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A Sedgwick, Kansas, police chief used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles 228 times over four-plus months and used his police vehicle to follow them out of town, according to a city official and a report released this week by the agency that oversees police certifications.
Lee Nygaard admitted to misusing Flock while he was being investigated for an unrelated misconduct case, a Sedgwick official said. He then resigned.
The license plate readers alert officers of specific license plates and vehicle types they might be looking for. Police can also use the system to search for vehicles.
Flock, which has license plates readers in 4,000-plus cities across the country , would not agree to a phone interview and wouldn’t say how many instances of police abuse of the cameras have occurred.
“While it is the job of law enforcement to hold the general population accountable to the laws, ultimately, it is the job of our elected and appointed officials to hold law enforcement agencies accountable to local and state laws that govern the use and misuse of policing technology,” Flock spokesperson Holly Beilin said in response to questions.
Flock said it wasn’t formally notified of this incident but would not say more about that.
It’s the second instance of police misusing the cameras that has been publicly reported. The first also happened in Sedgwick County when a lieutenant in Kechi used Wichita police’s Flock cameras to stalk his estranged wife.
He was sentenced to 18 months of probation.
Nygaard won’t face any charges, but he did lose his police certification.
He resigned Oct. 20, 2023. He used Flock cameras to check for his ex-girlfriend’s whereabouts 164 times from June 24 to Oct. 5, 2023, and her new boyfriend’s whereabouts 64 times from Aug. 11 to Oct. 10, 2023, according to the order from the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training that revoked his license.
Nygaard had been with the department since September 2020, just about all of that time as chief.
He could not be reached for comment.
Finding out about Flock
City adminstrator Kyle Nordick said Nygaard, “by his own admission,” said he had misused Flock when he was being investigated for an unrelated misconduct case.
The unrelated misconduct case was “substantiated and further provided evidence that he was unfit to wear the shield,” Nordick said in an email. He would not say what the unrelated misconduct was.
About Nygaard being able to misuse Flock, Nordick said they placed a lot of trust in him as police chief.
“Unfortunately, he proved not to be trustworthy,” he said.
Nygaard also used his police vehicle to “follow (his ex-girlfriend) and her new boyfriend outside of Sedgwick” and on “other occasions to follow the female and male to ‘keep tabs’ on them,”’ the order says.
He “confronted the female ... and told her to get back to town,” the order says.
He initially claimed he was following them because of drug issues but “ultimately admitted that jealousy was involved in his decision to do so,” the order says.
Misusing the cameras
Nordick said Nygaard’s case “did not appear to be sufficient to warrant a criminal investigation; however, it certainly was a violation of the ethics policy of both the City of Sedgwick and the standard of conduct in which officers are held accountable.”
“The City of Sedgwick takes great pride in creating an office of integrity and has taken necessary steps to ensure things like this do not happen again in our community,” he said.
Nygaard used Sedgwick’s Flock cameras only when tracking his ex and her new boyfriend, Nordick said.
Victor Heiar, the former Kechi lieutenant, got 18 months of probation after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in computer crime and stalking in that case. He tapped into Wichita police’s Flock cameras on Oct. 23, 2022, to track his estranged wife’s movements from Sept. 23, 2022 until that day.
He was caught after the victim made complaints that, based on Heiar’s texts, she felt she was being followed.
Wichita police banned Kechi Police Department from accessing its Flock cameras after that.
In a November 2022 interview about the Kechi incident, Flock told The Eagle that was the first time they learned about an officer abusing the cameras. A Google search doesn’t reveal any other cases, making this appear to be the second one publicly reported.
Flock originally sent a three-sentence statement. The company eventually did send a follow-up to additional questions in an email.
“Our platform requires a search justification for every search, providing robust tracking and auditing capabilities,” Beilin said in the original statement. “We also offer a first-of-its-kind (automatic license plate recognition) Transparency Portal for law enforcement to publicly display their usage and policies around the (license plate recognition) system. We encourage all of our law enforcement partners to create and follow usage policies that align with their local laws and regulations.”
The former Kechi officer used several different reasons for his search, which never got flagged. Those reasons, according to a court document, included “test” and “invest” and “investigation” and “ab501” and “123abv” and “****.”
Nygaard’s reasons included “suspicious” and “missing child” and “drug investigation” and “drugs” and “narcotics investigation” and “suspicious activity” and “drug invest” and “drug use,” according to the KSCPOST order.
How to prevent abuse of Flock?
Nordick said Nygaard’s successor, Bryan Hall, is looking at adopting a policy to prevent future misuse of Flock cameras.
Sedgwick, a small town of roughly 1,600 people just 15 miles north of Wichita, has used Flock since 2021.
Nordick said they have only two cameras after stopping use of two others. The contract on the remaining cameras is up for discussion next year.
“If results do not improve, they will more than likely be terminated as well,” he wrote in an email, adding that this incident played a role in their cutting back on the cameras. He added that the “annual fee associated with Flock was not justifiable in terms of results.”
Wichita police have said Flock is effective and has helped solve multiple murder cases.
In Kansas, the locations of the cameras are a secret and will stay that way after Wichita police Capt. Casey Slaughter, then the president of the Kansas Fraternal Order of Police, successfully lobbied the Legislature to keep that information hidden.
Wichita police’s Flock cameras have been been searched 1,540 times in the last 30 days , according to the transparency portal.
Wichita audits police searches, but they do not scrutinize each search. When asked at a June 8 police town hall meeting if they investigate every individual search, Wichita police Lt. Brian Safris said: “That’s not even possible.”
Wichita police also plan to adopt Flock’s gunshot detection sensors after testing them secretly for a couple years.
Contributing: Eduardo Castillo with The Eagle
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