A Milton police officer honored as the city's 2025 Officer of the Year has been fired, with his attorney saying the dismissal stemmed from his use of the city's Flock license plate cameras to check on his wife during diabetic emergencies. Randy Dula, who joined the Milton Police Department in November 2023, was terminated on Aug. 7, according to state records, though those records do not specify why.
Attorney Says Firing Followed Seven Camera Checks
The termination came just months after Dula picked up another honor: in April, the Alpharetta Lions Club named him its Outstanding Officer of the Year, according to WSB-TV. That same outlet reports Dula's attorney, Mitch Skandalakis, says his client was fired for neglect of duty, abuse of position and use of departmental equipment — stemming from seven instances over a two-year period in which Dula used Milton's Flock cameras to check on his wife during diabetic emergencies.
According to Skandalakis, Dula and his wife had an arrangement where she would call him when she left home and again when she arrived at her destination. When she didn't call as agreed, he would check the Flock cameras, the attorney said. The couple had tried the Life360 tracking app first, but Skandalakis described it as unreliable. He said Dula was ensuring a vulnerable person was safe, and described him as a devoted husband responding to genuine emergencies.
City Cites Ongoing Investigation, Declines Comment
Milton City Manager Steve Krokoff and City Council Member Carol Cookerly declined to comment on the specifics, telling WSB-TV reporter Bryan Mims during a 20-minute phone call that they could not discuss an ongoing investigation and a personnel matter. They did say more information could be released in the coming weeks, per that same report.
Milton's license plate reader policy restricts use of the system to legitimate law enforcement purposes, and the WSB-TV report notes that misuse of LPR data can carry civil and criminal penalties under state law in addition to termination under city policy. Before he began his law enforcement career in 2013, Dula served in Afghanistan, according to Appen Media, which also reported that he was recognized as the department's Outstanding Officer of the Year at the Alpharetta Lions Club's annual public safety awards dinner.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Flock Misuse Cases
Dula's case lands amid a broader reckoning over how police use automated license plate readers. The nonprofit Institute for Justice has tracked at least 47 instances of officers disciplined for allegedly abusing Flock systems to stalk romantic interests, and has identified well over 100 total incidents of license plate reader abuse nationwide, according to the Institute for Justice. In one case the group documented, a Georgia police chief allegedly tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times, and in Athens-Clarke County, officer Tyler Vaughn was fired and criminally charged after allegedly using Flock to track an ex-girlfriend's location.
The pattern extends well beyond Georgia. In Kentucky, Shively Police Department Officer Asad Zahir was arrested after authorities said he ran 2,048 Flock searches tracking vehicles tied to his ex-girlfriend, including 241 searches conducted while a protective order was in place, CNN reported. In Savannah, police fired officer Amber Harpe after an internal audit of 983 searches involving 97 license plates found she had given her husband, an ICE agent, access to her Flock account, according to WJCL. And in Texas, the Brenham Police Department fired officer Gabriel Duran on Oct. 16 after an internal affairs probe into unusual search activity found multiple policy violations involving the technology, per a Yahoo News report.
Georgia Lawmakers, GBI Respond to Rising Case Count
Georgia officials are increasingly focused on the issue. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says at least 14 people have been arrested and charged this year for misusing the state law governing license plate cameras, according to the Georgia Recorder. State Sen. John Albers said he is working with the Georgia Sheriffs' Association and the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police on a new task force to examine the problem, the outlet reported.
Flock Safety itself has rolled out new safeguards in response to the mounting cases, including an AI-driven audit-assistance tool meant to flag potentially suspicious searches for supervisor review, which the company launched in April, according to Atlanta News First. That outlet identified at least 20 Georgia cases in the past year involving officers disciplined or facing criminal allegations tied to improper Flock use. Separately, the company has also moved to shorten how long license plate data can be stored, cutting retention from 30 days to seven and requiring users to log a case number or crime type with every search, per the Georgia Recorder's reporting.
