A Sharonville police lieutenant has been indicted on a felony charge after prosecutors say he used the department's Flock camera system 29 times over roughly 16 months to track someone's whereabouts for reasons that had nothing to do with police work. Walter Cordes, 48, is accused of running the unauthorized searches between Dec. 19, 2024, and April 20, 2026, according to Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich.
Cordes was charged with unauthorized use of a computer, cable or telecommunications property, as reported by WKRC. He faces up to one year in prison if convicted. According to cleveland19.com, Cordes self-reported the searches during a department audit of the system and admitted to conducting them.
Prosecutor Warns of Trust Breakdown
Pillich said misuse of investigative technology undermines public trust and law enforcement work. She added that technology used in investigations carries a responsibility to protect people's rights, a message prosecutors are framing as central to the case against one of their own.
Cordes has been placed on administrative leave while the Sharonville Police Department completes its own internal investigation, the same report notes. The department also said it is conducting additional required training for every officer on the use of law enforcement databases and technology, an effort apparently prompted directly by the audit that flagged Cordes's searches.
Flock Cameras Have Also Helped Solve Local Crimes
The irony of the case is that Sharonville's Flock system has otherwise been credited with helping solve real crimes. The department has used the license-plate readers to help make arrests in several cases, including a shooting, a pedestrian hit-and-run and catalytic-converter thefts, according to wcpo.com. Sharonville police have said officers may only view the stored images when they have a legitimate law-enforcement reason to search them, a policy now under fresh scrutiny given the allegations against Cordes.
More than 130 police departments across Ohio have implemented Flock Safety's license-plate readers, per Flock Safety data cited by WCPO. The company says images in its database are encrypted and deleted after 30 days, a retention window that mirrors policies some other Ohio cities have adopted for their own systems.
Ohio Lawmakers Debate Tighter Rules Statewide
The Sharonville case lands amid a broader statewide reckoning over how police departments store and access license-plate data. Ohio's statewide public-records exemption for automated license-plate recognition data first took effect in the fall of 2025 and was retained in the version of the state's Public Records Act effective this September, according to cleveland.com.
Cleveland's own policy generally limits data stored on its department's server to 30 days unless an exception applies, and the city requires historical searches to meet a reasonable-suspicion-or-higher standard with every query logged, the same report states. State lawmakers are now weighing whether to impose similar guardrails statewide. State Sen. Al Cutrona has announced legislation that would generally require government-held Flock data to be deleted within 10 days and would restrict third-party sharing, while state Rep. Levi Dean has proposed legislation that would prohibit government entities from deploying mass-surveillance technology like Flock cameras altogether and require a search warrant before officials could access surveillance footage.
Separately, House Bill 725 would restrict the collection, use, sale, transfer and sharing of license-plate data for commercial purposes, though it includes exemptions for law-enforcement activity. As of early September, the bill remained in the Ohio House Public Safety Committee and had not passed the House. Many jurisdictions in Greater Cincinnati have reportedly halted or canceled their own Flock Safety contracts over concerns about misuse, according to wvxu.org, as the Cordes case feeds directly into that ongoing debate over who should be trusted with the keys to a camera network originally sold as a crime-fighting tool.
