Zachary Klein: Lufkin Cop Searched His Ex’s Plate 10,000 Times — Nobody Noticed For 18 Months

A Texas police officer now sits in a county jail, indicted on more than one hundred counts. And the whole case traces back to one number: ten thousand. That’s how many times prosecutors say he searched one woman’s license plate.

What happened

Zachary Klein, 32, was a Lufkin police officer — day shift, crash investigations. On August 14, a public records request landed at the department asking specifically about his use of the Flock camera system. When the department audited his account, what they found stopped them cold.

According to the arrest affidavit, the searches were “inconsistent with criminal investigations.” One plate in particular stood out: his ex-girlfriend’s. Searched more than 10,000 times, stretching over a year and a half.

The pattern investigators found

On August 18, a Lufkin officer told a Texas Ranger that Klein had searched multiple plates more than a thousand times each — and several of those plates belonged to people Klein knew personally. Remember his actual job: day-shift crash investigations. No long-term criminal cases. None of the people whose plates he searched were part of any Lufkin investigation, past or current.

The searches were run from a cell phone. Klein was never issued a department phone — this was his personal device. The timestamps showed searches at nearly all hours of the day and night. A day-shift crash investigator, running plate searches in the middle of the night, from his couch, on people he knew.

The woman at the center

The ex-girlfriend told Rangers the two had dated twice — once starting in 2022, again in 2023. She described Klein as obsessed with the idea she was cheating on him, and said he would often go through her phone.

And she knew something else: Klein sometimes got Flock alerts on his phone. He’d told her about the system himself. She knew exactly how he was watching her.

It wasn’t just her. Rangers interviewed everyone whose plate Klein had searched more than a hundred times. Almost every single one was connected to her — family members, men she’d dated, even her romantic interests. Her family members’ vehicles: searched. Vehicles she sometimes borrowed: searched. One witness whose truck Klein searched repeatedly had been communicating with the ex-girlfriend around March 2025.

And here’s where it gets darker: the affidavit says Klein once threatened to find a man she’d previously been with. Investigators confirmed it — he searched that man’s plate, too. Another witness told Rangers his soon-to-be ex-wife had a relationship with Klein in early 2025. Her plate was searched, too.

So picture the shape of this case. One woman at the center. Her family. Her past. Her present. Every human connection she had, mapped out through a police surveillance database.

The charges

August 20, Klein was booked into the Angelina County Jail. Bond: $700,000. The grand jury came back with more than 100 counts across three felony charges: tampering with governmental records, abuse of official capacity, and misuse of official information.

What happens next

Lufkin police didn’t just suspend Klein. Chief Travis Brazil suspended the department’s entire Flock camera system while the investigation continues — one officer’s alleged behavior took a surveillance tool offline for an entire city. A second officer has been placed on leave as part of the same investigation.

Klein’s arraignment date has not been set. His attorney has not publicly commented.

But here’s the question that should stick with you: this wasn’t caught by internal oversight. Nobody at the department noticed 10,000 searches. It took a public records request from outside the building. Who’s asking the questions where you live?

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