The Milledgeville Police Department is down a detective after Maj. Brandon Sellers was fired following his arrest last week, Chief Dray Swicord confirmed to The Baldwin Bulletin.
Sellers, 48, had led the MPD’s criminal investigations division for the past two years. The department has not named an interim replacement, and Swicord said “it’s currently a team effort.”
Sellers, a former field operations commander for the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, was charged with one count of violation of oath by a public officer and one count of misuse of captured license plate data. The first charge is a felony, while the latter is a misdemeanor.
Despite being a felony, prison time is rare for those convicted of violating their oath as a public officer. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections’ database, only three people in the state are currently serving prison sentences for the charge.
Sellers is the latest Georgia law enforcement officer to be arrested in connection with the alleged personal misuse of Flock license plate reader data.
The Flock database allows law enforcement officers to track vehicle locations and commuting patterns.
It is not immediately clear exactly what Sellers allegedly did. The incident report was brief, and no supplemental report was available. What is known is that another “employee of the Milledgeville Police Department” became concerned about Sellers’ activity and brought those concerns to Swicord. An internal inquiry followed, ultimately leading to Sellers’ arrest.
“We will not tolerate the misuse of Flock technology in any manner,” Swicord said.
Roughly 20 Georgia law enforcement officers have been arrested in the past month and a half for misusing the Flock database.
Milledgeville and Baldwin County currently have about 30 Flock cameras.
That number includes Flock cameras used to catch speeders in school safety zones. The wave of arrests involving law enforcement officers has also sparked growing backlash against the camera system.
Some citizens have been more vocal than others, with incidents of Flock cameras being sawed off, damaged, or stolen reported across the country this summer.
In Taylor County, someone sawed off a Flock camera and stole it before it became operational.
In Barrow County, three Flock cameras were recently destroyed.