A 35-year-old Clermont County man accused of ripping a Flock Safety license plate camera off its pole in Union Township will not face felony charges after a grand jury declined to indict him earlier this month. Police say the man, identified through a mix of private surveillance footage, credit card records, and Bureau of Motor Vehicles photographs, had been charged with fifth-degree felony vandalism and theft before the case fell apart.
The man, Cody Morelock, was arrested on July 30 after investigators say he removed a Flock Safety camera, its solar panel, and its computer box from a pole near Mt. Carmel Tobasco Road and Glenrose Lane, according to a criminal complaint cited by WCPO 9 News. Union Township police reportedly matched him to the scene by cross-referencing nearby private surveillance footage with credit card purchase records and his BMV driver's license photo, according to WLWT 5. He was accused of damaging the camera on June 13 and was held on a $10,000 cash bond after his arrest, per the WCPO report.
Court records reviewed by the station show Morelock's name did not appear on the August 18 list of people indicted by the Clermont County grand jury, and his case does not show that he was ever indicted at all. Following a scheduled hearing on August 17, the fifth-degree felony vandalism and theft charges against him were dismissed without prejudice — a legal outcome that, per Local 12, follows directly from the grand jury's refusal to return an indictment. Court records do not show why the charges were dismissed, the station's report notes, and WCPO does not name the man beyond noting he is no longer accused of a crime.
What the Dismissal Does and Doesn't Mean
Dismissal without prejudice is not an acquittal. It allows prosecutors to refile the same charges against Morelock in the future if new evidence surfaces, per the WCPO report. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 2953.33, someone in his position generally has to wait for the statute of limitations to run out, or two years, before he could even apply to have the arrest record sealed, according to the Ohio General Assembly.
Ohio law treats damage to government or business-critical property valued at $1,000 or more as fifth-degree felony vandalism under Revised Code Section 2909.05, a charge that carries six to 12 months in prison and fines up to $2,500, according to the Ohio General Assembly. The camera damage in this case reportedly exceeded that $1,000 threshold, per the criminal complaint cited by WCPO, and a conviction on the felony counts could have exposed Morelock to months or potentially years behind bars. The Union Township Police Department had leased the Mt. Carmel-Tobasco Road camera system rather than owning it outright, a subscription arrangement common among Ohio law enforcement agencies working with Flock Safety, according to WLWT 5.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Ohio
The Clermont County case is not an isolated incident. Ohio has seen a surge in targeted camera destruction this August, including three Flock cameras cut down from poles in Gahanna within a six-week span and four more vandalized in the Toledo area, according to WTOL 11. Nationally, Flock Safety operates roughly 120,000 automated license plate readers across more than 6,000 communities in 49 states, logging around 20 billion vehicle scans a month, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
Despite the volume of reported incidents — cameras sawed off poles, shot, or spray-painted around the country — criminal prosecutions remain relatively rare, the Post notes, because vandals are typically identified only when they're caught on nearby cameras or linked through local purchase records, much as Morelock reportedly was. That difficulty in securing convictions may help explain why the Clermont County grand jury balked at an indictment even after police said they had built a case using surveillance footage, credit card trails, and BMV records.
Flock Faces Pressure on Privacy and Security
The dismissal comes as Flock Safety confronts scrutiny on multiple fronts. In August, the company announced policy changes across its national network, cutting default data retention from 30 days to seven and adding audit software meant to catch unauthorized searches by law enforcement, according to Quartz. That shift followed nationwide investigations into police officers who allegedly used the camera network to track people without authorization.
Separately, a June cybersecurity investigation found that dozens of Flock camera administration interfaces were exposed publicly online without password protection or encryption, allowing unauthenticated access to live vehicle feeds, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Those findings have fueled broader privacy and Fourth Amendment concerns that have shadowed Flock deployments well beyond Clermont County, and echo debates Hoodline has tracked in Stow over the same camera contracts.
