Officers ARRESTED After Using Flock Reader System to Search Woman 300 Times

Police officers secure a residential street with patrol cars and yellow tape — Photo: Steve Sanchez Photos / Shutterstock

A Florida deputy pulled up a teenage girl’s personal records so many times he started calling her his “queen” in texts to coworkers, and another deputy ran a woman’s license plate through police cameras more than 300 times while chasing a date.

Quick Take

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced the arrests of two former deputies, Travis Stanton and Karl Gwynne, for misusing restricted law enforcement databases.
Stanton, 33, is accused of repeatedly searching a 17-year-old girl and her family after she reported him online.
Gwynne, 57, allegedly queried a woman he wanted to date 381 times across five databases, including an automated license plate reader (ALPR) system called Flock.
Both men resigned before their arrests on felony charges including official misconduct and unauthorized computer access.

What The Sheriff Says Happened

Sheriff Gualtieri said the investigation into Stanton began after a 17-year-old girl filed an online complaint against him in August 2026. He said Stanton “ran the victim and the victim’s family through multiple databases to find out more information” about them, using his patrol car computer to pull state vehicle and criminal history records. Investigators later found he searched her information again at her high school.

Gualtieri said Stanton told supervisors he had no official reason for the searches, admitting that “curiosity got the better of him”. He had reportedly entered a code claiming he was “verifying an identity,” but the sheriff said the queries had nothing to do with police work. Two other deputies told investigators Stanton repeatedly called the teen his “queen”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvDiPYpCQCI

Stanton resigned before deputies took him into custody. He now faces charges of accessing a computer or electronic device without authority and official misconduct, both felonies under Florida law. He had been working as a community policing deputy for the City of Seminole at the time of the alleged searches.

A Second Deputy And Hundreds Of Searches

The second case involves Karl Gwynne, a 57-year-old deputy accused of obsessively tracking a woman he was interested in dating. An internal audit found he queried her information 381 times across five separate law enforcement databases between January 2025 and July 2026. More than 200 of those searches happened while he was off duty, according to Fox 13 News.

Investigators say Gwynne also used the Flock automated license plate reader system, a network of cameras that logs vehicle tags for police, to track the woman’s location roughly 300 times. When supervisors confronted him, he claimed it was “official use,” but the sheriff’s office determined the searches stemmed from personal interest, not police business.

Why This Keeps Happening Across The Country

Pinellas County is not an isolated case. The Associated Press previously found more than 325 officers nationwide were fired, suspended, or pushed out over three years for misusing confidential databases, many to check on exes or romantic interests. A Minnesota audit years earlier found over half of 11,000 officers with database access made searches that looked questionable. The pattern points to a systemic gap in oversight, not a few bad actors.

License plate readers like Flock raise the stakes because they track physical movement, not just paperwork. Policy researchers have called for mandatory logging, individual user identification, and required case codes explaining every search, arguing that access without accountability invites exactly this kind of abuse. Florida’s own transportation agency has already flagged concerns about camera misuse and ordered some units removed from state roads.

Accountability Matters More Than The Technology

Conservatives who support strong policing tools, including license plate cameras, should also demand strict guardrails on who touches them and why. Gualtieri said the agency is tightening scrutiny of database searches following these arrests, which is the right response. Tools built to protect the public lose public trust fast when officers turn them into personal surveillance for dating prospects or teenage girls who reported them.

Both men resigned before facing charges, and the cases now move to the courts. An arrest is an allegation, not a conviction, and both deputies are entitled to due process. But the sheriff’s own account, backed by audit logs showing hundreds of unauthorized queries, paints a troubling picture of what unchecked database access can allow inside a police agency.

Pinellas County residents trusted these deputies with badges and database access meant to protect them, not to stalk them. The sheriff’s swift public accounting of both cases suggests the agency understands the damage this does to that trust, and that real consequences, not just policy memos, are the only way to rebuild it.