The Madison County sheriff’s office is no longer using Flock cameras, the office announced in a Facebook post Tuesday.
They said they ended their relationship with Flock Safety in September.
Flock cameras have been used in Madison County for a couple of years now as an investigative tool to read license plates. The sheriff’s office decided the benefits were not worth the financial cost.
The cameras are still in place but are not in use or taking photographs. They’ll be removed over the coming weeks, according to the post.
Using Flock cameras to police traffic and track down license plates has become commonplace across the state over the past year or so. But that has come with public scrutiny.
Last month, Georgia Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock spoke about preventing misuse of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) across the country. He and Alabama senator Katie Britt have been urging the Department of Justice to have better guidelines for ALPR usage.
“Georgians want to be safe in their communities,” Warnock said in a press conference. “Yes, they want to be safe from crime, but they also want to be safe from stalking and harassment. They shouldn’t have to choose one or the other. With the right guardrails, we can achieve both.”
In Athens alone, there have been multiple police officers fired for misusing the Flock equipment. Earlier this month, an Athens-Clarke County civilian employee was fired for using the Flock system to search his ex-girlfriend’s license plate several times over a week in 2025. This was the second such case since August.
A University of Georgia Police Department IT employee was placed on administrative leave after misusing the Flock safety system 85 times without authorization in September. The employee was later suspended without pay for 20 days and demoted.
