IMPD chief defends Flock cameras after five officers charged with tracking spouses and dates

IMPD Chief Tanya Terry. Photo provided by the City of Indianapolis.

Five current and former Indianapolis police officers are accused of turning the city's license-plate cameras on spouses, exes and women they met in public. On Thursday, their chief stood before reporters and defended the cameras.

“Whether it’s this community, or communities across the country, this technology has been used to save lives,” IMPD Chief Tanya Terry said of the department’s Flock Safety network, according to WRTV. She also objected to requiring a warrant before officers can search Flock data, saying “seconds matter” and that judicial review “may have a negative impact on a case.”

Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears announced the charges Wednesday. Court records and local reporting name the officers as Michael Rogers, Jonathan Schultz, Cassandra Crawley, Matthew Binford, and Abigail Cramer, and prosecutors allege hundreds or thousands of improper searches. Four were suspended and recommended for termination; Cramer resigned, according to WIBC and Axios Indianapolis.

The accusations, officer by officer

Citing court filings, WRTV reported that:

• Officer Matthew Binford searched for his ex-wife’s vehicle.

• Officer Abigail Cramer searched for relatives of her spouse’s ex-wife.

• Officer Cassandra Crawley tracked vehicles belonging to an IMPD lieutenant she once dated.

• Officer Michael Rogers tracked his wife and a man he suspected of having an affair with her.

• Officer Jonathan Schultz tracked nearly a dozen people, including women he did not know, to engineer dates. Axios reported Schultz faces stalking counts in addition to fraud and official misconduct, and that prosecutors say he searched more than 1,000 plates.

Every item on that list comes from charging documents. None of the five has been convicted.

‘Should have been stronger’

Terry conceded the department’s audit and oversight “should have been stronger” and said officers must now tie every Flock search to a specific case number under an updated policy, WRTV reported. The scale is not small: WIBC reported more than 700,000 IMPD searches over about three years by more than 600 employees, under a multi-year contract that local reporting puts near $1 million a year and up to about $6 million over its term.

Mears called the charges “just the beginning.” Terry took issue with that, telling WRTV she was “not sure what prosecutor Mears was thinking,” and said it is too soon to know whether other officers abused their access. She called the five cases “disheartening” and “disappointing” but said they do not reflect most of the force.

The ACLU of Indiana, which has urged communities to drop automated plate-reader contracts, called the technology “ripe for abuse” and said this type of abuse is “becoming a pattern,” a spokesperson told WRTV. Flock Safety, in a statement carried by WRTV, said misuse of any law-enforcement tool is unacceptable, that the company has long provided audit logs, and that it will make its “Audit Assistance” feature mandatory for every customer.

A lot of trust, not much check

Limited-government conservatives have warned for years about exactly this kind of tool: a camera net that can rebuild a citizen’s day from a license plate, run by an agency that polices its own use of it. Indianapolis now has one of the densest such nets in the state, five officers accused of aiming it at private lives, and a chief who wants to keep the cameras while keeping warrant requirements out of the way. The department’s own audits, by her admission, fell short. How many of those 700,000-plus searches were personal, who was reading the logs, and whether City-County leaders will put truly independent oversight on the system are now questions for the people paying for it.

Sources: WRTV (Sept. 24, 2026); WIBC (Sept. 24, 2026); Axios Indianapolis (Sept. 23, 2026); The Washington Post (Sept. 23, 2026); ABC News (Sept. 23, 2026).

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.