{"id":415671,"date":"2026-10-01T12:34:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415671\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T12:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:34:29","slug":"pinellas-sheriff-arrests-two-deputies-after-tcpalm-reporter-sends-flock-inquires-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415671\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinellas sheriff arrests two deputies after TCPalm reporter sends Flock inquires"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AA screengrab from a Sept. 28, 2026 press conference led by Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. Credit: Pinellas Sheriff \/ YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n

The Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office has arrested two deputies after identifying misuse of automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The agency didn\u2019t catch it until a Florida reporter started asking questions.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 2, Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters at a press conference there were no current investigations into abuse of the Flock database\u2014one brand of ALPR\u2014by deputies. Days earlier on Aug. 20, TCPalm reporter Jack Lemnus asked about an anomaly he found in publicly-accessible logs<\/a> that show limited information about Flock camera searches by law enforcement officers.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 21, PCSO told Lemnus that the anomaly was \u201crelated to ongoing investigations, and all queries were valid.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a press release Wednesday morning, PCSO said Gualtieri would hold a press conference about the arrest of two deputies for \u201cimproperly accessing sheriff\u2019s office systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s office separately sent an email to Lemnus.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of your original inquiry and after further research into our additional ALPR vendors, we did identify a misuse,\u201d the email reads.<\/p>\n

Pinellas isn\u2019t the first agency to arrest deputies after Lemnus\u2019 queries.<\/p>\n

Over the last several months, dozens of law enforcement officers have been arrested, fired, put on leave or placed under investigation after Lemnus probed publicly-accessible Flock search logs.<\/a> Many of those officers are accused of using Flock cameras to stalk ex-lovers.<\/p>\n

Lemnus and his colleagues reached out to police departments, alerting them of concerning patterns they found in the publicly-accessible data\u2014which represent only a fraction of the audit logs police departments can access.<\/p>\n

Many of the departments were surprised and had not previously caught the abuse.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, CL interviewed Lemnus about his investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, all of the agencies that we reached out to had no idea that this abuse was going on,\u201d Lemnus told CL. \u201cWe ran our own data analysis and we found users that had kind of abnormal or suspicious search patterns, you know, searching a single plate hundreds or thousands of times within a year or so. That kind of fits that pattern of the officers who use it to surveil their ex-romantic partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that there were two main mechanisms by which abuse in an agency can be caught: law enforcement agencies policing themselves, or external auditors like reporters reviewing logs that are publicly available.<\/p>\n

Flock encourages organizations to make some of their audit logs public in the interest of transparency, but PCSO doesn\u2019t do that. Lemnus said that this, combined with a new Flock policy that redacts officer names and license plates, makes it basically impossible to do more investigations like his.<\/p>\n

Lemnus said he was alarmed to discover that these agencies hadn\u2019t already caught the issues. \u201cOur reporting has shown that in the past, these law enforcement agencies have not been capable of policing themselves when it comes to looking for abnormal or suspicious users,\u201d Lemnus said.<\/p>\n

No information about the officers was provided before Wednesday\u2019s 1 p.m. press conference.<\/p>\n

At the press conference, Gualtieri announced the arrest of deputies Travis Stanton and Karl Gwynne. <\/p>\n

Stanton was accused of inappropriate conduct towards a 17-year-old high school student. He allegedly told the girl that he got a \u201chit\u201d for her drivers license in the ALPR database, which the sheriff said did not actually happen.<\/p>\n

Gwynne was accused of searching around 300 times for a love interest in the sheriff\u2019s database that searches across all ALPR brands the agency uses, including Flock.<\/p>\n

Gualtieri previously said ALPRs cannot track people. When asked why Gwynne was interested in the ALPR results, Gualtieri said he was simply interested in pictures of the back of the woman\u2019s car.<\/p>\n

UPDATED 09\/30\/2026 2:36 P.M.: Updated to include information about deputies arrested<\/p>\n

Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow us:\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n

This article appears in Sept. 24 \u2013 30, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

\t