Eyes Off Indiana

Indiana · Updated August 2026

Every documented case of Indiana police misusing license plate cameras

Indiana's license plate reader cameras photograph every car that passes and store where it was, and when. Police can search that history for any reason they type into a box. These are the 4 cases where Hoosiers found out an officer had searched someone who was not under investigation at all.

4
Documented cases in Indiana
5,877
Searches of people who were not under investigation
1 of 4
Caught by the police department itself
Criminal charges filed Jackson County · August 2026

Jackson County deputy charged after running one plate 2,055 times

2,055 searches of one license plate, every one logged as “City Planning/Traffic Analysis”

Prosecutors allege that former Jackson County deputy Skylar Thompson searched the same license plate 2,055 times over roughly seven months. On each search he entered “City Planning/Traffic Analysis” as his justification — an assignment the sheriff's office says he never had. A routine internal audit flagged the pattern, and the office referred the matter to the Indiana State Police.

What happened to the officer

An arrest warrant was issued August 31, 2026 on charges of official misconduct, a low-level felony, and fraud, a misdemeanor. Jackson County Prosecutor Lynsey Fleetwood cited a “no-tolerance policy for cases where public trust is violated.” Thompson is no longer employed by the sheriff's office. The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.

The stated reason is the only thing separating a lawful search from an unlawful one, and nothing in the system checks whether it is true. Here the same justification was accepted 2,055 consecutive times. No public reporting has identified the plate's owner or the deputy's motive.

Jackson County Sheriff's Office
Searches ran December 31, 2025 – August 2, 2026
How it came to light: A routine internal audit by the sheriff's office itself
Sources (4)
  1. Ex-deputy accused of searching for same license plate 2,055 times on Flock — WRTV Indianapolis, August 31, 2026
  2. Ex-deputy accused of searching for same license plate 2,055 times on Flock — WISH-TV, August 31, 2026
  3. Jackson County deputy allegedly used Flock cameras to search same license plate 2,055 times — FOX59, August 31, 2026
  4. Ex-Jackson County Sheriff's deputy charged for alleged misuse of FLOCK cameras — The Republic (Columbus, Ind.), August 31, 2026
Disciplined Porter County · August 2026

Porter County sheriff's lieutenant demoted for running a citizen's plate

A Porter County Sheriff's lieutenant ran a citizen's plate through Flock “for a reason that was not consistent with PCSO policy,” according to Sheriff Jeff Balon. It surfaced only because the citizen found out and complained, which prompted an internal affairs investigation that confirmed the unauthorized searches. The Times of Northwest Indiana reported a man's claim that the searches were tied to an affair.

What happened to the officer

The lieutenant was demoted, suspended without pay, permanently barred from Flock access, and ordered into ethics training. The sheriff's office has since required a case number and a stated reason for every Flock search.

Nothing in the system surfaced this. It surfaced because one member of the public happened to find out and had the persistence to file a complaint. Almost no Hoosier has any way to learn their plate was searched, which means the only path to accountability that worked here is closed to nearly everyone.

Porter County Sheriff's Office
Timing not specified in local reporting
How it came to light: A complaint from the citizen whose plate was searched
Sources (2)
  1. Porter County cop disciplined over misuse of Flock license plate search (paywalled) — The Times of Northwest Indiana, August 28, 2026
  2. Porter County Sheriff's Police officer disciplined for departmental Flock LPR policy violation — WIMS Radio, publishing the Porter County Sheriff's Office statement, August 28, 2026
Termination recommended Marion County · August 2026

IMPD officer ran plates tied to his wife and two acquaintances 3,759 times

3,759 searches in ten months — about twelve every day

An IMPD East District officer used department Flock access to track a small set of plates unconnected to any investigation — reported to be his wife and two close personal acquaintances — roughly 3,759 times over ten months, about twelve searches a day, according to a Washington Post analysis of audit records. IMPD did not catch it. Post reporters brought it to the department on August 6, 2026.

What happened to the officer

IMPD suspended the officer without pay, stripped his police powers, and referred the matter to the Marion County Prosecutor. On August 13, 2026, Chief Tanya Terry called the conduct intentional misconduct and recommended termination. He has not been publicly named because he has not been charged.

Chief Terry acknowledged that IMPD “had no regular practice of auditing officers' searches.” Twelve improper lookups a day, every day, for ten months, inside Indiana's largest police department — and it took outside journalists to notice. Nothing in Indiana law required IMPD to look, and nothing requires any other department to start.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department
Searches ran over roughly ten months, ending August 2026
How it came to light: Washington Post reporters, who brought it to IMPD
Sources (3)
  1. Chief recommends firing IMPD officer who misused license plate readers — WISH-TV I-Team, August 13, 2026
  2. Police departments weren't looking for officers abusing Flock. We did it for them. — The Washington Post (via The Spokesman-Review), August 19, 2026
  3. Chief recommends firing IMPD officer who misused license plate readers — WRTV Indianapolis, August 13, 2026
No discipline Wabash County · August 2026

A town council critic's plate was searched 63 times by police and deputies

63 searches of one man’s car in a year, by two different agencies

Bob Sklar is a North Manchester resident who regularly criticizes the town council and records police. After noticing a Flock camera, he sought the search records for his own plate and found 63 searches logged by North Manchester police and the Wabash County Sheriff's Office over roughly a year. The logged justifications included his own last name, “PATROL,” and “Locate” — the last used repeatedly by North Manchester Officer Griffen Miller.

What happened to the officer

Confronted on camera, Miller said “you're going to have to talk to somebody else about that.” The Wabash County Sheriff's Office said all searches were “for a legitimate law enforcement purpose — to ensure officer safety during traffic stops.” No discipline has been reported, and Sklar has never been charged with a crime.

This is the case Indiana's missing rules make impossible to resolve. Whether or not you accept the county's explanation, there is no mechanism in Indiana to test it: no statute requires an agency to justify a search after the fact, to have a supervisor approve one in advance, or to explain why a man who has never been charged with anything was looked up 63 times in a year.

North Manchester Police Department and Wabash County Sheriff's Office
Searches ran December 2024 – December 2025
How it came to light: Sklar himself, who requested the search records for his own plate
Sources (1)
  1. Flock alters system tracking transparency while shadow of alleged misuse cases expands — InvestigateTV (Gray Media), August 10, 2026

What these cases have in common

Four cases is a small number. It still repeats itself in the same four ways.

Nobody checks the reason

To pull up your location history, an officer types a reason into a box. Nothing verifies it. A Jackson County deputy is alleged to have typed the same one 2,055 times, for work he was never assigned.

Departments are not the ones noticing

1 of these 4 cases was caught by the police department. The rest came from reporters, a citizen's complaint, and a man who requested the records on his own car.

The people searched did nothing wrong

A wife. Personal acquaintances. A man whose offense was speaking at town council meetings. None of them was under investigation. All of them were tracked anyway.

The consequences are a coin flip

Similar conduct brought a felony charge in Jackson County, a firing recommendation in Indianapolis, a demotion in Porter County, and nothing at all in Wabash County. Each of those was a local judgment call.

Know about a case we are missing?

We would rather be corrected than be wrong. If you know of an Indiana case that is not listed here — or if something above is inaccurate or out of date — email Walker directly.

walker@eyesoffindiana.org

What helps most:

  • A link to a news story, court filing, police department statement, or public record.
  • The agency and county, and roughly when it happened.
  • Any documents you already have — an affidavit, an internal affairs summary, a records request response.

Think your own plate was searched? Write anyway. Start by looking it up on HaveIBeenFlocked.com — that is how the North Manchester case came to light — and we will help you work out which records to request from which department.

Indiana has no law about any of this

Every consequence on this page happened because a particular department or prosecutor decided to act. Nothing required them to, and nothing requires the next one. As of August 2026, no Indiana law:

  • limits how long your location data is kept
  • restricts what police may search that data for
  • requires anyone to review search records for misuse
  • creates a penalty for misusing the system
  • lets you find out whether your own plate was searched
  • makes a department tell the public when it finds misuse
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Common questions

No — it is every case anyone has found and published. No Indiana law requires a police department to check its own search records, and 3 of these 4 cases were uncovered by someone outside the department. The number here measures how often somebody looked, not how often it happened.

Sometimes. No Indiana law gives you that right, but where departments publish their search records you can look your plate up on HaveIBeenFlocked.com. You can also file an Indiana public records request with the department directly. That is how a North Manchester man discovered his plate had been searched 63 times. Email us and we will help you word the request.

Three things have to be true: an Indiana officer ran the searches, the person searched was not under investigation, and it is documented in a named public source we can link to — a news story, a court filing, or an official department statement. Nothing here rests on a rumor or on our own guess about someone's motive. We name an officer only where local reporting has named him and charges or confirmed discipline exist. Some of these cases are allegations that have not been decided in court, and each one says so.

We are for communities getting to decide. A town that wants no cameras should be able to have none. A town that keeps them should have real rules about how long data is kept, who can search it, and what happens when someone misuses it. Indiana currently guarantees neither.

Yes — please cite Eyes Off Indiana and link back. Every case here, with all the source links, is also available as a spreadsheet or JSON. If you are working on a story, email walker@eyesoffindiana.org and we will walk you through the underlying records.

Want the bigger picture? See every camera documented in Indiana on a map, the count in your county, or our data on how fast the network is growing. Last reviewed August 31, 2026.