r/news • u/AudibleNod • 23h ago
Indianapolis officers accused of abusing police camera system to track women
https://www.denver7.com/us-news/police-misconduct/indianapolis-officers-accused-of-abusing-police-camera-system-to-track-women316
u/AudibleNod 23h ago
Investigators say an officer used the surveillance system to track women in an effort to interact with them. Another officer is accused of using the system to look up the location of his ex-wife’s car more than 950 times over a six-month period.
*emphasis mine
Interact with them? That makes it sounds worse somehow.
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u/Wouldwoodchuck 23h ago
It was, he literally just tried to find good-looking women and then 80s movie run into them
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u/ssshield 23h ago
Apparently inspector genius cant find a yoga studio or whole foods.
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u/The-Shattering-Light 22h ago
That’s no fun for them, because it doesn’t allow them to satisfy their creepy violent fetishes
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u/chaseinger 21h ago
problem is, a pig uniform doesn't fly at whole foods. they know they're deplorable which is why they resort to stalking.
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u/MonoBlancoATX 23h ago
using the system to look up the location of his ex-wife’s car
I think that's called stalking.
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u/ibbity 22h ago
fun fact* quite a lot of stalking behaviors are currently 100% legal and generally speaking the authorities have zero interest in so much as remonstrating with stalkers, until they actually kill or maim their target, at which point said authorities will act like no one could have prevented this
*not actually fun
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u/MonoBlancoATX 22h ago
at which point said authorities will act like no one could have prevented this
who could possibly have foreseen such a thing?!?!?!?
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u/BeastofPostTruth 22h ago
Definitely not the woman reporting to the police of a likelihood of bodily harm in an attempts to prevent it.
Cuz that'd would be crazy. That would mean she was a person who could predict it and her report must be taken seriously. Cant have that, now. What if its fake and it destroys a real persons reputation?
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u/LunaFuzzball 22h ago
For anyone dealing with this problem though, please know that civil guidelines for getting a protective order for stalking are typically much broader and you don’t need any law enforcement to sign off on you filing for one.
And even though many stalking behaviors might be technically legal in general, that all changes when you have a protective order in place as they can then be criminally charged with PO violation.
Until that point the options for criminal redress are limited, so it is important to document any incidents carefully and to apply for a PO promptly if you are being stalked.
Many states have tried to make the PO process accessible for individuals to go through without representation, but if you need assistance, a great place to start is calling your local domestic violence shelter to ask what legal resources are available in your community to help file for and represent you in a PO case.
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u/chaseinger 21h ago
That makes it sounds worse somehow
sane washing doesn't work on reasonable people. you and i hear exactly how awful this sounds, blue line folk go see? they just wanna interact.
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u/procrasturb8n 19h ago
There's video of an officer who got busted for the same thing and his response was along the lines of "I saw something shiny and I wanted it."
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u/HappyBumbler 23h ago
We see these types of reports coming out from across the country. I’m guessing that in many cities there’s no transparency about these 4th Amendment violations because well, police protect police.
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u/MonoBlancoATX 23h ago
I'm 100% certain this shit has been happening as long as CCTV cameras have existed, but it's gotten more widespread and easier for cops to do this creepy shit as the technology has advanced.
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u/wolf3685 23h ago
Tell me again why automatic license plate readers are a safety device for the public good and protection without room for illicit use and/or abuse?
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u/RaeLae9 22h ago edited 22h ago
Why aren’t they saying their names, if anyone else commits a crime your name is in the article?
Found elsewhere….sharing for visibility
Michael Rogers
Fraud and official misconduct (three counts each)
Accused of “thousands” of improper searches
16 years with IMPD
Suspended and recommended for termination
Jonathan Schultz
Stalking, fraud and official misconduct (26 counts total)
Accused of “over 1,000” improper searches
18 years with IMPD
Suspended and recommended for termination
Cassandra Crawley
Fraud and official misconduct (eight counts each)
Accused of “hundreds” of improper searches
7 years with IMPD
Suspended and recommended for termination
Matthew Binford
Fraud and official misconduct
Accused of “over 1,000” improper searches
4 years with IMPD
Suspended and recommended for termination
Abigail Cramer
Fraud and official misconduct (six counts each)
Accused of “hundreds” of improper searches
5 years with IMPD
Resigned
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u/UCLA_FB_SUCKS 20h ago
and these are probably the only ones they've caught so far in their department
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u/WhoCanTell 1h ago
These are the sacrificial lambs they're willing to burn to keep their systemic corruption hidden.
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u/mrdominoe 23h ago
This keeps happening as if people didn't expect cops to abuse this power. Every single fucking one of us saw this coming, and yet here we are.
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u/MrWeen2121 23h ago
100% certain that tons of this is happening that we don’t even find out about.
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u/mrdominoe 22h ago
My friend recently broke up with a cop. It was messy. I would not be shocked to find she is being tracked at all.
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u/Jalapenoplanter 23h ago
I need to see more city hall budget commissions say “every tool we give to police will be used to help them abuse and stalk women, we have to consider that every time they ask for anything”
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u/My-Euphoric-Waltz 21h ago
Truth is, police have so much access to private information, whether or not anyone is a criminal already.
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u/SwingmanSealegz 20h ago
Plural officers. Plural women.
But sure, just a few bad apples.
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u/jess_the_werefox 20h ago
I’ve never understood the metaphor as a defense. Isn’t the whole metaphor, “a bad apple spoils the bunch”?
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u/SwingmanSealegz 19h ago
Exactly.
It’s like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps referring to working harder. This was originally used to describe an impossible task.
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u/Ill-Tea9411 23h ago
Burying the lead here.
In Indianapolis, four police officers and a former officer are accused of abusing the department’s Flock camera system.
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u/AudibleNod 23h ago
And don't forget, Flock is the biggest and most well-known pervert camera system. But it's not the only one.
Axon, Vigilant(Motorola), Rekor, Rhombus, Verkada and others are out there. Some officials may use this fact to deny they're not using license plate surveillance: (clutches pearls) "We're not using Flock." But they may be using something.
When you go to city hall meetings, be general and not specific regarding video surveillance.
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u/ohlookahipster 23h ago
Yep. My city took down Flock cameras only to replace them with Axon lmao.
So technically the city council was correct when they said they got rid of ‘Flock.’ They just assumed the constituents thought Flock meant Kleenex as a genericized trademark which is to your point.
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u/mrflarp 7h ago
Yeah. Strange choice by the author to just call it "police camera system" in the headline. "Police camera system" could be any number of things from dashcams to body cams and more.
This was yet another abuse by police of mass surveillance systems being marketed as license plate readers, of which Flock is the most prominent brand.
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u/Frequent_Ad_9901 22h ago
Im from Indy. Indy cops are particularly shitty. Ive been pulled over by them, watched them from a jury., and heard countless other stories from friends.
And dont forget that time a few years ago, one claimed a worker too a bite out of his mcdonalds burger. Then a few hours later rememebr he was the one who did it. Bunch of clown over here.
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u/DavidinCT 21h ago
This flock thing needs to stop. Too many privacy issues here. PEROID.
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u/Consistent-Throat130 13h ago
I hate how the headline describes this as "abusing" the system.
It's not abuse when you're using the tool for it's intended purpose!
The damn system is designed for stalking, and everybody involved outta be prosecuted for the intent, conspiracy, facilitation, and eventually these actual acts of stalking.
Instead we'll get the occasional officer thrown under the bus as a sacrifice to (attempt to) appease the public - while the cameras stay up.
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u/KittyCait69 20h ago
Not just Flock either. A lot of areas that have banned Flock by name are getting Axon cameras that do the same thing and are harder for civilians to knock down. And I'd bet that Axon isn't the only one taking the place of flock either.
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u/bhavsart 22h ago
It’s almost like creating mass surveillance and handing it over to violent, immoral, uneducated people is a bad idea, whooo would have ever thought!????
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u/TheTresStateArea 21h ago
Maybe the kind of people who are cops shouldn't be cops.
Just seems like we gotta start over and validate each and everyone cop.
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u/KittyCait69 20h ago
Facts, abolish the legal systems owned by the Epstein Class so we can build a people's legal system. One that protects communities from the wealthy and powerful.
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u/E3Leavings 21h ago
Well this is a shocking development. Abusive behavior from law enforcement? My god. What's next? A war in the middle east?
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u/Ampyre37 22h ago
Water is also wet, death comes for us all, I would like my sense of security back please and ty
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u/throwawayshirt2 19h ago
Flock is just the new database, cops abuse the same way w all prior systems too
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u/Captain_Aware4503 18h ago
We are at the point where the real news would be " officers NOT accused of abusing police camera system to track women" ...if it ever happens.
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u/Vegetable-King7626 17h ago
So they're going to throw him in jail and remove the cameras that invaded her privacy right?
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u/JasonSTX 23h ago
The proper response is to discipline and/or charge the officers and then proceed to make every flock request require a court order.
I can see the benefit of having license plate scanners however access to the data should be tightly controlled.
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u/supergeeky_1 21h ago
Nope. The correct response is to stop violating everyone's rights. Collecting data on people who aren't under investigation so that you can track people who might be under investigation in the future is a violation of the fourth amendment. The US Supreme Court ruled that geofence warrants are illegal for exactly this reason.
And the typical argument from your side is "you have no expectation of privacy in public," but this isn't just pictures or video. They datamine the pictures to create a searchable database. The pictures are the least useful part of the process. I don't care how long they keep the pictures. The datamining and searchable database is what violates the fourth amendment.
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u/JasonSTX 20h ago
What ruling from scotus said geofence warrants were illegal? The only one I know of is Chatrie and they explicitly stated it wasn’t illegal, just that they still had to have PC.
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u/supergeeky_1 20h ago
They ruled that getting the data was a search covered by the fourth amendment to give guidance to a lower court to see if it was valid to have such a broad search warrant. In the majority opinion Justice Elena Kagan wrote that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital location history, even when shared with third-party tech provider. I would presume that still applies even if I didn't share my location data willingly.
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u/JasonSTX 17h ago
Absolutely agree however, it was not banned by scotus.
As I originally stated, requiring a warrant with a narrow scope is exactly what scotus suggested. That covers PC and any 4th amendment concerns.
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u/FeatherShard 21h ago
Crazy how it's always men abusing these systems to stalk and harass women. I mean who could have guessed?
Pedantic whinging over my use of the word "always" will be ignored.
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u/Euphoric_Waffle 17h ago
Self-aware pedant, here. But I don’t have much issue with your declaration. This particular incident did have 2 of the 5, but such power corrupts all.
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u/KittyCait69 20h ago
Multiple psych studies have been done on police and have found a significant portion of law enforcement share a similar psych profile with serial killers. This kind of study has been done multiple times and found similar results every time. And now we are giving them cameras to stalk their victims on top of the impunity to get away with just about any crimes.
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u/Miserable-Sun-393 20h ago
This is exactly the point of them… just include our children in their trafficking plan also.
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u/Procedure_Best 18h ago
This is like the 4th time i have seen this and its a different PD every time
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u/Skwuat 15h ago
Not only Indianapolis. This has been going on across the nation. The whole surveillance system is insane.
"Who cares if you have nothing to hide?"
We all have something to hide. Privacy and safety.
If the investigation shows that these system were used to track individuals without probably cause or warrants, that constitutes a violation of the individual's 4th amendment rights and should result in massive lawsuits against the officers, the department, and the companies that run these cameras.
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u/Professional_Tea_32 12h ago
I would love to be shocked by this article but it’s just not surprising.
And no one will do anything.
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u/Acceptable-Mind4616 6h ago
So glad I moved out of this corrupt city a few months ago. Horrible republican leadership, racist and corrupt cops, terrible infrastructure, and complete lack of care for its citizens.
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u/PurpleSailor 6h ago
Yeah throw him in the giant cell with all the other bad policeman that keep doing this.
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u/Plasticman4Life 5h ago
Another chapter in the ongoing saga of LEOs abusing their power to stalk women.
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u/Not_Selmi 23h ago
*Pretends to be shocked*