When oversight fails
Tennessee misuse and misread cases
Supporters say “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.” Tennessee’s own record shows officers do misuse these databases — sometimes against intimate partners. In the documented cases linked below, misuse was often found by victims, internal affairs, or news reporting — not by vendor marketing tools.
Reading this section: Where someone was charged, pleaded, or sentenced, we say so and link sources. Where reporting describes an accusation or investigation without a final public disposition, we label it as an allegation or as attributed reporting — not as a finding of guilt by this site.
This is not only a Flock problem.
Most documented East Tennessee cases involve Flock because that is what agencies bought. The risk is the tool itself: a searchable log of where cars go, with weak rules on who can search. Cities that “quit Flock” and install Axon (or another plate reader) keep the same problem. See Not just Flock — Axon and company swaps.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee · 2025–2026 · Flock misuse · sentenced
Officer Zachary Gauthier — 18 Flock searches for personal use; pleaded guilty & sentenced on 23 counts
Former Oak Ridge Police Department officer Zachary D. Gauthier accessed the Flock ALPR system 18 times for personal use between February 25 and March 25, 2025, and also misused Accurint, the State Link System, and his patrol-car computer. He was placed on leave April 21, fired April 24, indicted July 1, 2025 on 23 counts of official misconduct (Class E felony), and pleaded guilty March 23, 2026.
Per court reporting (including Crossville-area 3B Media): he received a Range I two-year sentence on each count, with 48 hours to serve and the remainder suspended to supervised probation, plus judicial diversion eligibility after probation, POST certification surrender, a mental-health assessment, no-contact conditions, and court costs.
Flock’s product supports multi-agency search across East Tennessee agencies documented by MaryvillePrivacy.org. When agencies share plate data, misuse in one city can affect drivers whose plates were scanned in another. Crossville has not published which partners can query local reads — ask before treating network membership as proven for this city.
Sources:
Maryville Residents for Privacy ·
3B Media (sentence) ·
WATE / Yahoo (plea & sentence) ·
WBIR (indictment) ·
WBIR (plea) ·
WATE (indictment) ·
WVLT (indictment) ·
WVLT (plea)
· Catalogued as FLK-2025-027 in the
misuse master database.
Shelby County, Tennessee · ALPR misuse allegation
Deputy Thadius Gordon — accused of 100+ ALPR lookups of an ex-wife
According to Institute for Justice reporting, Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Thadius Gordon was accused of accessing county ALPR tracking databases more than 100 times to monitor his ex-wife without a law-enforcement purpose. He was relieved of duty and reportedly faced internal and criminal investigation. This site has not identified a final public case disposition. Primary local reporting describes SCSO plate databases; this site does not treat Gordon as a confirmed Flock-product case unless a primary source names Flock.
Source:
Institute for Justice — ALPR stalking report
· Catalogued as ALPR-2024-030 (not a confirmed Flock product case) in the
misuse master database.
Louisville, Kentucky · 2025 · Border-state Flock stalking pattern
Former LMPD officer Roberto Cedeno — charged after alleged Flock tracking of an ex and friends
This case is in Kentucky, not Tennessee. It shows the same kind of plate-reader / Flock access being used nearby. Former Louisville Metro Police officer Roberto Cedeno was indicted on multiple felonies (including stalking and unlawful computer access) after an internal investigation into “concerning behavior.” Institute for Justice and Courier Journal reporting describe alleged use of the city’s ALPR / Flock network to track an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times over roughly two months. He resigned before termination proceedings finished.
Sources:
Institute for Justice — ALPR stalking catalog (Cedeno) ·
Courier Journal — Cedeno charges / arrest ·
Courier Journal — Louisville Flock map / Cedeno IA files ·
WHAS11
Morristown, Tennessee · June 2025 · Flock misread / gunpoint stop · BI police-records reporting
Herron family — personalized plate LOVEY misread as stolen L0VEY
According to Business Insider reporting on police records, Morristown officers received a Flock alert on JC and Carolyn Herron’s nurse plate LOVEY (letter O), matched to a stolen Ford F-150 plate L0VEY (zero). Guns were drawn; adults were handcuffed; their 3-year-old granddaughter was left alone in the vehicle until the mismatch was sorted out. BI also describes a Flock investigative summary provided to officers that included a photo of the Herrons’ Expedition with the plate recorded using a zero.
Local WATE coverage (Yahoo News republish) describes the same gunpoint stop and O/0 mix-up; that account focuses on the stolen-tag / crime-information-database mismatch and does not name the ALPR vendor. Morristown separately approved Flock LPRs in Sept. 2024 local reporting — so the city runs Flock, and BI’s police-records reporting is what names Flock for this specific stop.
Sources:
Business Insider — Flock misreads (names Flock alert / investigative summary) ·
WATE / Yahoo — Herron stop (local account) ·
Institute for Justice — ALPR error detentions ·
WBIR — Morristown approves Flock LPRs
· Also summarized in the
City Council liability brief.
What Tennessee has — and has not — shown so far:
Tennessee has not yet paid a settlement like Aurora’s Gilliam case ($1.9M) or San Francisco’s Denise Green case ($495k) — both are documented ALPR wrongful-stop cases, not Flock-branded products. Tennessee has documented felony personal use of Flock in Oak Ridge, a reported Flock misread gunpoint stop in Morristown (Business Insider police-records reporting), and a nearby alleged stalking pattern in Louisville involving ALPR/Flock access. Large ALPR settlements elsewhere show what cities can face when plate-reader programs run without clear rules.
Wider pattern (outside Tennessee)
Other states have documented Flock false alerts, stalking allegations, and high-risk stops — plus dozens of cities that cancelled or let contracts expire. Browse the full catalog on National cases.
Browse National cases →
Case databases
Tennessee cases above (Oak Ridge, Shelby, Morristown) and the nearby Louisville case are what matter most for local council. Crossville still has not published who can query local plate reads.
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Crossville
