A Columbus police officer is under internal investigation for the supposed scandal of using a surveillance database to assist federal immigration enforcement — while an Illinois police chief who used the same technology to stalk personal acquaintances faces 12 felony counts. The contrast tells you everything about where the establishment's priorities land: enforcing immigration law is treated as misconduct, while actual abuse of surveillance tools only becomes a crisis when it targets connected individuals.
Why it matters: Flock Safety's license plate reader networks photograph and log the movements of every vehicle that passes their cameras — millions of searches, millions of plates, all tracked, all stored. Law-abiding Americans live under this dragnet every day without complaint from the press or city officials. But the moment an officer in Columbus typed "ICE" into the search field, the machinery of municipal government mobilized to investigate him.
Here is what happened in Columbus. According to MLive, an officer queried the Flock system six times in a 10-minute span on the morning of February 3, 2025, listing "ICE" as the reason while searching for a silver or gray GMC pickup truck. Some searches were limited to a single camera network; others cast across hundreds of connected Flock systems. The activity surfaced in a footnote of an audit reviewing nearly 20 million Flock queries by Columbus police. The audit also flagged 14 additional searches tied to Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal division of ICE.
Deputy Chief Tim Myers said the officer has not been placed on leave because investigators have not determined whether any rules were broken. The officer was among the department's most frequent Flock users, with over 5,000 searches since late 2023. On the same day as the ICE queries, the officer also ran searches using dispatch codes for stolen vehicles and disturbance calls — officials have not said whether those were connected.
Columbus has barred city resources from being used for civil immigration enforcement since 2017, when Mayor Andrew Ginther signed an executive order that was later codified into city law. The policy generally prohibits employees from using city resources to identify or detain individuals based on suspected immigration status, except in limited circumstances such as criminal investigations or court orders. Myers emphasized the city distinguishes between civil immigration enforcement and criminal investigations, and that Columbus police continue to cooperate with federal agencies on criminal cases.
MLive framed the officer's searches as "unusual" and the audit as a mechanism to determine compliance with city policy — presenting assistance to ICE as inherently suspect.
Now consider what actual abuse of Flock looks like. In Holiday Hills, Illinois, Police Chief William Copp, 54, was charged this month with 12 counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony. According to Shaw Local, prosecutors say Copp made hundreds of unauthorized searches using Prairie Grove's Flock system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database to track multiple people he knew personally — while on duty and off. Three people have filed orders of protection against him. He was fired from his part-time Prairie Grove role in May but continued serving as Holiday Hills chief until his arrest warrant was served June 18. The village is now considering disbanding its police department entirely.
That is what surveillance abuse actually looks like — not an officer running plates to help federal law enforcement locate a vehicle, but a chief weaponizing databases to stalk acquaintances.
The question neither outlet asks: if Flock's dragnet is acceptable enough to log 20 million queries on ordinary citizens' movements, why is it controversial when an officer uses it to assist in enforcing federal immigration law? The same cities that install these cameras on every corner and the same press that shrugs at the surveillance state suddenly discover civil liberties the instant deportation is on the table.
The open question is not whether the Columbus officer violated a sanctuary policy. It is why a policy exists to obstruct federal law enforcement while the surveillance apparatus operates without interruption — and why the only time the establishment objects to any of it is when it might result in an illegal alien being found.
