Deputy charged with misusing Flock database
By James Stratton
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KENOSHA, Wisconsin (WISN) — A now-resigned Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office deputy faces felony charges after prosecutors say he searched a romantic partner more than a dozen times to track her whereabouts in the Flock camera network, a license-plate reader database.
Frank McGrath faces two counts of misconduct in public office. The Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office filed the criminal complaint late Wednesday.
Racine County Sheriff’s Office investigators started a criminal investigation in February.
Prosecutors allege an internal audit of the Flock license plate reader camera system showed Deputy Frank McGrath searched “16 to 17” times on Sept. 30, 2025, while off duty.
“Defendant McGrath listed the search reason as ‘Suspicious’ for all queries and left the case number field blank,” the criminal complaint reads.
12 News Investigates also obtained internal investigative documents from the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office through a public records request.
“He admitted the searches were not related to any criminal investigation or law-enforcement function,” the internal review documents say. “He acknowledged he used the system specifically to determine the whereabouts of [redacted] during a period of relationship conflict. He described escalating jealousy leading up to the incident, including concerns related to a close male coworker of [redacted] whom she had recently fallen out with.”
The woman, according to the investigative documents and the criminal complaint, is also a Kenosha County sheriff’s deputy.
Prosecutors also allege McGrath used another internal GPS location system to track the deputy’s body camera location and squad car location roughly 40 times between July 18, 2025 and Oct. 23, 2025.
Prosecutors say he told the victim her exact location and stated, “I know everything,” while she was parked squad-to-squad with another deputy behind a county salt shed.
Internal investigative documents show McGrath admitted to searching the location of the squad car, “… including while he was off duty, for purely personal and jealousy-driven reasons (to see where she was, who she was sitting with, and which deputies she was working near).”
McGrath resigned in December, according to Kenosha County Human Resources.
McGrath did not answer his phone Wednesday. WISN 12 News knocked on the door of an address listed for him and left a business card there as well. Thursday, at another address listed for McGrath, someone told a 12 News crew to stay off the property.
Text messages recovered in the investigation, according to the criminal complaint, show he texted the victim acknowledging lying about his use of Flock.
“In the text messages, Defendant McGrath stated that his actions ‘got out of hand,’ that he ‘lost control,’ and that running her plate 17 times ‘makes me look really bad,'” the complaint states.
Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office did not agree to an interview. 12 News Investigates asked if they plan to review the Flock policy or add any guardrails to the system, but they did not answer that question Wednesday.
The sheriff’s office posted a press release to social media late Wednesday. The sheriff’s office says, following the incident the office added more safeguards to the Flock Safety system. Those changes include adding any sworn supervisor as an auditor to the system, requiring personnel to document a legitimate law-enforcement reason and case number before searching, reducing data retention from 30 days to a week, and requiring all deputies to complete new training and review policy requirements.
McGrath is set for an initial appearance on Sept. 17, according to court records. WISN 12 News is using his department photo because he has not been booked into the Kenosha County Jail, so no booking photo is available.
McGrath is the third officer in southeastern Wisconsin to face charges for allegedly misusing the technology. A judge sentenced Milwaukee Police officer Josue Ayala to probation for tracking an ex-girlfriend. Milwaukee Internal Affairs Detective Tehrangi Chapman faces a felony charge. Plus, the Racine County District Attorney is reviewing potential charges for two officers there.
“People are realizing, ‘oh this can be abused and we don’t want that,’ and ‘oh my gosh it’s everywhere,'” said U-W Madison Professor Dorothea Salo who researches IT and technology.
Salo believes the safeguards the sheriff’s office put in place make for a good step forward. She says the public scrutiny of the technology is adding to awareness.
“I don’t think the uptick we’re seeing right now is actually due to a rate of change in how much police misuse surveillance technology, it’s just becoming more apparent because of all of the scrutiny on these ALPR systems,” she said.
Flock did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
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