Indiana town cancels Flock Safety contract after resident says police tracked his vehicle

Share Add Us On Google Add as a preferred source on Google What you’ll learn in this report: Why an Indiana town voted to cancel its contract with Atlanta-based Flock Safety. What Atlanta News First Investigates Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe’s reporting revealed about searches for resident Bob Sklar’s license plate. How Flock Safety explains changes to its audit logs and why public records advocates are concerned. ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — An Indiana town has voted to cancel its contract with Atlanta-based Flock Safety after a resident who says police tracked his vehicle raised concerns about the town’s automated license plate readers. The North Manchester Town Council voted Nov. 4, 2026, to end its agreement for three Flock cameras. The vote follows an Atlanta News First Investigates report about North Manchester resident Bob Sklar, a frequent critic of local government who discovered police had searched for his license plate dozens of times in Flock’s database. “For over a year, when I raised concerns about how these cameras were being used, the town ignored me,” Sklar said following the vote. “They claimed records were shielded for ‘officer safety.’” Sklar criticized what he described as a lack of written rules and oversight governing the cameras, saying the vote should prompt other communities to examine how their systems are used. “This vote isn’t just about ending a contract in North Manchester, it’s a warning shot for towns across Indiana,” he said. Sklar has spoken at town council meetings, recorded police officers conducting traffic stops and publicly questioned the police department’s budget and conduct. During the Nov. 4, 2026, town council meeting, one city official apologized to the chief of police for not asking Sklar to leave the meeting after he allegedly “chose to get into Chief Birch’s personal space twice from my vantage point, in what I would consider a threatening manner” but did not ask Sklar to leave. (Editor’s note: The comments referenced here begin at the 25:08 mark.) “I did not pull the trigger and ask him to leave,” the official said. “I apologize. That will not happen again. I speak to everyone in this room, and everyone listening on YouTube. If you harass an employee or any person in this room during a meeting, I will, with prejudice, ask you to leave. That will never happen again.” Sklar previously told Atlanta News First Investigates he began to notice an officer appearing wherever he went. After seeing a Flock camera, he wondered whether officers were using the system to track his vehicle. Sklar requested records from the police department. He said the town acknowledged an alert had been placed on his vehicle but declined to identify the officer responsible, citing officer safety. He later searched his license plate on HaveIBeenFlocked.com , a website that aggregates search records obtained from law enforcement agencies, journalists and other sources. The site showed 63 searches of his plate from December 2024 through the end of 2025 by officers with the North Manchester Police Department and the Wabash County Sheriff’s Office. InvestigateTV independently confirmed dozens of those searches through public records obtained from out-of-state agencies whose audit logs were available publicly or through records requests. Some searches covered periods going back 30 days from the date of the query. Flock requires officers to enter a reason for each search. The reasons recorded for searches of Sklar’s plate included his last name, “PATROL” and “Locate.” “I was shocked, emotionally distraught when I saw the level of surveillance that that data revealed,” he said at the time. The Wabash County Sheriff’s Office previously said its searches of Sklar’s license plate were for a legitimate law enforcement purpose: “to ensure officer safety during traffic stops.” InvestigateTV requested interviews with a North Manchester officer and the police chief, but neither agreed, and the department had not provided additional comment when the earlier report was published. Sklar said making the audit logs public helped residents understand how the technology was being used. “Canceling this contract proves that ‘trust us’ is not a legal or moral substitute for real policy and public oversight,” he said. Flock’s cameras capture license plates, and agencies connected to its network can search data collected by other participating agencies. The company says the technology helps law enforcement investigate crimes and maintains that searches are logged and audited. Atlanta News First Investigates previously identified at least 19 cases in a single year in which Georgia officers faced disciplinary action or criminal charges for allegedly using Flock’s database for improper personal searches, including searches involving former romantic partners. Concerns about the technology also reached Capitol Hill in September, when a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on Flock’s nationwide surveillance network. Public records advocates have questioned changes to Flock’s network audit logs that removed searching officers’ names, the license plates queried and open-text search reasons from logs available to agencies sharing their camera data. Flock previously told Atlanta News First Investigates the information remains with the agency that originated a search. The company said it made the changes at the request of customer agencies to protect officer safety and active investigations. “Nearly 200 law enforcement leaders raised this concern directly with our leadership, and we acted on it,” a Flock spokesperson said in an earlier statement. Sklar said the North Manchester vote shows why communities should scrutinize who can access the systems and how they are governed. “Your work didn’t just expose what happened to me in North Manchester, it brought awareness to a secret surveillance system, and gave communities across the entire country a blueprint for auditing Flock cameras and demanding real accountability,” he said, referring to the reporting. Download our Atlanta News First app for your latest news and information. If there’s something you would like Atlanta News First Investigates to dig into, fill out this submission form . Copyright 2026 WANF. All rights reserved.