Five Indianapolis police officers now face fraud and official misconduct charges after an internal audit found they used the city’s 301 Flock plate readers to follow ex-partners, spouses and strangers instead of suspects.
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears announced the filings on September 23. Each fraud count maps to a single license plate searched, so an officer who ran one plate hundreds of times carries one charge for it. Jonathan Schultz drew 26 counts, including stalking; investigators say he searched a woman’s car 300 times and another’s 218 times, then appeared where they were.
Chief Tanya Terry said an officer’s self-report started the audit. Police suspended four officers, recommended Schultz for firing and revoked their camera access. One officer resigned. Terry said IMPD will not reduce its camera count, and the department has widened its internal auditing.
A second case stretched the damage further. Hancock County Deputy James Heneghan faces 441 counts over 6,190 searches logged between December 2024 and March 2026, only about 40 of them on duty. Investigators say he ran more than 1,100 searches on his wife’s car and accounted for about 70 percent of his department’s Flock search volume.
Mears called the filings “just the beginning.” The Indianapolis City-County Council is studying how other cities govern the technology, and the prosecutor credited Washington Post reporting with prompting some of the inquiries.
