FirstAlerts

4 Former Georgia Police Employees Charged in Flock License Plate Reader Misuse Case

The GBI alleges the four accessed the Flock Safety System for non-law enforcement purposes. The case remains undecided.

2 reports on this incident · first at Aug 21, 2026, 10:49 p.m. ET

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 21, 2026, 10:42 p.m. ETWritten Aug 21, 2026, 10:52 p.m. ET
Four former Georgia police employees have been in connection with the alleged misuse of a license plate reader system, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) as reported by WRDW. The matter is at the charging stage and has not been resolved; no trial date has been announced. The GBI alleges that Marquis Dillard, 48, of Savannah; Donald Phillips, 23, of Fleming; Matthew Rich, 39, of Savannah; and Calandic Thomas, 34, of Pooler accessed the Flock Safety System for non-law enforcement purposes. Each faces two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office, according to WRDW. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The case is undecided and remains at the charging stage.

Earlier reports

  1. Aug 21, 2026, 10:49 p.m. ETFirst report

    Four Former Georgia Police Employees Charged in Flock License Plate Reader Misuse Case

    Four former employees of a Georgia police department have been charged in connection with the alleged misuse of a license plate reader system, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) as reported by WRDW.

    The charges, filed on August 22, 2026, include two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system and one count of violation of oath of office, per WRDW. The defendants are Marquis Dillard, 48, of Savannah; Donald Phillips, 23, of Fleming; Matthew Rich, 39, of Savannah; and Calandic Thomas, 34, of Pooler.

    The GBI alleges the four accessed the Flock Safety System for non-law enforcement purposes. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The matter is at the charging stage and has not been resolved; no trial or plea has occurred.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 122 Aug 2026, 02:52current

    First published.

  2. Version 122 Aug 2026, 02:49current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.