Six employees of one Georgia sheriff’s office. Arrested in a single summer. All for the same thing: misusing Flock license plate cameras.
The latest two — Investigator Sean Morrow and Deputy Jose Ferrer — were arrested August 31, booked into the Charles B. Webster Detention Center, and fired from the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office in Augusta.
What happened
Investigators say both men knowingly accessed the department’s Flock system to search license plates for reasons unrelated to legitimate law enforcement. No case number. No investigative purpose. Each faces charges of misusing license plate readers and violating his oath of office.
And note Morrow’s rank: investigator. The position that’s supposed to catch misuse, not commit it.
Morrow and Ferrer were not alone — they were the fifth and sixth arrests in a Flock investigation that has consumed the department since June.
The audit that started it all
The story began with a routine internal audit of the department’s Flock system in June. It flagged unauthorized activity, and that flag led to Deputy Jaquarius Yarbrough of the transportation division.
Court records say Yarbrough searched the plate of a woman he’d had a past relationship with 1,639 times over 28 days — tracking her movements after the relationship ended. For context: that’s more than double the 717 searches that got a Florida sergeant national attention. One deputy nearly tripled it. Yarbrough was arrested and fired June 26, and his case has been cited nationally as an example of license-plate-reader privacy risks.
Then July 20 brought three more arrests in a single day: Lieutenant John McKenzie, Investigator Curtis Hoskins, and Deputy Joshua Johnson — all fired, all facing the same charges. Outside reporting indicates each ran more than 100 unauthorized searches.
One office, ten weeks, six arrests
Six arrests in ten weeks at one department — a department big enough that its own deputies get booked into its own detention center. And the Flock cases aren’t even the department’s only self-inflicted wound: Major Robbie Silas was arrested by Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents September 1 on unrelated charges, in a case we covered in full on this channel.
The Flock arrests themselves were made by the department’s own criminal investigators — one internal unit arresting its own colleagues.
Sheriff Eugene Brantley has said the department remains committed “to the integrity and accountability of every member.” Six arrests later, Augusta is asking what that commitment was doing in June.
Every Flock search demands a typed reason. Six employees apparently typed whatever they wanted — until one audit read them all.
What happens next
Morrow and Ferrer face the same two charges as the four deputies before them. Court dates have not been announced. This story is developing — we’ll update as the cases move.
So the question isn’t whether this can happen in your town. It’s whether anyone has bothered to run the audit. Who watches the watchers where you live?
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