AI incident ·
Sedgwick, Kansas, Police Chief Reportedly Used Flock Safety License-Plate Readers 228 Times to Track Ex-Girlfriend and Her New Boyfriend
In brief
An AI system built by Surveillance technology developers, Flock Safety and 1 other and deployed by Sedgwick Police Department (Kansas), Police departments in the United States and 2 others allegedly harmed Unnamed boyfriend of Lee Nygaard's former girlfriend, Privacy and 1 other.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 1 report
What happened
From June to October 2023, Sedgwick, Kansas, Police Chief Lee Nygaard reportedly used Flock Safety license-plate readers 228 times to check the whereabouts of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, according to a Kansas certification order. The order said he also followed them in a police vehicle and ultimately admitted jealousy influenced his conduct. Nygaard resigned in October 2023 and later lost his police certification.
Editor's notes
(1) 06/24/2023 is used as the incident ID date, marking the earliest documented Flock search. (2) Searches of the boyfriend’s vehicle began 08/11/2023; the last documented searches occurred 10/05/2023 and 10/10/2023. (3) Nygaard resigned 10/20/2023; Kansas regulators revoked his law-enforcement certification on 08/12/2024. (4) The incident ID was created 09/23/2026.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (1)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Sedgwick Police Department (Kansas) Police departments in the United States Lee Nygaard Law enforcement
- Alleged developer
- Surveillance technology developers Flock Safety Automated license plate reader (ALPR) developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Unnamed boyfriend of Lee Nygaard's former girlfriend Privacy Lee Nygaard's unnamed former girlfriend
AI systems implicated
Surveillance technologyFlock Safety automated license plate reader systemAutomated license plate readers (ALPR)
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1705 on the AI Incident Database · all 1 report