Lufkin, Texas: a police officer is sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to 100 counts of misuse of official information for searching the department's Flock license-plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend, her family and people she dated between mid-2024 and December 2025

KTRE (26 August 2026) reports a Texas Ranger's arrest affidavit: a Lufkin Police Department officer used the department's Flock license-plate-reader system more than 10,000 times to track an ex-girlfriend, her family members and people she had relationships with. The department received a public information request on 14 August 2026 about his Flock use, audited his searches, found them inconsistent with criminal investigations and referred them to the Texas Rangers. According to the affidavit, his duties were mainly crash investigations, the searches were run from a mobile phone at nearly all hours, and the suspected unauthorized searches ranged from June 2024 to December 2025. Her plate had been searched more than 10,000 times. She told investigators that he had been obsessed with the idea she was cheating, that he received Flock alerts on his phone, and that he had once threatened to find and kill someone she had a prior relationship with; the affidavit says he had searched that person's plate. Two of her family members and two men linked to her confirmed that vehicles searched were theirs, and the affidavit says a vehicle driven by another woman who had a relationship with the officer in early 2025 was also searched. On 30 September 2026 he pleaded guilty to 100 counts of misuse of official information and was sentenced to five years in prison (KTRE, citing District Attorney Amy Wren). The Lufkin Daily News (1 October) cites the judgment of conviction and the indictment, which alleged he located vehicles belonging to 11 people on dozens of occasions from July 2024 through December 2025. The DA's office says the Rangers found more than 25,000 non-law-enforcement inquiries, about 18,000 of them on plates associated with three people, and that interviews showed coercive control in the previous dating relationship which continued after it ended through his use of Flock and other law-enforcement databases. The DA said prosecutors moved quickly out of concern for the victims' safety. Audits of about 130 Lufkin police officers and Angelina County deputies found no other misuse. Only the Flock searches are treated as the AI component; the other databases are not.

Prosecutors say a Lufkin police officer used the department's Flock license-plate readers and other police databases to track his former girlfriend, her family and people she dated for about 18 months, continuing coercive control after their relationship ended; he pleaded guilty to 100 counts of misuse of official information and agreed to a lifetime protective order for her (Angelina County District Attorney, as reported by KTRE and the Lufkin Daily News).

Arrested by the Texas Rangers and booked on 20 August 2026; indicted by an Angelina County grand jury on 21 August on 100 felony counts. On 30 September 2026 he pleaded guilty in the 159th District Court to 100 counts of misuse of official information, third-degree felonies, and was sentenced to five years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with 42 days of credit; he agreed to a lifetime protective order for his former dating partner on the basis of stalking, and the state agreed not to pursue stalking charges (KTRE, Lufkin Daily News, Tyler Morning Telegraph). The Lufkin Police Department suspended its Flock cameras; the suspension remains in place.