A southern Indiana police officer was arrested Thursday morning after investigators say he spent months secretly searching license-plate data without any legitimate reason, then covered his tracks by making the searches look like they were tied to real cases. Indiana State Police say Georgetown officer Justin Craig was taken into custody at his home and now faces fraud and official misconduct charges tied to his alleged misuse of the department's Flock camera system.
Indiana State Police troopers arrested Craig at his home, with the agency's SWAT team assisting, and he was taken into custody without incident, according to WISH-TV. He was charged in Floyd Superior Court 1 with one low-level felony count of official misconduct and two top-level misdemeanor counts of fraud, and paid a $2,000 bond with a next hearing set for Dec. 17, the station reports. As WLKY reports, A Georgetown police officer has been arrested and charged after he allegedly misused Flock cameras, according to Indiana State Police.
Chief Learned of Irregular Activity Before Review Began
The case traces back to a meeting between investigators and Georgetown Police Chief Travis Speece, who had learned of irregular search activity in the department's Flock system, according to WISH-TV. That tip prompted the Georgetown Police Department to complete an internal review of Craig's searches, and investigator Clay Boley reviewed the Flock system logs as part of that process, the station reports.
What Boley found, per WISH-TV, was that Craig had conducted numerous Flock searches in 2026 using justifications including traffic violations, drug offenses, assault and vehicle theft — but with no related investigations to back any of them up. WDRB's reporting aligns with that account: the outlet states that an internal review found Craig conducted numerous searches in 2026 that did not appear connected to any authorized investigation, according to WDRB.
Searches Allegedly Disguised to Look Legitimate
Investigators didn't just find unauthorized searches — they say Craig tried to hide them. WLKY reports that Craig made searches on the Flock system that were not related to any investigations and had been mislabeling his searches to make them seem justified. Boley ultimately determined that Craig accessed Flock information in a manner inconsistent with department policy and without a lawful purpose, per WISH-TV, and the searches were conducted during Craig's scheduled duty hours, the same account notes.
Boley sought an arrest warrant for Craig after completing his review, and the warrant was served Thursday, according to WISH-TV. Craig had previously served as town marshal with the Greenville Police Department and had also worked with the Floyd County Sheriff's Office, the station reports. Indiana State Police released a statement that did not say whether Craig was booked into the Floyd County Jail, and the Floyd County Sheriff did not immediately respond to a request for information about Craig, per the same WISH-TV account.
Attorney Says He'll Seek Dismissal
Craig's attorney, Matthew Lemme, pushed back hard on the charges, telling WDRB that the alleged conduct did not violate any law or department policy. Officer Craig will file a motion to dismiss the charges against him, Lemme said, according to the station's report.
Georgetown is a town of about 3,855 residents in Floyd County, roughly a 20-minute drive west of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, per WISH-TV's reporting.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Indiana and Beyond
Craig's arrest lands amid mounting scrutiny of automated license-plate readers statewide. Eyes Off Indiana estimates that 3,604 of the cameras are in use across the state, with at least one in 84 of Indiana's 92 counties, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. The outlet also reports that Bloomington Police did not renew its contract with Flock Systems, and that a pending bill would require agencies to perform regular audits of plate-reader searches, with additional yearly audits by Indiana State Police.
Bloomington went further still. The city council there voted unanimously, 7-0, to ban city agencies from owning, operating, using or accessing automated license plate reader technology, and to bar access to data collected by other agencies, according to the Indiana Daily Student. In Indianapolis, volunteers had documented 649 of the cameras in Marion County as of early September, the most of any Indiana county tracked by the Finding Flock database, per Axios Indianapolis.
That reporting also describes an IMPD officer suspended without pay and recommended for termination after being found to have tracked license plates for personal reasons, and a Jackson County deputy accused of using plate readers to search for his then-girlfriend's car more than 2,000 times before resigning and facing misconduct and fraud charges. In response, IMPD has drafted a new ALPR use policy that officers must sign to keep access, along with a daily auditing process, and now requires every search to be tied to a case or dispatch number — a step that was previously optional, the Axios account notes.
National Cases Echo the Same Pattern
Similar allegations have surfaced elsewhere in recent months. A former Vidalia, Georgia, police sergeant was arrested after investigators said he repeatedly accessed the department's Flock Safety system for reasons unrelated to law enforcement, according to WJCL, which reports the Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged Santonio Wilcher with two counts of misuse of a license-plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office.
A former Greene County, Missouri, sheriff's lieutenant was charged after allegedly searching a woman's license plate more than 200 times over roughly a year despite her not being the subject of any criminal investigation, according to NewsNation, which also reports that Flock plans to require users to reauthenticate every 12 hours beginning next year. The Detroit News reports that Flock's network includes at least 120,000 roadside cameras nationwide, and that at least 100 law-enforcement employees have been charged with or accused of misusing license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes — part of what the outlet describes as at least 11 documented incidents of unauthorized Flock database access nationally, details found in that Detroit News investigation. The Institute for Justice's ALPR abuse database separately documents a Sharonville police lieutenant who admitted searching for someone he knew in the Flock system 29 times and was charged with a felony.
