Three former Bibb County Sheriff's Office deputies were arrested Monday after an internal audit found they had allegedly used the agency's license plate reader network to track people they knew personally, rather than for any legitimate law enforcement purpose. Former K-9 deputy Joseph Callaway, 37, and former patrol deputies Coznavian Stubbs, 45, and Toni Lewis, 32, each face charges including stalking, unlawfully retaining license plate data, and violating their oath of office.
The Bibb County Sheriff's Office began the internal audit after Flock Safety alerted officials to possible irregularities involving the system, according to CBS News Atlanta. The sheriff's office said the three cases were separate and that each involved someone with whom the deputy had a personal relationship at the time. Callaway was charged with three counts of stalking, while Stubbs and Lewis each face one count of stalking, along with unlawfully retaining license plate data and violating their oath of office; Callaway also faces a charge of improperly requesting or sharing criminal history information.
All three were booked into the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center on August 10. Jail records reported by the Macon Telegraph show bond was set at $22,000 for Callaway and $11,000 each for Stubbs and Lewis. Callaway resigned as a K-9 deputy shortly after his arrest, while Stubbs and Lewis resigned as patrol deputies during the investigation.
Years on the Force Before the Flags
Training records cited by the same Macon Telegraph report show Callaway joined the sheriff's office as a jailer in 2014 and became a certified peace officer in 2016. Lewis and Stubbs were both certified as peace officers in 2023, and Lewis had previously worked as a communications officer starting in 2018 before transferring to jailer duties, per that report.
Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said law enforcement has an absolute responsibility to use those resources only for legitimate law enforcement purposes, according to CBS News Atlanta. Davis added that the public entrusts law enforcement with access to powerful technology and sensitive information. The sheriff's office said the cases remain under investigation and asked anyone with information to contact the agency.
An Automated System Built to Catch This
The arrests trace back to a compliance tool Flock Safety rolled out in April, an AI-powered “Audit Assistance” system that continuously monitors search activity and flags patterns that fall outside an agency's normal parameters every 30 days, according to POLICE Magazine. Bibb County has deployed more than 150 solar-powered Flock cameras along high-traffic corridors across Macon-Bibb County since summer 2023, according to the Macon Telegraph, originally intended to help track stolen vehicles and violent-crime suspects.
Under Georgia Code § 35-1-22, license plate reader data may only be collected and accessed for legitimate law enforcement purposes, and knowingly using captured plate data for personal reasons is classified as a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature, according to Justia Law. Separately, Georgia Code § 16-10-1 makes it a felony, punishable by one to five years in state prison, for a public officer to willfully and intentionally violate the terms of their official oath when that act is predicated on a felony or high-and-aggravated misdemeanor, which is why the oath-violation charges against all three former deputies carry felony weight.
Part of a Wider Wave Across Georgia
Bibb County is far from an outlier this summer. At least 18 law enforcement officers across Georgia were arrested, fired, or placed under investigation for misusing license plate reader technology for personal reasons during July and August alone, according to Reason Magazine. In July, five Albany Police Department officers were fired and charged by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation over Flock misuse, and three Coweta County Sheriff's Office employees resigned in August during a similar automated audit, prompting that office to request an independent GBI probe.
Hoodline has tracked the pattern spreading county by county this summer, from a Cherokee deputy caught snooping in June to a DeKalb sergeant hauled off in a similar scandal, a Habersham deputy fired and arrested over alleged personal searches, and six Savannah police employees benched pending a GBI referral just over a week before the Bibb County arrests. The Atlanta Police Department has also confirmed it is reviewing how its officers use license plate reader technology, describing its own review as a proactive audit that is still underway. The department has not released further details but said it will provide more information when appropriate once the audit is complete.
A Tool With Broad Reach, and Broader Risk
Flock Safety, headquartered in Atlanta, maintains roughly 120,000 automated license plate reader cameras installed across urban and rural jurisdictions nationwide, storing vehicle location data in cloud databases with a standard 30-day default retention window, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization's research also indicates that less than 1% of all vehicle license plates scanned nationwide are ever associated with active crime investigations, warrants, or stolen vehicle reports, a figure privacy advocates point to when warning that vast databases of law-abiding drivers' movements carry a persistent risk of personal misuse without proactive oversight.
Whether Bibb County's cases represent isolated personal misconduct or a longer-running gap in oversight that predates automated auditing remains an open question, one the sheriff's office has not addressed beyond confirming that the investigation continues. For now, the office says all three cases stay open, and it is asking anyone with relevant information to come forward.
