who don't always do the right thing and with no oversight, right? Because the chief said, hey, we have been discussing better early warning capabilities that could flag suspicious patterns automatically, but it gets directly at what the criticism is that most people have, because auditing a database after the fact is different from preventing something bad, abuse, while it's happening. So if an officer searches somebody's vehicle once, maybe that's legitimate. If an officer searches the exact same private citizen's vehicle over and over and over again, critics argue the system ought to be saying, why is this

• 7:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  happening? If you have such a powerful system that's capable of doing so much, then why does the system not have checks and balances in place?

• 8:00Derrick Levasseur?

  That's my big issue with the system currently.

• 8:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  And this apparently made the police chief even more frustrated, because Snowman's arrest came shortly after an officer with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department had also been arrested for allegedly misusing law enforcement databases and license plate reader information. So when we say, yeah, we know this is happening, we know this is happening because it is, because we keep getting news stories about it every week, sometimes weekly and on the daily. So this news station, WSOC, interviewed Chad Marlowe, the senior policy consul for the ACLU, and Chad argued that the larger problem obviously goes beyond individual officers breaking the rules. His position was that these systems already surveil an enormous portion of the public who are not criminals, who, you know,

• 8:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  it's Minority Report, right? It's like, pre-crime, they are not doing anything wrong. They're monitored in case they do, but that becomes an issue. And he said, even when they're being used according to policy, they're still kind of taking in more information than was the original stated intention of what Flock was supposed to be. And he raised a particularly compelling issue in a situation like this police officer Snowman's alleged conduct. Imagine you're being tracked by an ordinary stalker. You called the police, but what if the person allegedly tracking you is a police officer and is using police tools to do it? Who does the victim feel safe reporting that to? That's part of why the abuse of law enforcement surveillance technology feels far more threatening. It's like state stalking, state-sponsored

• 9:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  abuse. It feels more threatening than somebody simply looking up information on Google. The alleged abuser potentially has access to systems ordinary civilians could never access. So we've kind of discussed what's going on in Officer Snowman's case and how, not only in Officer Snowman's case, but now apparently 10 other cases in that same police department, and then there's other cases in different police departments where this is kind of dominos falling at this point. And we see that this is happening. There's no checks and balances in place, and we have to really understand why this isn't some kind of like, oh, whatever, you know, they're looking up license. No, it goes deeper than that based on the depth of what Flock does. And we are going to talk about what the Flock System

• 10:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  does and what it was intended to do and why it's a huge concern for a multiple variety of reasons, but let's take a quick break first.

• 10:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  This episode of Crime Weekly News is brought to you by Wild Grain.

• 10:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, which I appreciate because fresh bread at home makes you feel instantly more impressive.

• 10:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  It really does. You put warm sourdough on the table and suddenly everyone's like, wow, you have your life together.

• 10:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, even the five minutes earlier, you were staring into the freezer wondering, what's dinner gonna be tonight?

• 10:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that is the magic of Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake-from-frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas.

• 10:51Derrick Levasseur?

  And the key to what you said right there is baked from frozen, no thawing.

• 10:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  The second something says thaw overnight, or thaw beforehand even, I'm out. I needed it tonight. I needed it right now. That was the whole point. Everything bakes in 25 minutes or less, which gives you a timeline that you can actually depend on. And Wild Grain uses simple ingredients with a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your stomach and packed with nutrients. Their sourdough loaves are hands down always my favorite. The 20-hour slow fermentation gives them such good flavor, really good texture, you know, that whole sourdough thing, like crispy on the outside, nice and soft on the inside. And you know that I'm not having any of these

• 11:32Derrick Levasseur?

  There's no way.

• 11:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  breads or croissants, not without their slow churned French butter. It's over. Like, you're a victim of this bread now.

• 11:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm at the point now where I'm like, do I just take a spoonful of this stuff and eat it? But I haven't gotten there yet, Stephanie. I'm not gonna do it.

• 11:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  People probably think it's like we're ridiculous, like overexaggerated. Like, how different could this butter be than any other butter?

• 11:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Try it. We'll let us know.

• 11:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay. And the boxes are fully customizable, which I love. So I have a Wild Grain subscription. I get a box every month. So in there, I'm gonna make sure I have my croissants. I'm gonna make sure I have my sourdough bread. I'm gonna make sure I have my gnocchis. I'm also gonna make sure I have my cookies, because Wild Grain has the most amazing, like, huge, soft, chewy, delicious cookies. But you can also choose from the variety box. They have a gluten-free box, vegan box, or their new protein box. So it's easy to find something that works for your household.

• 12:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Breakfast, dinner, dessert, busy weeks, slow weeks, whatever you need, they got you covered.

• 12:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  All of it. Croissants for breakfast, pasta for dinner, cookies for dessert, sourdough for, you know, literally any moment when you want to feel like you made a good life choice, or you need some quick dopamine.

• 12:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so the freezer becomes less of the emergency food storage and more like a secret bakery.

• 12:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah. My kids, when their friends come over, they love it. Because they're like, ah, we wish we had cookies, or we wish we had. And I'm like, really? Hold on. I have everything you need.

• 12:43Derrick Levasseur?

  I got you.

• 12:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  This is a secret bakery that requires no shoes, no store, and no small talk with anyone in the public. And that is my favorite kind of luxury. So imagine having fresh bakery quality bread, pastries, and pastas at home without any trips to the store. And don't just take our word for it. Wild Grain has over 40,000 five-star reviews, and they've been voted the best food subscription box by USA Today for three years in a row. So for a limited time, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off your first box, which is a great deal, plus free croissants for life, which, how could you make a great deal even better? Free croissants. And all you have to do is go to wildgrain.com/crimeweekly30 to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free croissants

• 13:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  for life when you visit wildgrain.com/crimeweekly30, or you can use promo code CRIMEWEEKLY30 at checkout.

• 13:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, we're back. So Flock Safety was founded in Atlanta in 2017 by Garrett Langley, Matt Fury, and Paige Todd, all Georgia Tech alumni. So the original concept was fairly straightforward. Give neighborhoods an affordable way to capture information about vehicles coming into and out of an area after a rash of property or vehicle crime. Now, Flock described its beginnings as an effort to improve neighborhood safety. These cameras, understand, were not ordinary security cameras. They were automatic license plate readers. So rather than somebody sitting there, watching hours of footage, the camera would essentially say, I think using like AI, a gray Toyota Camry with plate XYZ 123, pass this location

• 14:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  at 11:43 PM. It pulls it up for you, so you don't have to watch all the footage. And importantly, Flock's software could identify more than the plate. It could identify things like vehicle make, model, color, and other characteristics that could become searchable.

• 14:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Distinguishing marks as well.

• 14:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. Bumper stickers.

• 14:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Like dents and things, and it's, oh, roof racks is another one.

• 14:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  So very early on, a DeKalb County detective told Langley that one of these cameras had helped investigators solve a residential burglary. According to Flock's founding story, that helped convince the founders that law enforcement would be a major market for the technology. So the trajectory was basically neighborhood security camera, like neighborhood watch kind of thing, then useful police investigative tool. And that turns into enormous interconnected law enforcement surveillance network. And that's where things got controversial, in that third step. Because from a police perspective, obviously, I think you and I both, what we do with true crime, when we talk about missing children, and then the person's like, I saw this car, and this car. Yes, we can see and immediately

• 15:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  understand the appeal.

• 15:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Especially when time, time is of the essence. Like, it's the difference between life and death.

• 15:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Of course. So imagine there's an armed robbery, or a child abduction, and a witness says, the suspect left in a black Dodge Charger. I didn't get the plate. Traditionally, the police might have to pull nearby security footage. They have to canvas businesses, find witnesses, hope somebody caught the vehicle.

• 15:48Derrick Levasseur?

  And like you said, go through all of that footage, which could be ours.

• 15:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Hope that somebody caught the vehicle, hope that somebody saw something.

• 15:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, yes.

• 15:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  But with Flock, investigators can potentially search black Dodge Charger at this particular location, in this particular time window. Or even better, if they know the plate or the partial plate of the stolen vehicle, the system can alert officers when that plate passes another Flock camera.

• 16:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct, correct. So if they identify the vehicle, and they're trying to track it, and there's a child in the car, gonna be very difficult for them to get away. Think about some of the cases we've covered where you think about this system, just on the surface, and you think about, man, what if?

• 16:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 16:25Derrick Levasseur?

  You know, would we be here discussing certain cases and not knowing what happened if we had something like this?

• 16:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think the best thing that a human brain can do is hold two truths

• 16:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  inside of it at once, right?

• 16:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Completely agree.

• 16:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So we see this can be helpful. People who are into true crime, who have seen how many kids have gone missing, or how many suspects have gotten away.

• 16:48Derrick Levasseur?

  And how many times have you and I been like, how the hell did nobody see anything? Like, it's like ridiculous, especially in 2026. It's insane.

• 16:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  We see that this can be incredibly useful. And Flock now openly markets itself as public safety infrastructure, and says thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities use its technology. And that is true, is very widespread. And if every department's or neighborhood's cameras kind of existed in isolation, the privacy discussion would probably look very different than the one we're having now. But they don't. They don't necessarily exist in isolation. The criticism isn't really a camera photograph my license plate. Your license plate is visible to the public once you go out, right? The concern is what happens when tens of thousands of cameras repeatedly photograph everybody's cars, record when and where they are seen, put those observations into a searchable database, and allow information to be shared widely across jurisdictions. So

• 17:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Flock reportedly now has roughly 120,000 cameras operating across 49 states. This is very widespread. One camera would tell police, Stephanie Harlow's car went through this intersection. And then a network of cameras potentially tells police, Stephanie's car left her house at 8:04, passed this intersection at 8:17, appeared near this doctor's office at 8:46, was downtown at noon, returned to her neighborhood at 4:22. No officer physically followed me. No GPS tracker was attached to my car. But technologically, you can begin creating something resembling a location history anyway. No warrant was asked to track my location, where I'm at all day, but they still can.

• 18:22Derrick Levasseur?

  And just to add another wrinkle to that, and this is coming from a police officer, when I'm tracking someone, I don't necessarily need a warrant to go do that. So for example, if I was trying to track someone, I could go around and physically go to different houses and obtain Ring camera systems and put together the pieces. But it's a lot more work. You could, through investigative work, piece together different camera footage to track them. But it's a lot more involved, and it would be person or vehicle specific. What you're saying, which a lot of people are saying, is this information is too readily available. There's no, there's no actual work being done for a specific person. It's just out there for dissemination.

• 19:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's no work and there's no warrants. Because technically, you could go, if you saw, like with the Chandler-Halderson case, right? They go to his neighborhood. But they don't know necessarily where his car goes after that until they get a warrant for his cellphone data, which then shows where he's pinging, right? So then they can go to those companies.

• 19:16Derrick Levasseur?

  That would make sense, yeah.

• 19:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you have to get a warrant for that cellphone data, which means you have to show that person did something wrong.

• 19:22Derrick Levasseur?

  I do hear the argument of like, oh, it's warrantless, warrantless. Yeah, to get cellphone data, absolutely, which would make my job a lot easier. You need a warrant. You need to articulate the crime that is allegedly been committed. But for going around, like on foot, I, as a detective, could go to Chandler's area and ask neighbors for their footage and not need a warrant. Now, if they said, no, I don't want to give it to you, I would have to get said warrant, and I would have to do everything you just said.

• 19:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm talking about the step that comes after that. When Chandler leaves that neighborhood, where does he go? We have to get a warrant for his cellphone records to see where it's pinging.

• 19:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah. You would have to get a cellphone, or you would have to physically continue to go house to house and get traffic cameras. It would be an astronomical amount of work.

• 20:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we can both agree that in the case of Chandler Halderson, or other people like him who are up to nefarious, no good things, that's fine. We want it to be quicker. However, let's say there's a police officer who's like, I think my wife's cheating on me. I'm gonna put her license plate into this, and I'm gonna see everywhere she went. And then he finds out that she was someplace she shouldn't have been, and then she comes home that night, and he kills her.

• 20:20Derrick Levasseur?

  No rebuttal whatsoever, no notes.

• 20:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Because there was nothing he had to do to Give to a judge to prove his wife had done something illegal to access that information. This is where it becomes problematic, right?

• 20:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Absolutely. I have no debate to that. You're absolutely right.

• 20:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  When even if it goes beyond that and it goes to broader things, there's, there's issues about what are the police using flock cameras for? The EFF, which is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading nonprofit digital rights group that defends online privacy, free speech and digital innovation. They have basically analyzed millions of flock searches and say that law enforcement agencies are using the network for much broader purposes, including things like school residency investigations, like for school residency stuff, not criminal investigations, background checks, noise complaints, even things like obviously immigration. And it has even invaded medical privacy, things like terminating pregnancies, which may be illegal in some states.

• 21:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now they can say, oh, this person was at a clinic. That person should technically have had medical privacy for that thing that they were doing, right?

• 21:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with what you're saying, that they shouldn't be using it for that, to make that clear.

• 21:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  And one of the most controversial examples does involve a Texas sheriff's office using flock data while investigating a woman suspected of self-managing a pregnancy termination. According to documents obtained, deputies searched a flock network containing information from more than 83,000 ALPR cameras, so the license plate reading cameras. And this is exactly the hypothetical privacy that advocates have warned about. Because suddenly the question wasn't, can this help find a stolen car or a stolen child? It became, should law enforcement be able to search a nationwide database of Americans' movements to investigate behavior that may be illegal in one state and maybe legal in another? Once you have this infrastructure, which is set up for the right reason, the permissible use of that infrastructure can change depending upon who's in the government,

• 22:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  what laws are passed, what police department's conducting the search, what police officer is conducting the search. There's no oversight. So obviously we have immigration enforcement. This is a big issue. Flock maintains that customers control their data and say there's no secret federal backdoor. But law enforcement agencies have been using flock-related hot lists that could identify vehicles on behalf of immigration authorities.

• 22:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so basically the local, local agencies could be working as an agent of the state for federal agencies.

• 22:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you don't necessarily need ICE to own their own cameras if thousands of local departments collect the data and then those departments share.

• 22:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, let's say, let's say Stephanie's a local police officer and I work for ICE, right? And I go to Stephanie and I say, hey, you know, hey Stephanie, do me a favor. Run this, run this plate real quick for me. What's to stop you from doing it?

• 23:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right, yeah. If a federal law enforcement person, like an agent, is contacting me, technically they're like my boss, right?

• 23:09Derrick Levasseur?

  No, they're not, they're not.

• 23:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I, you might feel that way, though.

• 23:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you could feel intent, yeah, I guess, I guess an individual basis, but you could also tell them to go pound sand and there's nothing they can do about it.

• 23:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you're also gonna look at it as like, hey, we are fighting crime together. We are on the same team.

• 23:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, we're wearing this together.

• 23:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Realistically, nobody really is saying we shouldn't use these to fight legitimate crime. Realistically, we're saying technology is removing this practical limitation of what police officers can do with warrants, what they're allowed to do. It's kind of becoming this warrantless, like 1984 surveillance state thing that people are becoming uncomfortable with. There's a lot of things that are now coming out recently, and you, we were talking about it before. People are making videos, people are even in law enforcement saying, this is not really good. And we don't, we didn't really understand how these were gonna be used or how they could potentially be used. We were just kind of told, hey, this is like a great crime fighting tool. It's gonna make your job easier. It's gonna get bad people off the streets faster. It's gonna save lives. And we were like, hell yeah, give it to us.

• 24:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  But people didn't understand how big the network became. One flock camera doesn't necessarily scare people, but tens of thousands of searchable cameras potentially communicating across jurisdictional lines does. And then we see how these actual examples of like the original mission creep have emerged. We're not really debating hypothetical scenarios involving termination of pregnancy investigations, immigration enforcement, protests, petty administrative matters. There's documented examples showing the systems being used beyond serious violent crime. And obviously, this has happened over and over again with technology. Communities and people adopting the technology faster than lawmakers can create rules for it. Right? We talk about that with the internet all the time.

• 24:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  People are allowed to get away with a lot of stuff on the internet that in real life there are laws for, but there's really no laws for the internet as of yet. They don't really know how to make those. I think that everybody on all sides of the political spectrum are mad about this for different reasons.

• 25:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 25:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  But mad about this. We can't even just say this is a political thing anymore.

• 25:10Derrick Levasseur?

  No, no, it's much, it's much deeper than that.

• 25:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we have people on the left who are worrying about immigration enforcement, investigations about terminations of pregnancy, protest surveillance. And then we have people on the right who we know like their privacy, don't like too much government involvement, the general Fourth Amendment stuff, which is the Fourth Amendment. What does it do? It means?

• 25:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Illegal search and seizure.

• 25:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we have everybody on all spectrums, where you stand politically, where you stand socially, even where you stand on technology. We don't really like this. It makes us uncomfortable. So obviously, we have now seen a ton of get flock out campaigns.

• 25:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. We've seen campaigns to actively go around and destroy the flock cameras.

• 25:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think that's necessarily what it started as. It was more like, hey, write to your lawmakers. But it became people physically vandalizing.

• 25:58Derrick Levasseur?

  FYI, this is how you destroy it. If you cover your face. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it became people physically vandalizing flock cameras. Is that right? Is that wrong?

• 26:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, it's, it's against the law.

• 26:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's against the law, but technically, some of the ways that this flock system is being used is also against people's Fourth Amendment rights.

• 26:15Derrick Levasseur?

  But two wrongs don't make a right. I think you would agree with that. You know what I mean? Like that's, we, we learned that very young.

• 26:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  But if you want people to, to be told, hey, what you're doing is wrong, you have to listen to the fact that they are telling you, the government and law enforcement, hey, what you're doing is wrong.

• 26:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 26:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I think that's where it's converging now. And hopefully, we see with this case that we're talking about, we have a police chief saying, yeah, this isn't right and this shouldn't be happening, but it is. It's happening a lot more than when, than we really want it to be. And we do need to put something in place to prevent it from happening. So that's a good step. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back, because I know we have discussions. I know Derek and I probably don't feel 100% the same about this, but let's take a break. We'll be right back.

• 27:00Derrick Levasseur?

  All right, so we're back from break. First and foremost, let's just say this is a much larger issue than we're gonna solve here on Crime Weekly today, but I do think there are some general points that we, we can all agree on. A couple of problems that you identified that I think can be corrected almost immediately. First and foremost, the access to the system. Currently, as it stands, basically any police officer can access the system. You can have a patrolman, like Officer Snowman, who's got less than a year on the job and she has access to the system. You can cut that right out. That should never happen. There should be flock representatives within agencies, maybe one or two people. Like, for example, in most police departments, we have what's called evidence custodians.

• 27:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Basically, these one or two people are the only two people in the entire agency that have keys to the evidence room. That's for chain of custody, right? It, it creates a level of accountability for those two people and they, they usually take that job very serious. And obviously, when you're picking people to run those certain agencies or those certain departments or be in charge of those responsibilities, that is something that is taken very seriously. So first and foremost, accessibility. One or two people within each agency that has the ability to access the database associated with flock.

• 28:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, I agree. Accessibility needs to be addressed. I would even go as far as to say, you should have to do the same thing you'd have to do to get any warrant. Go to a judge and show, this is why I need to access flock, because this person is suspected of doing this. Then you have access to flock and it is documented that you're, you're investigating this specific person, not just your boyfriend's ex-wife.

• 28:33Derrick Levasseur?

  The reason I would disagree with that is there's gonna be situations where you don't know who you're investigating. For example, if Stephanie Harlow calls in and says, I can't find my kid. I can't find my daughter. She was outside playing in the front yard. I can't find her. She's been missing 15 minutes. So at that point, let's say Derek Levasseur was in charge of the flock system database, but I wasn't working that day. It would create a little bit more timing, which is unfortunate with a missing child. But basically Sergeant so-and-so would have to call Derek Levasseur in and then I would be able to access the flock system. Even without the warrant, there would be a path. There would be an investigation that would need to be opened. Derek Levasseur would have to write up a report saying, I accessed the flock system on this day at this time because of call number 1772,

• 29:17Derrick Levasseur?

  where Stephanie Harlow called in and reported her daughter missing from Darling Street at approximately 3:15 PM.

• 29:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Don't put that bad juju on me.

• 29:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you're right. But there would have to be a lot of documentation. Why would that be? Well, this would be to my second point. And my second point would be oversight. We would need to establish an independent agency, not flock, not the police department investigating themselves, but a completely separate agency made up of law enforcement officials and private citizens who would be able to audit said flock access. So for example, if I was a private citizen working for this entity that's overseeing any usage of flock, I could see that it was used by Derek Levasseur on June 16th, 2023. I would be able to go in and access the flock access report that Derek would have to file after the fact to say, hey, this is why I use this system.

• 30:08Derrick Levasseur?

  And then I would have the ability to go in an interview and question Derek if there was anything in that report that didn't make sense. But also I want to add on to something you said. If there's an exigent circumstance where you have to go in and you don't have a specific target that you're going after yet, the flock system would allow you to get that warrant. And here's where I think you're right, Stephanie. Let's say there's break-ins in the area and Derek Levasseur, who is the flock agent for that agency, uses the flock system and identifies a specific vehicle that appears to fit the description and timing of these crimes. At that point, flock access is stopped. You now have identified the vehicle. You need to go get a warrant for that said vehicle. And that's where, again, this all has to be legislatively written out and really articulated

• 30:52Derrick Levasseur?

  to a point where there's not a lot of room for interpretation. And this is something that's gonna happen over an extended period of time. It's gonna be multiple cases, but. Let me just go back to my first point for a second because and Stephanie and I were talking a little bit before we started recording. I have seen this problem with the NCIC system where we have had individuals search ex-boyfriends, ex-wives, looked up attractive drivers as they're passing by with no cause to do so. So we know that there's an abuse of the system and there also needs to be something that is using AI to flag those behaviors. So, for example, number one thing we're going to do is create a funnel where instead of allowing

• 31:36Derrick Levasseur?

  everyone access, there might be one or two people within each agency who has access to it. So we're going to eliminate 90% of the people who can even access Flock. But then on top of that, we're going to create some type of program AI that will monitor certain behaviors. So even though these people have been vetted and reviewed and approved to have access to Flock, there will still be a system in place where if there's a pattern of behavior displayed by one of these Flock users, it will notify the agency overseeing the Flock access to say, hey, Derek Levasseur has accessed the Flock system seven times this month. Why? What was he searching for? And we could go in there and see that. So there needs to be programs

• 32:19Derrick Levasseur?

  put in place outside of Flock. It can't be Flock policing themselves, right? And it can't be the police policing themselves. Again, independent agency. So those are just a few of the things that would address some of the major concerns that we have. And then we would have to continue to improve on those initial foundations in order to vet the process. But I know on the other side of things, and this is where you and I may split. I don't know exactly. We haven't talked about it at length. There are people who believe that the Flock system should just be completely dismantled and not used at all because of privacy concerns.

• 32:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, yeah, kind of until you have a system in place, like, don't use it. Yeah.

• 32:57Derrick Levasseur?

  I think it should be on pause. And I think that is fair. I think the system should currently be on pause until we iron out those details. However, and I'm only one person, and I'm not here to convince anyone else to believe what I believe. But I'm just going to talk about where I'm coming from without any agenda behind it. In fact, I don't mind saying this. I was, again, talking to Steffi, but I'll be honest with you guys. Flock came to me for detective perspective and wanted me to do an ad on Flock. And I refuse to do it at this point because I think there's a lot of things that need to be addressed before doing so. So I'm with you guys. But here's my, my, where I'm sitting from. We have discussed as a community, too many cases where the Flock system may have prevented it, or at least saved lives. We know that to be

• 33:40Derrick Levasseur?

  true. There's multiple cases that Stephanie and I have covered that I've cried about on camera and off camera, where the Flock system might have saved that person. So I don't think the answer is to get rid of it completely. I am one of those people that believe at this point, when you step outside your home, you are being recorded. It's scary, but you're being recorded everywhere from toll booths to security cameras to the cellphone companies having access to your GPS data. Like, there's people who work at AT&T and Verizon who may have ulterior motives who can track you as well. Like, if you live in a world of technology and you're using it at all, you're being tracked. So, so to me, that's not as much of a concern. Again, it goes back to accessibility. And I really think Stephanie did a great job of articulating

• 34:22Derrick Levasseur?

  that in the first half of this episode. So I do approve of systems like Flock, but I think, and I don't want to be corny here, but with great power comes great responsibility. And because this tool is so powerful and will only get more powerful, the people who are allowed to have access to it, it should be so limited where we could probably sit here and give you the list in like 30 minutes, where it could be 50 to 100 people. And by the way, like, as it goes up the chain, again, warrants would need to be in place and higher positions of authority within the Flock accessibility hierarchy would have to go in. So like, there has to be tiers to the access that you have. There's so many things you can do to limit the availability of Flock. But I think at minimum, all of these cases where we're talking

• 35:07Derrick Levasseur?

  about patrolmen abusing the system, well, we have to go after them and hold them accountable, make sure they lose their jobs, right? But we can also take away their right to do it. None of these local police officers who are working traffic need access to the system. If there is an exigent circumstance, if there's an emergency, someone within their agency that they can contact who even can be from home, needs to be notified to access that system. So there's one person who we can go to and we can hold accountable if something doesn't add up.

• 35:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree with everything you said, but here's the problem. Our government has used these emotions you're describing historically to enact things like this, to completely reduce and remove the privacy that US citizens are entitled to under the Constitution. I will bring your attention to the Patriot Act.

• 35:55Derrick Levasseur?

  That's another thing for Flock, by the way. Terrorism as well. I didn't even mention that. Thank you.

• 35:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  The Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11, and the government was like, everybody's upset about this, rightly so. We are upset. And the Patriot Act sounded good at first, until you found out that now the federal government is tracking its domestic citizens, everything you're doing, right? At first, it was like, oh, it's checking what kind of books we check out of the library. That's crazy. But then it was like, oh, also, they're looking at your emails. They're listening to your calls. They're looking at your communications, things that you thought while you're in the privacy of your own home, not stepping outside.

• 36:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Warrantless, by the way. Warrantless in many cases.

• 36:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Warrantless. And Edward Snowden exposed this, and now he can't even ever come back to the United States.

• 36:39Derrick Levasseur?

  By the way, I completely agree with you there. I'm not, I completely agree with you.

• 36:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they use these things. Crime is high. Children are being kidnapped. People are being murdered. They use these things to enact laws and policies and infrastructure that reduces our privacy to nothing. And because we are like, yes, the general public, we care about people, of course, we keep giving it away, giving it away. And at some point, there's not going to be a way to get it back. And I think we've reached that point, honestly.

• 37:08Derrick Levasseur?

  There's definitely an overcorrection when tragedy strikes, right? Like, you know, like you just said, terrorism, Patriot Act, all these things. And I think at this point, you got to reel it in. So I'm on board with what you're saying. And I feel like, right now, giving access to the Flock system to all police officers was not the right decision.

• 37:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Should have never happened.

• 37:27Derrick Levasseur?

  And so now there has to be a correction. I don't think getting rid of the system completely is the answer. That's my personal opinion. I know there'll be many of you who disagree with me.

• 37:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you said put it on pause is okay.

• 37:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, for sure.

• 37:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Derrick Levasseur?

  I would love to be on the committee to oversee this because I am someone who worked in law enforcement, but am also willing to call them out. I think a lot of people would agree with me in my, in my opinions on it. I think it's a valuable tool, but it has to be in the right hands. It's a very powerful tool. But like, local traffic violations or any medical stuff, get out of here. Miss me with all of that, right? Like protesting, no shot. You should be using this for that, right? I'm talking extreme circumstances, missing children, murders, violent crime, terrorism. There are cases where time is of the essence and having something like this could be the difference between life and death. But this should be not something that is used every day like it's a library card.

• 38:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like, I wonder what this person is doing.

• 38:19Derrick Levasseur?

  That's ridiculous.

• 38:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  It comes into like, okay, now if they want to get me for this, but they don't have evidence to get me for this, well, they can just go and follow me until they have evidence to get me for something.

• 38:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct. Correct. And people are abusing it. And that's always what happens, right? People abuse these, these technologies. And I just also want to add for disclaimer purposes, we keep saying Flock because Flock is the prominent system, but there are other companies that are doing this as well. So we're not demonizing Flock necessarily. It's the system itself. Flock is just the biggest one right now. So we're not sitting here saying, Flock, Flock, Flock. There are other systems that are by different companies that are doing this, a similar thing. I think Los Angeles, there was just an article with LAPD where they had put their relationship with Flock on hold. But then there were also reports, they were working with another company that does the exact same thing, not named Flock. So this is the overall system that we're talking about. And whether it's Flock or Bozo the Clown,

• 39:12Derrick Levasseur?

  we're not in agreement with the idea of local patrolmen being able to access the system on a daily basis because they're sitting in the parking lot, having a sandwich, and they want to see what their ex-girlfriend is up to. That's the problem here. And that's just one of the problems. And I do think entities, outside parties, need to be put in place to not only monitor those actions, but the rights of the Flock system need to be taken away from everyone for right now. And then slowly, after much training, processing, and vetting of said users is taking place, and then you slowly disseminate that responsibility, that accessibility, back to particular individuals with the understanding that if that system is abused, and it is, and it is found out through the measures that are put in place, you're looking at some serious charges against you.

• 39:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Some federal charges, maybe, because I've seen, I've seen the federal government go after hacktivists who are just releasing like academic journals. And I've seen them go after them for like wiretapping and like federal felonies.

• 40:11Derrick Levasseur?

  There would be serious repercussions to the point where you would have to ask yourself, is searching so-and-so worth spending the next 25 years in prison? It would have to be that extreme to deter people from this type of behavior. But one way to do it is just to, again, like, I sound so trivial, but like, to just limit the access where we have talked about this many times before, and I am someone who has said this publicly, not all police officers are created equal. I've worked with some absolute clowns. I've talked to you off record about fistfights that I've gotten in with other police officers inside the building because they're, they're scumbags. And so, do I want everybody with a badge having access to these types of systems? No. Former cop here telling you that.

• 40:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  You can see how, how this type of system would be incredibly appealing to a certain personality. Because how many people have we known where they're like, man, I just wish I could get into my boyfriend's phone and like, see where he's going. And now here's a system where you can see where he's going every minute of the day, and it's dangerous.

• 41:12Derrick Levasseur?

  It should be scary for everybody, and there has to be some serious, serious changes. So please, everyone, we want to hear your opinions on this. We know going into it that everyone's going to feel differently about it. And I don't think it's a binary answer. I think there's going to be nuance to this, and it's going to be a deeper conversation, but nothing changes if you don't discuss it, which is why we are. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We appreciate the love. We appreciate the support. I don't really think there's anything else to, to talk about. Steffi and I have some things going on behind the scenes that could be interesting and could be fun. Later this year, we're in discussions for them, and we're excited about those possibilities. But as always, we appreciate you guys being here. We appreciate the love, the support. And we will be back later this week with, I believe, the fourth and final part of Chandler Halderson.

• 41:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, sir. Yep, absolutely.

• 41:59Derrick Levasseur?

  This case has been something that you guys have really attached yourselves to. A lot of you knew about this case beforehand and are saying that some of the information Stephanie's breaking down are things that you've never heard of before.

• 42:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  You already know.

• 42:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And so we really want to make sure that Krista and Bart's story is told correctly. And it's been a really fascinating conversation. So if you haven't already, catch up with that series. Part four will be out later this week on audio on Friday and out on YouTube on Sunday. Until then, please, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.

• 42:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.