Florida deputy used crime surveillance system to spy on girlfriend, records state

An Osceola County sheriff’s deputy arrested last week on charges of domestic battery and stalking used the sheriff’s office crime monitoring system to spy on his girlfriend, court records reveal.

Douglas Ford used software at the office’s Real-Time Crime Center to observe his girlfriend, an Osceola reserve deputy, through security cameras where she worked at the Criminal Justice Academy of Osceola.

An audit done by the sheriff’s office found Ford had accessed the crime center’s database on 10 different days between July 2023 and May 2024 and had used it mostly for live viewing on security cameras in and around the academy, which trains aspiring officers. The longest time he remained on the cameras was for three hours and 40 minutes, according to his arrest affidavit.

That affidavit is one of several documents the Orlando Sentinel obtained from court records giving a fuller picture of the allegations against Ford, whose arrest was announced last Tuesday. The Sentinel is not naming the girlfriend because she is alleged to be a victim of abuse.

A forensic search of their phones showed Douglas had sent multiple messages to his girlfriend telling her he was watching her. He had also sent several photos of her taken from the security cameras as early as July 2023.

In May, Douglas struck his girlfriend in the arm in the academy parking lot after she pulled away when he grabbed her wrist, an incident caught on security cameras. Academy director Guy Samuelson witnessed the aftermath of the incident, according to the affidavit. Ford sent the girlfriend another photo of her taken from security cameras the following day.

The girlfriend told investigators the incident resulted from Ford seeing her in the police vehicle of a Kissimmee Police Department officer. She said he called and threatened to perform a precision immobilization maneuver on the vehicle unless they pulled over. Such a maneuver, in which one driver uses their vehicle to strike and immobilize another vehicle, can be highly dangerous.

Several days following the incident, Samuelson filed a written complaint about Ford’s behavior with the sheriff’s office, describing Ford’s surveillance of the girlfriend, which she had told him about. The girlfriend moved to a different location and disabled GPS tracking in her car, believing Ford was tracking her. It’s unclear whether the affidavit meant she moved her residence or her workplace.

The Real-Time Crime Center, which opened in 2021, has access to surveillance cameras around Osceola County.

“If you don’t think Big Brother is watching you — come on, you’re on the wrong planet,” Sheriff Marcos López said at the time. “If you are a criminal … you better believe, we’re going to use every investigative tool to watch you and make sure we suppress that.”

Ford has been charged with domestic battery, aggravated assault and 10 counts of accessing a computer system without authority, according to court records. He pleaded not guilty on Friday. A judge denied a motion from prosecutors to keep him in custody until his trial.

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