Ohio grand jury clears man who dismantled a Flock license plate camera

A Clermont County grand jury declined to indict Cody Morelock, whom Union Township police had charged with felony vandalism for allegedly taking apart a Flock automatic license plate reader—camera, pole, and solar panel—in a Cincinnati suburb in June. Investigators had tracked him down using nearby surveillance footage plus credit card and rewards-account records, and pegged the damage at over $1,000. He posted a $10,000 bond after his arrest; with the grand jury’s refusal to indict, the charges were dropped.

The non-indictment lands amid a widening revolt against Flock, whose cameras log the plate numbers and physical characteristics of passing vehicles into a central database that police in other cities and states can query. Vandalism of the devices has spread nationally—someone recently cut down and stole all eight of Winona, Minnesota’s readers—and online organizers are pushing a ‘De-Flock America Night’ urging people to disable or cover the cameras on Halloween.

The backlash has sharpened as officers face mounting accusations of misusing the system, frequently to track romantic interests; the Institute for Justice counted more than 100 abuse cases by mid-August. Flock has rolled out new anti-misuse safeguards, but the EFF dismisses them as largely cosmetic and argues that searching plate-reader data should require a warrant.