Smith Collection/gado/Getty Images Add Jalopnik on Google: Google Discover There are always a few (or more than a few) bad apples among the police. A Massachusetts woman went as far as changing her identity after leaving an abusive relationship with one, only to find that he tracked her down anyway using Flock cameras, reports Boston 25 News. The woman, whose identity has not been revealed for reasons that will become clear, was in a relationship with Officer Jason Rogers of the Stow Police Department. She ended the relationship with him five years ago. "This was an abusive relationship that I had fled and changed my identity," she told Boston 25 News. "I had moved, changed my phone number, blocked his number and I'm not really active on social media." Recently, she ran her license plate through Have I Been Flocked?, a website that can tell you if your plate has searched through Flock's system. She discovered multiple searches between 2024 and 2025 through the Stow Police Department, presumably by Rogers. Stalking is bad enough when ordinary people do it, but police access to Flock cameras elevate the creep factor exponentially, letting the system do the stalking for them. Criminal charges filed Stow Police Department / Facebook To its credit, the Stow Police Department acted swiftly and decisively in the face of these accusations. The Lowell Sun reports that the victim filed a complaint on June 18. Within three hours, Rogers was placed on paid administrative leave while his actions were investigated. His access to department systems was also revoked. Rather than protecting his own, as we've seen other departments do many times before, Chief Michael Sallese began an internal affairs investigation into the acting sergeant. It confirmed Rogers' improper use of Flock as the victim suspected. From the Sun: Police said that the internal affairs investigation sustained findings of conduct unbecoming of an officer, improper use of an official position, failure to comply with written orders, use of false and unsubstantiated search reasons, and violations of department policies surrounding law enforcement databases. The investigation also revealed that he had run searches on her through the state's Criminal Offender Record Information at least five times, and searched for her vehicle information through Criminal Justice Information Services multiple times. Accessing this information without a legitimate law enforcement reason also violates state law, and a criminal investigation is now underway. Rogers' administrative leave was changed from paid to unpaid as of July 31, and a Select Board meeting about his employment status is scheduled for August 26. Additionally, Chief Sallese has sent the department's internal affairs report to the to the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission to re-evaluate Rogers' certification as a police officer. The Town of Stow has canceled its contract with Flock and taken down cameras in the small Boston suburb. This is exactly how police departments should treat improper use of its systems. No one should have to worry about exes looking them up, tracking their movements, or showing up at their home because they have access to this type of privileged information. It's worth noting that while the internal affairs report found that Rogers violated several department policies by misusing Flock systems, his criminal charges are only for accessing state databases improperly, not Flock's. Those are the laws currently on the books, which have not kept up with the explosive growth of privately owned surveillance networks. Perhaps if the same legal safeguards against misuse of police systems were put on Flock's location data, fewer cops would misuse it.
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