Florida officer charged with running his estranged wife's plate through Flock 717 times
A surveillance network sold as a tool against car theft was allegedly used by one officer to follow one woman, 717 times.
The charges
Christopher Goodson, 31, of the Haines City Police Department in Florida was arrested this week on charges of official misconduct and computer offenses. Investigators say that between September 1, 2024 and June 30, 2026 he entered his estranged wife’s license plate into the Flock database 717 times, including 280 times in September 2025 alone. The searches were made with a department-issued laptop and phone, both on and off duty.
Authorities say she was not part of any criminal investigation and her car was not linked to any crime. Goodson has been charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent.
A public archive of the logs
Separately, the site HaveIBeenFlocked.com launched with a searchable archive of publicly obtained Flock audit logs covering nearly 242 million searches of more than 4.6 million plates between December 2021 and July 2026. A driver can look up their own plate and see whether, and how often, it was queried.
The logs are incomplete and often redacted, and the site says it does not store what visitors type. Flock operates more than 120,000 cameras and connected devices, so even a large public archive covers only part of the system’s activity.
The individual with a login
Automated license plate readers are usually debated as a policy question about mass surveillance: how long data is kept, who can access it, whether it should exist at all. This case is smaller and sharper. The risk it illustrates is not only the system in aggregate but every individual with a login and a personal motive. A network built to find stolen cars can, according to the charges, be pointed at one specific person’s daily movements for nearly two years, from a police-issued phone, without her car ever being tied to a crime.
That is also why the audit logs matter more than the cameras. A search that leaves a record is the only part of this system a member of the public can actually inspect, and a count as precise as 717 is the kind of figure only a logged system produces. The open questions are how many departments review their own Flock logs proactively, and whether public archives like HaveIBeenFlocked will change that. For now, a database is only as private as the least accountable person holding a password to it.
Sources
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