# Inside the room where Lexington police watch the cameras, and the week they turned off nationwide search **Published:** 2026-08-28T20:40:55Z **Source:** [The Lexington Times](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/media/lfucg-meeting-archive/flock-lpd-answers-aug-2026/lpd-written-answers-2026-08-28.pdf) **AI-generated:** yes (claude-fable-5) **Canonical:** https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/lexington-police-turn-off-nationwide-flock-search **License:** [CC BY-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/) — You may republish this article, in full and unaltered, for free — including commercially — with credit to The Lexington Times and a link to the original. When David Richardson was a robbery detective, around 2005, he chased a bank robber who wore a wig. He had a vehicle description. He pulled registration records, narrowed the field to three cars and sat on the wrong house before the right one. His partners watched a man get out wearing the wig. By then the man had robbed six banks in about three months. In 2024, a man robbed a Lexington bank and drove off in a two-tone sedan. Patrol officers collected video from nearby businesses within about 40 minutes. Analysts in the police department's Real-Time Intelligence Center used it, and the city's license-plate cameras, to find the moment the car came into town with its plate still uncovered. The car was registered in West Virginia. Detectives drove there that night. "We were actually able to do that in under 24 hours," Richardson said. "They had him under arrest." Richardson, now a lieutenant, runs the department's Intelligence Unit and the center. On Friday afternoon he spent an hour walking a Lexington Times reporter through the room, one day after [17 people spoke against the cameras](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/flock-council-testimony-aug-27-2026) at the Urban County Council and opponents asked members to end [the city's contract](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/flock-opponents-council-thursday-what-the-contract-says) with the vendor, Flock Safety. "We want to show you everything we have because we have nothing to hide," he said. The department also handed over [four pages of written answers](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/media/lfucg-meeting-archive/flock-lpd-answers-aug-2026/lpd-written-answers-2026-08-28.pdf) to 16 questions the Times sent this week. One answer is news: Lexington police have switched off the setting that let officers search license-plate cameras across the whole country. "The Lexington Police Department has turned off the Nationwide search feature as we listened to concerns from the community," the reply says. It does not say when. The change is recent. Records collected by the website [haveibeenflocked.com](https://haveibeenflocked.com/pd/4082-lexington-ky-pd/audit) show that every Lexington search in the records from February through Aug. 1, the last day for which records exist, reached at least 1,000 camera networks. In July the median search touched 2,678 networks.  (From left: Cmdr. Matthew Greathouse, Sgt. Bige Towery, Lt. David Richardson and Assistant Chief Brian Maynard at Lexington police headquarters, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026. (Photo: The Lexington Times)) ## The 24 people you don't stop The department's case for the cameras comes down to a phrase Richardson used again and again: precision policing. A call comes in about a man harassing people at a busy corner. Without the cameras, he said, officers arrive to find 25 people and start asking questions. With them, an analyst has already told the officers to look for a white man in a red shirt and khaki pants with a beard. "We're not having to stop the other 24 people there," Richardson said. Asked how he would answer a resident who would rather have privacy than the safety benefit, he said: "I would ask that citizen, were you stopped by police? Were you ever approached by police? Probably not. So where's the privacy violation? Because there isn't one if you're actually in public." Assistant Chief Brian Maynard, who heads the Bureau of Investigation, Cmdr. Matthew Greathouse of Special Investigations and Sgt. Bige Towery, the department's public information officer, sat in. ## The ICE searches The Times [reported Friday morning](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/lexington-police-flock-searches-for-ice-april-2026) that two Lexington searches on Saturday, April 18, carried the typed reason "Other - agency assist (ICE)," for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and reached 2,081 networks. The record turned up in audit logs released by agencies in Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, New York and Alabama. The department's written answer says the searches were run "to assist a federal agency with a criminal pic-up [sic] order." The people searched "were wanted due to their continued gang and drug trafficking involvement which was brought to their attention after a family member was arrested for a local murder," it says. Greathouse, asked in person, said: "That person was wanted for murder, and so was their family, was wanted for probably complicity and something gang related. The one that was wanted for murder is actually in prison for murder right now because of the utilization of technology." "It's not like a regular thing," he said. "That was probably the one and last time we've had one in a while." ICE agents "do not have access to the current ALPR vendor system," he said, using the acronym for automated license plate reader. The department has no task-force arrangement with Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's investigative arm, which is named in 84 other Lexington searches, the reply says. "The Lexington Police Department assists federal agents with lawful requests." Asked whether [a state law](https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb58.html) that took effect July 15, limiting plate-data sharing to public-safety and criminal-investigation purposes, changed anything, the reply says "all request from outside agencies are vetted to make certain they are legitimate law enforcement reasons." ## Who checks the checkers No one outside the police department has audited the program, the reply indicates. Lexington "was one of the first agencies in the country to audit ALPR/Flock search records," it says, and outside firms have not done so "due to CJIS Security Policy standards" and the knowledge needed of dispatch, case-management and National Crime Information Center records. CJIS is the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division. Its [security policy](https://le.fbi.gov/file-repository/cjis_security_policy_v6-0_20241227.pdf) does not bar outside auditors. It requires a fingerprint background check and training for anyone who handles FBI criminal-justice data, and it lets a city's non-police agencies in under a management agreement. [Austin's city auditor](https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=451701) reviewed that city's Flock program in 2025. The [California State Auditor](https://information.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2019-118/summary.html) examined four agencies' programs in 2020. Lexington's [two audits](https://www.lexingtonky.gov/government/departments-programs/public-safety/police/license-plate-readers/license-plate-reader-audits) are both inside the department. Richardson's Intelligence Unit, which runs the cameras, reviews searches each quarter. So does the Public Integrity Unit. Both report to Maynard's Bureau of Investigation. Since mid-2025 the Public Integrity Unit has [checked 60 searches a quarter](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/lexington-flock-audits-266000-searches-sample-of-60). Its memos call the selection random. The written answer describes it as the opposite: the fixed sample "enables PIU to specifically identify entries that could appear irregular as opposed to randomly looking at a proportional sample." The unit draws from about 2,900 entries a month, the reply says. The Intelligence Unit's own memos report 10,000 to 15,000 searches a month. Asked whether the department has ever caught anyone abusing the system, Richardson said: "We have not." Richardson said Lexington pushed Flock for years to build better audit tools. "We're going to try to break your system," he said. "We want to find where the holes are." In April, Flock added a tool that flags five patterns, including an officer who searches only outside networks. "Their audit system mirrors what we have been doing from day one, so they're not going to give us credit," Richardson said. "That's our stuff." Flock's [April 14 announcement](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/04/14/3273480/0/en/Flock-Safety-Introduces-Audit-Assistance-Its-Latest-Trust-Compliance-Tool-to-Set-A-New-Standard-for-Accountable-Public-Safety-Technology.html) credits Fairfax County, Virginia, police as its early test user and does not mention Lexington. Richardson said there are no minutes of the meetings. Towery said there have been "like 31 cases total in the last five years" of officers misusing Flock nationally. [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/) counted at least 50 officers accused, charged or convicted as of Aug. 2. An [Institute for Justice database](https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/) launched this month lists more than 100. One control Lexington set from the start, Greathouse said: individual officers cannot put a plate on a "hot list," the watch list that pings whenever a camera sees the car. A request goes on paper, tied to a case, through two layers of supervision. "It'd be very easy for me to want to look for you, look for an ex or a current spouse, whatever, and find out where they are," Greathouse said. "So we turned that crap off." The department also refused to accept other agencies' hot lists. That is why one case produced 3,724 searches between February and July 2025, nearly all by one officer, up to 469 in a day. The reply says the searches were manual, aimed at "a violent subject" with outstanding warrants, and stopped when he was arrested July 28. Without a hot list, "some Officers will search a record multiple times."  (The department's written answer on nationwide search, received Friday, Aug. 28, 2026.) ## The 60-day shredder Plate records "are kept for 60 days and then no longer available for inquiry," the reply says. "If robbery-homicide is working something and they come to me at 61 days, I say, I'm sorry, we don't have that information," Richardson said. "You can't call Flock. They don't have the data." Anything an investigator wants to keep has to be saved into a case file first. The 2024 contract lists a 30-day retention period and an "extended data retention" add-on of at least $150,000 a year. The reply does not say what the add-on buys. Two other answers. The Times found more than 4,000 searches whose reason field carried pasted warrant records, including dates of birth and driver's license numbers, which were transmitted to every agency whose cameras were queried. The reply says the vendor "has changed the information that is shared and this is no longer the case." The records agree: the last such paste is dated Nov. 17, 2025. And the audits' old test, flagging any plate searched more than 10 times, became a check in 2026 for searches more than seven days apart, because, the reply says, misuse elsewhere involved "searches over an extended period of time." ## Behind the glass  (The Real-Time Intelligence Center at Lexington police headquarters, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026. (Photo: The Lexington Times)) There is no video wall. Analysts at other centers "don't even use them," Richardson said, so Lexington's sit at three-monitor stations: traffic cameras on one screen, dispatch calls on another, plate alerts on a third, three radio channels in their ears. Six civilian analysts work Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Saturdays are covered on overtime. Sundays are not staffed. "I get several texts a couple times a month asking, 'Hey, is anybody working RTIC on Sunday?'" Richardson said. "I say no." The seats are civilian because the department is "110 officers short," he said. None of the analysts make arrests. "It is providing intelligence for the people that are responding to the calls on the street for them to make that determination." A platform called Fusus puts dispatch calls, officers' locations, updated every five seconds, and the city's roughly 137 traffic-camera intersections on one map. Richardson recalled a rookie three days on the job who chased three people out of a stolen car near Winchester Road and Elkhorn and radioed that he was in a field with a creek. That was before the location layer was switched on, he said. Afterward, "an officer thanked us for doing it, because he was able to find his beat partner that night much quicker." Officers must confirm any plate alert in NCIC, the FBI's national crime database, before acting on it, Richardson said. He pointed to an alert on the monitor: the registered owner had a warrant, but patrol officers had seen a woman driving. "So they don't stop the vehicle, because she doesn't have the warrant." Live body-camera video "could" begin feeding the center as soon as next week, he said, "only under very certain circumstances," and the details are "still to be determined." The department is also testing a drone that launches from the roof of headquarters as a first responder. A slide in Richardson's deck, current as of March, listed $5.4 million in recovered vehicles and 740 "success stories," a hand-kept tally he said is not complete. The city's [web page](https://www.lexingtonky.gov/government/departments-programs/public-safety/police/license-plate-readers) now lists $5,529,343 in recovered vehicles and 32 missing persons found. Towery remembered a car stolen at a Lexington gas station before the cameras, with a child seat in the back. "Now it would be instantaneous," he said. "People forget about that humanistic side of it, too." ## A question we got wrong One of the eight questions the Times sent Aug. 26 asked the department to restore 10 audit documents the Times had reported as unreachable. That premise was wrong. The files were always online; the error was in how the Times retrieved them, as we [corrected Aug. 27](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/corrections). The department's reply says "this error is being reviewed and the corrections will be made." It should not be read as confirming that any audit was missing. The council next meets Thursday, Sept. 10. On the monitors downstairs Friday, a hot-list alert popped up while the reporter watched: a person wanted for first-degree assault. Nobody moved. It was a Friday afternoon, Richardson said, with 49 calls waiting and, he estimated, three or four officers free. The center does not dispatch anyone; the one exception, he said, is an Amber Alert. It tells the people on the street what it sees and lets them decide. That, in the department's telling, is the whole idea. _The department's [written answers](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/media/lfucg-meeting-archive/flock-lpd-answers-aug-2026/lpd-written-answers-2026-08-28.pdf) are posted in full. The recording of Friday's briefing is on file with the Times._ ## Sources - [Lexington Police Department, written answers to The Lexington Times (Aug. 28, 2026)](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/media/lfucg-meeting-archive/flock-lpd-answers-aug-2026/lpd-written-answers-2026-08-28.pdf) - [haveibeenflocked.com, Lexington KY PD audit records (agency 4082)](https://haveibeenflocked.com/pd/4082-lexington-ky-pd/audit) - [City of Lexington, License plate reader audits](https://www.lexingtonky.gov/government/departments-programs/public-safety/police/license-plate-readers/license-plate-reader-audits) - [Lexington Police Department, General Order 2022-01, License Plate Readers](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/media/lfucg-meeting-archive/flock-ice-searches-aug-2026/GO-2022-01.pdf) - [FBI, Criminal Justice Information Services Security Policy v6.0 (Dec. 27, 2024)](https://le.fbi.gov/file-repository/cjis_security_policy_v6-0_20241227.pdf) - [Flock Safety, Audit Assistance announcement (April 14, 2026)](https://www.flocksafety.com/press-releases) - [Flock Safety, "Does Flock share data with ICE?"](https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/does-flock-share-data-with-ice) - [Kentucky General Assembly, 2026 RS HB 58 (Acts Ch. 71)](https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb58.html) - [Office of the City Auditor, Austin, Texas: Automated License Plate Readers (May 2025)](https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=451701) - [California State Auditor, Report 2019-118, Automated License Plate Readers (Feb. 2020)](https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2019-118/index.html) - [Institute for Justice, database of ALPR abuse (August 2026)](https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/) - [City of Lexington news release, July 29, 2025 (arrest on wanton endangerment warrants)](https://www.lexingtonky.gov/news) - [The Lexington Times, Aug. 28, 2026: two Flock searches for ICE](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/lexington-police-flock-searches-for-ice-april-2026) - [The Lexington Times, Aug. 28, 2026: Flock council testimony](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/flock-council-testimony-aug-27-2026) - [The Lexington Times, Aug. 26, 2026: the 27 audits](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/lexington-flock-audits-266000-searches-sample-of-60) - [The Lexington Times, Aug. 25, 2026: what the contract says](https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/flock-opponents-council-thursday-what-the-contract-says) --- This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance (Claude Fable 5) for The Lexington Times and finalized by the editor. It is based on the police department's four-page written answers, received Aug. 28, 2026, and on an audio recording and transcript of the same day's briefing at police headquarters, which the editor attended. Quotes from the briefing were checked against the recording. Search figures were recomputed from the 547,712 Lexington records collected by haveibeenflocked.com (through Aug. 1, 2026). The written answers are linked in full.