Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin did not wait for a complaint. After watching plate camera misuse surface in other Ohio agencies, he ordered an audit of his own office’s Flock access, and the review found Deputy Robert Tischler querying the system outside his assigned duties. He received 30 days without pay, lost his patrol assignment, and can no longer log in.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that the technology entrusted to this Office is used appropriately, responsibly, and solely for legitimate law enforcement purposes,” Baldwin said in the announcement.
The fix was administrative rather than technical. Each division now names a major who controls who may reach plate data and conducts recurring audits. The sheriff’s office runs no stationary roadside cameras of its own, so its exposure sits in whatever network its deputies can query.
That is the awkward part of the model. Access controls in a plate network are only as strong as the log review behind them, and most agencies inherited both from a vendor rather than designing them. County officials said the audit was proactive, not triggered by an outside tip.
Central Ohio has become a test case. Two Reynoldsburg officers resigned over possible misuse, one after searching the same plate 53 times in six months. Cleveland’s school district cancelled its contract and suspended 201 cameras after an audit counted 141,032 network searches in June alone. State law keeps plate images out of public records while setting no statewide rule for who may search them.
