Police Chief Used Flock Cameras to Stalk His Ex

For more than a year, Marci Bakely believed someone was secretly tracking her movements. Grocery trips, doctor’s appointments, even nights out could be followed within minutes by unsettling messages from her ex-boyfriend, Michael Steffman, who was also the police chief of Braselton, Georgia. She searched her home for hidden cameras and had mechanics inspect her car three separate times for a tracker, but they found nothing. The device following her wasn’t attached to her car at all, it was mounted along the roads she drove. Flock automatic license-plate readers photograph passing vehicles, record their location and time, and make those sightings searchable to participating law-enforcement agencies. When Bakely eventually examined publicly available search logs, she found roughly 600 searches involving her vehicle and her teenage daughter’s over about 13 months, including dozens conducted late at night. In November 2025, Steffman was arrested and charged with stalking, harassing communications, violation of oath, and offenses related to misuse of license-plate-reader systems; the allegations were never tested at trial because officials said he died by suicide in April 2026. But Bakely’s case exposed a much larger concern. A Washington Post investigation cited in the script found at least 50 officers charged with or accused of misusing license-plate-reader systems, with wives, girlfriends, exes, new partners, or women they wanted to meet among the subjects in 26 cases. This is the disturbing story of how technology designed to find stolen cars and criminal suspects can also create an extraordinarily detailed trail of an ordinary person’s movements, and what can happen when someone with access decides to use that power for something personal.