Savannah mayor, police chief feel ‘betrayed’ after 6 employees placed on leave for Flock camera misuse

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Savannah police placed six employees on administrative leave Friday after an internal audit found misuse of the department’s Flock camera system.

The employees include four officers and two civilians. The Savannah Police Department said they are accused of running searches unrelated to law enforcement, including searches on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer is also accused of giving an outside agency unauthorized access to the system.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Savannah Police investigating 6 employees over alleged misuse of license plate reader system

City officials defend Flock cameras

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, Police Chief Lenny Gunther and City Manager Jay Melder gathered Monday to address the findings and reaffirm their support for the camera program.

“To be honest I’m disappointed, I’m totally pissed off about it,” Johnson said.

Johnson pointed to last week’s Fellwood Park shooting as an example of the technology’s value, saying Flock cameras helped officers apprehend suspects in the case.

“Without that you have 17, 18, 19-year-olds with guns out here on these streets,” Johnson said. “The difference is you have five individuals in custody.”

How the misuse was detected

SPD’s automatic audit-assist tool flagged 127 of the department’s approximately 39,000 Flock searches this year. Officers manually reviewed every flagged alert, which led to the identification of potential misuse by the six staff members. SPD deemed 34 of those searches unjustified.

“They manually went through every single alert, and it came to the potential misuse by those six staff members,” Gunther said.

The audit-assist tool uses 10 items to generate red flags, including high search volume and manual plate lookups.

What comes next

City Manager Jay Melder acknowledged the damage to public trust.

“It doesn’t help that conversation when members of our team breach that public trust, whether it’s a big breach or a small knucklehead breach,” Melder said.

Johnson said the benefits of the technology outweigh the actions of a few.

“Given the sheer numbers of this, the benefit to the technology, leveraging the technology, far outweigh the few individuals who did not make the right choices,” Johnson said.

Gunther said he is working to add a formal policy governing Flock camera usage. The audit-assist tool will also conduct weekly inspections going forward to identify potential misuse earlier.

The names and positions of each employee involved have not been released. The outside organization that received unauthorized access to an SPD Flock account has also not been identified.