An Oak Ridge police investigator used the department's automated license plate readers to track down two people and hand their locations over to someone outside the department, all because his family wanted them found. Timothy Buckner was suspended for just three days without pay in 2024 over the misconduct, and he remains on the force today, serving as a crime task force investigator and a member of the department's SWAT team.
The Oak Ridge Police Department investigation found that Buckner used Flock Safety automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, to run the plates of a woman and a man because his family wanted them found. He then shared their locations with people whose identities the city redacted from the released records. Buckner admitted accessing the Flock cameras through the State of Tennessee Integrated Criminal Justice Portal, according to documents obtained by WATE.
The case reached Oak Ridge through other law enforcement agencies, rather than a direct complaint to the department. The Roane County Sheriff's Office had learned about the incident from the Oliver Springs Police Department. On July 8, 2024, Roane County Chief Deputy Tim Phillips told Oak Ridge Police Captain John Kelly that Buckner had used Flock cameras to locate two people and share their locations with someone else. Phillips also informed Oak Ridge Police Chief Robin Smith, who notified District Attorney General David Clark, according to WATE.
How the Misconduct Came to Light
The man identified in the documents as A.B. received a photo of himself and the woman outside a Knoxville business, then confronted Buckner about using the cameras to track her. A.B. declined to file a police report but wanted Buckner to stop tracking him, WATE reported. During a conference call with District Attorney General David Clark, Captain John Kelly and Chief Robin Smith, David Laxton explained how A.B. had first brought the matter to his attention. Laxton advised A.B. to confront Buckner directly. Buckner reportedly told A.B. he was staying out of family drama.
Laxton also alerted the Roane County Sheriff's Office. Mathew A. Tedford, who led the internal investigation, attended the conference call, later audited Buckner's ALPR use, suspended his Flock access and confronted him about it during SWAT training.
Buckner's Account of Why He Did It
In his own statements to investigators, Buckner said he began running the plates two to three weeks before July 4, 2024. He said he initially ran a plate to confirm that a car parked outside his home belonged to A.B., and used the cameras again to determine whether A.B. was parked outside his house. Buckner claimed a family member told him both A.B. and the woman were causing problems for the family, and that his family feared the man would show up at their home and start something.
He said he was tired of his family accusing the man of wrongdoing and that relatives repeatedly asked him to help locate the man and woman. Buckner told investigators he used the cameras to “mitigate the b.s.” and that he was trying to prove A.B. and the woman were not actually causing problems for his family. He admitted he knew using the cameras for personal reasons was wrong.
A Light Punishment and an Unclear Present
Buckner's discipline was a three-day unpaid suspension in 2024. A performance review for fiscal year 2026, which ran from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, praised his service and mentoring. The records leave his current task-force role unclear: Buckner indicated he had been officially removed from the 7th Judicial Drug Task Force, but also alleged that he still worked with the task force and wore the same equipment as its members, WATE reported.
6 News reported it learned of Buckner's conduct after reviewing an anonymous Oak Ridge Police Department survey, in which one respondent described misuse of Flock cameras as a terminable offense. Oak Ridge City Manager Randy Hemann said each case would be reviewed individually and sent to the responsible captain for a recommendation, and that the officers involved were likely to be suspended.
Flock's Reach and the Problem Nationwide
Flock cameras are a brand of automated license plate reader that law enforcement agencies use to identify vehicles tied to crimes and missing-persons cases, as WATE 6 On Your Side has reported separately. The system uses artificial intelligence to log a vehicle's make, model, color, plate number, bumper stickers and even scratches, automatically photographing passing cars and storing the images in a database that officers can search without a warrant, according to ABC News. As of September 2025, the Oak Ridge Police Department operated 18 of the cameras, per the Atlas of Surveillance.
Buckner's case is far from isolated. The Institute for Justice has catalogued more than 100 instances nationwide of officers using the technology for non-law-enforcement purposes or stalking, including two cases in Tennessee, as reported by Route Fifty. A USA Today analysis of more than 75 million Flock searches across 6,300 agencies over three and a half years found at least 19 police and sheriff's-office employees in five states who were arrested, fired, placed on leave or put under investigation for potentially improper use of the system, according to the Lufkin Daily News.
Comparable cases have played out across the country this year. In Massachusetts, the town of Stow moved to fire officer Jason Rogers and pursue criminal charges after he allegedly accessed Flock and criminal justice records at least five times without a legitimate law-enforcement reason, ABC News reported. A Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office officer in Louisiana was fired after allegedly searching a single plate several thousand times over several years. In Texas, Deer Park police officer Brandon Williams was suspended for 10 days and reassigned after a disciplinary memo found he searched one plate 165 times over several months despite no ongoing investigation, per Houston Public Media.
Other cases have ended in termination. A San Jose officer was fired in September after allegedly giving Flock data to a domestic-violence suspect who then used it to locate a victim, NBC Bay Area reported. Two New Bedford, Massachusetts, police officers were fired this week following an internal probe into alleged Flock misuse, according to WCVB. CNN reported that a former Milwaukee officer secretly used Flock to search for a romantic partner's location 124 times, while a Covington, Georgia, detective was fired after an audit showed he tracked a female coworker 41 times in one year, with later reporting putting the total at 2,890 searches over more than two years, per the Lufkin Daily News. In Arizona, Apache Junction officer Joshua McDaniel resigned ahead of being fired after the department said he used the technology to track his wife, according to Fox 10 Phoenix.
Tennessee Governments Reassessing Flock Contracts
The pattern of misuse has pushed Flock and some of its government customers to tighten controls. The company now requires a criminal case number for database searches and has cut camera-data retention from 30 days to seven, per ABC News. In August, Flock rolled out a mandatory Audit Assistance tool that flags abnormal search behavior by individual officers and can lock out users pending administrator review, CNN reported, noting that about a third of agency customers had already turned the feature on voluntarily before it became required.
Oak Ridge's rules for historical searches
Oak Ridge Police Department General Order 440, effective Sept. 11, 2024—after the conduct described in the records—says historical license plate reader searches are for official purposes only and are subject to audit, according to the city policy.
In Tennessee, the scrutiny has led some local governments to step back from the technology altogether. The Sullivan County Commission voted not to renew its Flock contract, which expires in January, according to Route Fifty. The Knox County Sheriff's Office has paused installation of additional license plate reader cameras, though it plans to continue its existing program, WATE 6 On Your Side reported separately.
