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They are well aware this is happening.

I told them I'd be driving through Lynn Haven later today, and that the City was on express notice that its Flock cameras were about to capture my vehicle again.

I also reminded them of something they already know, because I obtained Flock's "Investigative Summary" through a public record request.

It shows a capital letter "I" in my license plate photo got transposed to the number 1 by the camera's optical character reader (OCR).

That's not my plate number. But the City keeps sharing it anyway.

City officials know this happens. They it happened to me specifically. They continue to disseminate the false information anyway.

Here's something most people don't know: even when Flock gets the plate right, sharing that image or data is still illegal.

Florida Law: LPR Images/Data is Confidential

Fla. Statute 316.0777 designates images/data captured by license plate readers (LPRs) as CONFIDENTIAL whenever they contain personal identifying information (PII). That includes vehicle characteristics that can be traced back to you.

Bumper stickers. Scratches. Dents. The stuff that makes your car YOUR car instead of just any car.

Last December, a Flock representative told the Lynn Haven Commission, on the record, that the company's Vehicle Fingerprint technology can track individuals even without a readable license plate.

Given how OCR mangles the plate number in the first place, that's not a bug they're apologizing for. It's the business model.

And certainly not to a national sharable database accessible to more than 6,000 agencies.

The Florida Legislature didn't leave the reasoning to guesswork. Its Public Necessity Statement attached to Statute 316.0777 says confidentiality is required because the disclosure:

1. May jeopardize safety by letting third parties track a person's history and compile a driving history.
2. Constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
3. May be defamatory.

Read that again. The Legislature anticipated exactly what's happening and built a state to prevent it.

Why it’s a Fourth Amendment Violation

Set Florida's privacy law aside for a moment because there's a deeper problem:

Agencies are storing this data longterm in a searchable format that guilds a travel history without a warrant on everyday Americans.

That's an established Fourth Amendment violation.

The Supreme court has already walked this road. GPS tracking in United States v. Jones (2012). Cell-site location tracking in Carpenter v. United States (2018). Geofence tracking in Chatrie (2026).

Different technology each time: a device on a car, a phone company's cell records a Google location dragnet. But the same reasoning:.

That logic doesn't stop at a camera bolted to a traffic pole. The Fourth Amendment guarantees our freedom from unreasonable searches.

If it's reasonable for police to create a searchable driving history on every American without a warrant, what would be considered unreasonable? What's left?

I sent the City another notice today before I drive through Lynn Haven. I asked them to preserve every record generated by today's capture. All the images, OCR output, metadata, Fingerprint data, queries, access logs, disclosure records. All of it.

Not because I expect them to comply. Because I expect them not to. And I want the paper trail to prove it.

The public backlash against this kind of virtual dragnet is just getting started. The momentum across the country is growing exponentially.

Elected officials who dig in their heels on the wrong side of history here have two options:

Get removed from office, or spend every day trying to justify the unjustifiable to an outraged public that demands they follow the Supreme Law of the Land.

I am writing to request that the City of Lynn Haven promptly stop including my vehicle-related data in the City’s Flock Safety system or any other automated license plate reader (“ALPR” or “LPR”) system that captures, retains, indexes, shares, or makes vehicle data available for retrospective search.

This request applies to my vehicle’s true license plate, the incorrect OCR-derived plate associated with me, vehicle images, date/time/location data, and any vehicle-linked identifiers or “vehicle fingerprint” characteristics used to recognize or re-identify my vehicle.

I am not asking the City to disable all cameras or abandon lawful public-safety operations. I am requesting a narrow, individual-specific safeguard because the City’s Flock investigative material has already associated two different plate readings with me through an OCR-related error. That error demonstrates the real risk that false vehicle information can be generated, stored, searched, and disseminated through a shared system.

My request is grounded in Fla. Stat. § 316.0777, which provides that ALPR images and data are confidential and exempt when they contain or provide personal identifying information.

The public-necessity statement enacted with § 316.0777 is particularly important. (See a screenshot of the exact text at the bottom of this email.)

The Legislature found a public necessity to protect both

1. Images and data containing personal identifying information obtained through use of an ALPR system; and

2. Personal identifying information in data generated from those images.

The Legislature listed the dangers

• be defamatory to an individual;

• jeopardize an individual’s safety by allowing a third party to track that person’s movements;

• permit a third party to compile a history of where that person has driven;

• constitute an unwarranted invasion into an individual’s personal life and privacy; and

• create harms that outweigh any public benefit derived from widespread and unregulated public access.

Those are not hypothetical concerns in my situation. The City’s Flock investigative material has already associated an incorrect OCR-derived plate with me.

If the City retains, indexes, or shares both my true plate and the incorrect plate, the system can create a false association that is searchable by plate, vehicle image, date/time/location history, or vehicle-linked characteristics.

That creates precisely the risks identified by the Legislature: false or defamatory association, persistent tracking, compilation of travel history, and exposure of sensitive information throughout a broad network.

Personal Identifying Information (PII)

The Legislature also did not limit the confidentiality protection to information visibly printed in a raw camera image or to classic identity-theft credentials such as a Social Security number. It expressly recognized that personal identifying information may exist in data generated from ALPR images.

As Flock represented during the City Commission presentation on December 30, 2025, the system uses Fingerprint technology logs vehicle characteristics to recognize and locate the same vehicle even if a plate is removed, altered, swapped, obscured, or misread. Features such as vehicle configuration, racks, toolboxes, decals, bumper stickers, or other distinctive visual characteristics may function as searchable identifiers when the system uses them to re-identify the same vehicle across time and locations.

The issue is not whether a vehicle feature is identical to a driver’s license or Social Security number. It is whether the feature, alone or combined with plate, image, time, and location data, enables the system or its users to identify, single out, re-identify, locate, or track a particular vehicle and thereby the associated person. In a shared retrospective-search system, those features can do exactly that.

This is why I dispute any suggestion that the identity-theft definition of “personal identification information” in Chapter 817 controls the meaning of “personal identifying information” in § 316.0777. The statutes use different language, address different problems, and § 316.0777 does not incorporate Chapter 817’s definition. Chapter 817 concerns identity theft and direct identity credentials.

Section 316.0777 concerns ALPR surveillance data, including identifying information generated from ALPR images and used to identify or track a person through a vehicle.

Florida PROHIBITS sharing Flock data with only two exceptions:

Section 316.0777 does not authorize unrestricted dissemination merely because data is housed in a law-enforcement technology platform. Its disclosure language is limited. As I understand it, the statute only permits disclosure:

1. by or to a criminal justice agency in the performance of official duties; or

2. to the individual who is the subject of the data.

I am the individual whose data is at issue, and I have not authorized the City to make my data broadly available through a shared, retrospective-searchable network. The City’s placement of my true plate, incorrect OCR-derived plate, vehicle images, location history, and vehicle-linked identifiers into a system accessible by a large number of outside agencies is not self-justifying under the “official duties” exception.

For each agency, user, query, alert, export, or other disclosure involving my data, the City should be able to identify:

• the recipient;

• whether that recipient is a qualifying criminal justice agency;

• the specific official-duty purpose;

• the date and scope of access;

• the information disclosed;

• and the audit trail demonstrating that the disclosure complied with § 316.0777.

Absent that showing, broad shared-network availability appears to exceed the statute’s limited disclosure channels and resembles the widespread, inadequately controlled access that the Legislature identified as harmful.

My demand

Accordingly, I request that the City:

1. Stop collecting, retaining, indexing, sharing, or making available for retrospective search my true license plate, the OCR-derived incorrect plate associated with me, my vehicle images, and any vehicle-linked identifiers in Flock or any comparable system, except where the City can identify a specific lawful basis tied to an identified criminal-justice purpose.

2. Remove, disable, sequester, or clearly flag any existing record that falsely associates me or my vehicle with the incorrect OCR-derived plate.

3. Stop dissemination of my vehicle-related data to outside agencies through shared Flock access or any comparable interagency system unless the City can establish that the disclosure falls within one of § 316.0777’s authorized channels.

4. Preserve all records concerning my true plate, the incorrect plate, vehicle images, metadata, Vehicle Fingerprint or comparable identifier data, searches, alerts, hot-list entries, exports, audit logs, access logs, dissemination history, communications, policies, training materials, and correction efforts.

5. Provide a written response identifying:

• whether the City will grant this request;

• whether my data has been made available to outside agencies through Flock or any comparable system;

• each recipient or class of recipient that has accessed, received, searched, or been able to search my data;

• the City’s asserted legal basis for each category of disclosure; and

• the City’s procedure for correcting, flagging, sequestering, or removing an OCR-generated false plate association.

For clarity, I understand the City may decline this request. If it does, please treat this letter as formal notice that I dispute the City’s continuing handling and dissemination of my data under § 316.0777 and request preservation of all potentially relevant records.

Please provide a written response by August 29, 2026.

Sincerely,

Burnie Thompson

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It’s filtered through the lens of Left vs. Right, concluding that you shouldn’t align with the commies who oppose law-and-order so they can bring illegal aliens to the voting booth. Somehow, he turned the Fourth Amendment into a Slip-N-Slide to voter fraud.

The Fourth Amendment never shows up.

SCOTUS has already decided in United States v. Jones (2012) that tracking someone’s movements with a GPS device is a search requiring a warrant because cataloging a person’s travel history is clearly more intrusive than a single observation.

Justice Alito wrote in his concurrence that “Longer term GPS monitoring … impinges on expectations of privacy.”

Carpenter v. United States (2018) applied the Jones mosaic logic to cell-site data tracking and storage even though cell companies generated the records. The Court said government can’t side-step the Fourth Amendment by using third parties.

Chatrie v. United States (2026) punctuates Jones and Carpenter in two ways: (1) extending the mosaic/aggregation logic to a far shorter time window; and (2) stripping the third-party doctrine escape hatch.

The Court’s reasoning is simple: mosaic surveillance databases, regardless of the technology used to create them, require a warrant to avoid an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment.

But Walsh never mentions any of that. He wants you debating whether cameras catching bad guys outweighs your right to privacy. That’s just not the legal test.

The question is whether government may lawfully store and search a retroactive record of your movements without ever asking a judge first. Focusing on success stories misses the point entirely.

“Your phone already tracks you,” so what’s the problem?

Walsh leans on this comparison constantly, and it’s worth asking why so many people think it’s the gotcha question. It’s a false equivalence.

First, a private company logging your location is altogether different from government building a warrantless, searchable database of your movements for law enforcement purposes.

They’re governed by different laws, restrained by different mechanisms. One is a commercial agreement you can decline, governed by commercial privacy law. The other is a police search, governed by the Fourth Amendment.

Collapsing “a company knows things about you” into “the government may therefore surveil you without a warrant” is a non sequitur. The logic doesn’t follow.

Second, and more damning: the Supreme Court has already ruled on the phone comparison, and it went the other way.

The Carpenter decision held that historical cell-site location data is exactly the kind of comprehensive movement record that requires a warrant, not evidence that police using Flock is legal because your private phone already tracks you.

It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland logic. It’s inverted, topsy-turvy even. Consider this mock syllogism, Tweedledee style:

Major premise: Private companies already track our movements through our phones.

Minor premise: Flock cameras also track our movements.

Conclusion: Therefore, government may track our movements through Flock without a warrant.

Did you catch the flaws? First, we have the equivocation on the word “tracking” by not delineating between voluntary/private versus compulsory/government. Second, there’s that non sequitur again. Since private companies already track you, then government can too. It’s like comparing apples to semi-trucks.

It assumes private agreements set the legal ceiling for government searches, which is absurd.

That’s why the Carpenter and Chatrie decisions draw the line where Walsh and the Tweedledee syllogism pretend there isn’t one.

The recent Chatrie decision extended that logic to geofencing. The Court held even a two-hour window is a search requiring a warrant because the location data reveals the same kind of sensitive mosaic regardless of duration.

And the Court rejected the third-party doctrine argument outright, which is the actual news here, holding that data generated by apps on your phone remains your own for Fourth Amendment purposes, even though a third-party company like Google stores it.

Walsh even invokes the plain view doctrine, that there’s no expectation of privacy in what’s visible from a public road, without noticing that the Court has already distinguished a single public observation from the retroactive aggregation of thousands of them. That distinction is the central holding in Carpenter.

Everything gets filtered through left, right, and “commies”

Walsh can’t discuss Flock without turning it into a tribal loyalty test. Support government surveillance or you’re objectively aligned with people who “want criminals to get away with crimes.” Question Flock and you risk making “common cause” with communists.

The false dialectic is exhausting. And besides, until this century, it was the commies who wanted to spy on you. Republicans opposed government surveillance, and pointed to Orwell’s 1984 as a warning. Now it’s their instruction manual.

The reveal: it’s really about ICE

Walsh spends the back half of the podcast motive-hunting, insisting the left’s real objection to Flock isn’t privacy, it’s that the cameras help enforce immigration law. He spends too much time psychoanalyzing his opponents instead of engaging their claims.

Success stories are not a constitutional defense

Walsh strings together a list of cases where Flock helped catch criminals. Even if we concede every one of them, it doesn’t cure the constitutional violation of our right to travel our roads free from government’s prying eyes.

Acknowledging the utility of Flock is a moot point if it requires an illegal search. Police can’t break the law in order to enforce the law.

The tone: certitude as a substitute for rigor

Walsh relishes ridiculing those who disagree about Flock. But snark doesn’t substitute for analysis. The whole vibe was lame, and didn’t even seem all that authentic. It felt like more of a space saver to get to the end of the show.

False dichotomies, wall to wall

Support Flock or side with open borders. Trust the cameras or get rid of your phones. Nuance gets bifurcated by Walsh, who is always telling you which way the smart people go.

Comparing the best of his side to the worst of yours

Watch what he does with the Dunwoody gymnastics-room incident. A Flock executive pulls up footage of a children’s gym during what the company claims was a sales demo, and Walsh spends real energy defending the man’s honor against online commenters who called it something worse.

Notice the move: he holds the company to the benefit of the doubt while holding random commenters to their very worst framing. And he never even acknowledges the basic point: we don’t want Flock execs peeping at our kids in a children’s gym.

Walsh ignores confidentiality laws

Not once does Walsh mention that a handful of states, Florida among them, have designated LPR data and images containing personal identifying information (PII) as confidential. Here’s the relevant portion of Fla. Statute 316.0777.

The Legislature wrote a public necessity statement acknowledging that LPR images and data can contain personal identifying information (PII) that could “jeopardize the safety of an individual by allowing a third party to track a person’s movements and compile a history on where a person has driven. This exemption is necessary because the public disclosure of such information constitutes an unwarranted invasion into the personal life and privacy of a person.”

Agencies are sharing these confidential LPR images and data in ways that violate Florida law as well as their own policies. It’s beyond ripe for legal challenges.

10. “Elect better people” is not a safeguard as much as it is a surrender

Walsh’s actual policy proposal, buried at the end, is to elect people who won’t abuse the system and punish those who do.

A safeguard that depends on the character of whoever’s in office next isn’t a safeguard at all. And besides, it’s individual police officers who are searching the Flock databases.

Walsh’s list of success stories was never going to address whether the government may search the whole of our movements without a warrant. He defends Flock as a useful tool. Nobody’s arguing the tool doesn’t work.

The argument is whether the Constitution authorizes the search in the first place.

SCOTUS has already decided that government needs a warrant to aggregate our travel history in a searchable database even if it’s collected and maintained by a third party.

That reasoning applies to GPS trackers (Jones, 2012). It applies to cell-site tracking (Carpenter, 2018). It applies to geofencing (Chatrie, 2026).

Flock supporters say the exact same logic doesn’t apply to AI database cameras until the Supreme Court explicitly says so.

Actually, Walsh didn’t say the same logic doesn’t apply. He just ignored it completely.

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• Judge Mark Walker ruled that body-camera footage supports the allegation that officers entered the plaintiffs’ fenced backyard without a warrant.

• The court rejected claims that Sara Moon was unlawfully detained at the front door, dismissing all false-imprisonment counts with prejudice.

• Claims for unconstitutional search, retaliation, concealment of evidence, trespass, and conspiracy remain against multiple individual defendants.

• Sheriff Tommy Ford remains a defendant only on an official-capacity claim alleging post-search falsification and concealment of evidence.

• A sanctions motion filed by Panama City Police Lt. Richard Thore was denied, though the court warned plaintiffs that any repleading must be done in good faith.

Panama City, FL — A federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Bay County media figure Burnie Thompson and his wife, Sara Moon, survived key dismissal challenges yesterday, though U.S. District Judge Mark Walker sharply narrowed the case and issued a pointed warning against overreaching as it moves into discovery.

In an 18-page order entered July 15, Judge Walker granted in part and denied in part motions to dismiss filed by Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford and several Bay County Sheriff’s Office deputies, along with separate motions filed by the City of Panama City and Panama City Police Lt. Richard Thore. He also denied a motion for sanctions jointly filed by the City and Thore.

Read the Judge’s order here:

Order On Mtd And Sanctions Thompson

246KB ∙ PDF file

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The result is a mixed but significant ruling. The lawsuit remains alive against every defendant except the City of Panama City, which now has no surviving claims against it.

The judge also rejected qualified immunity and Florida statutory immunity defenses at this early stage for the surviving individual-capacity claims. That does not mean those defenses are gone forever. It means only that, taking the complaint’s factual allegations as true at the pleading stage, the defendants were not yet entitled to dismissal on those grounds. Judge Walker specifically noted that they may raise immunity again later, once discovery allows them to contest the facts with evidence.

Now the lawsuit is much more focused than the one originally pleaded.

CLAIMS THAT SURVIVE

Against the individually named defendants, the remaining claims are:

• Count I, unconstitutional search under the Fourth Amendment;

• Count III, First Amendment retaliation;

• Count V, deliberate falsification and concealment of evidence;

• Count IX, trespass;

• Count X, conspiracy to violate constitutional rights; and

• Count XI, civil conspiracy.

Against Sheriff Ford in his official capacity, the only surviving claim is:

• Count VI, deliberate falsification and concealment of evidence.

THE STRONGEST WIN: THE BACKYARD SEARCH

The strongest plaintiff-side win in the order was the Fourth Amendment backyard-search theory. Judge Walker wrote that the body-camera footage “does show BCSO officers entering Plaintiffs’ enclosed backyard through a latched wooden fence,” and he held that the complaint adequately alleges an unconstitutional search. He agreed with the plaintiffs that the right to be free from such a search is foundational and clearly established.

The retaliation claim also survived. Judge Walker found that the plaintiffs adequately alleged protected journalistic speech, retaliatory conduct intended to chill that speech, and a causal chain connecting the reporting to the law-enforcement operation at the home. While the defense argued the causal chain was too attenuated, the court found the allegations sufficient at this stage.

The falsification-and-concealment claims survived as well, though not without visible judicial skepticism. Judge Walker wrote that the claim survives “however unconvincingly.” But he held that the complaint still alleges joint participation by the individual defendants in concealing or distorting evidence and alleges enough post-search conduct by Sheriff Ford to support the official-capacity version of that claim.

The conspiracy claims also remain, but barely. Judge Walker said the plaintiffs alleged enough to survive dismissal, though he added that he was “hard-pressed to believe” such an understanding or agreement was reached, “especially regarding Lieutenant Thore.” Though the allegations survive the pleading stage, the Court has signaled that the plaintiffs will need real evidence to carry them further.

COUNTS THAT WERE DISMISSED

On the other side of the ledger, the Court rejected the plaintiffs’ seizure and false imprisonment theories.

After reviewing the body-camera and security-camera footage, Judge Walker held that Sara Moon was not unconstitutionally seized and was not falsely imprisoned. He emphasized that the officers’ behavior at the front door appeared “friendly and non-threatening,” that no weapons were displayed, and that when Moon said she needed to leave, an officer responded, “that’s fine.” Because of that, all five false imprisonment counts were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they are gone. Count I survives only as a Fourth Amendment search claim, but not as a seizure claim.

The court also dismissed without prejudice the official-capacity claims for unconstitutional search, retaliation, and equal protection against Sheriff Ford, finding those allegations too conclusory to establish municipal liability. Judge Walker rejected the complaint’s broad references to policy, custom, failure to train, delegated final policymaker authority, and ratification as insufficiently specific. He likewise dismissed the abuse-of-process claim, concluding that the alleged conduct did not fit the legal contours of that Florida tort.

DEFENSE MOTION FOR SANCTIONS

Then there was the motion for sanctions.

That filing by the City of Panama City and Lt. Thore was a bold one. It argued that the allegations against them were so baseless, factually and legally, that sanctions should be imposed on the plaintiffs and their counsel. Judge Walker declined to go that far and denied the motion outright. He agreed that the seizure and false imprisonment allegations were contradicted by the video, but he would not say the conspiracy-related allegations were entirely devoid of factual support.

In other words, the sanctions motion failed. But the Court also made clear that the plaintiffs survived it only because their remaining theories still receive the presumption of truth at this stage.

A POINTED WARNING BY THE JUDGE

The warning to the plaintiffs was unmistakable. Judge Walker gave them until July 29 to replead any dismissed counts in good faith, but cautioned that “good faith” is the operative phrase. He added that he would not hesitate to place plaintiffs’ counsel under oath and inquire into the good-faith basis for any repleaded counts. That is not routine language. It reflects a judge willing to let substantial claims proceed, but unwilling tolerate exaggeration, speculation, or recycled theories unsupported by facts.

WHERE THE CASE STANDS NOW

The lawsuit was not dismissed. Far from it.

The heart of it remains: an alleged warrantless backyard search, an alleged retaliatory motive, alleged concealment of evidence, and surviving conspiracy and trespass claims. But the case is now narrower, more evidence-dependent, and less forgiving of overstatement than before.

Discovery is where the case will be proven or disproven on a full factual record, testing whether the surviving allegations hold up once both sides can contest them with evidence.

The federal lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Florida. Plaintiffs are represented by attorney Marie Mattox.

Defendants include Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford, Major Jimmy Stanford, Sergeant Stephen Rhinehart, Investigator Alvin Iler, Investigator Ryan Nelson, Investigator Krista Chastain, and Panama City Lt. Rich Thore.

Nearby Lynn Haven City Commissioner Jamie Warrick made Facebook post thanking law enforcement agencies for their professionalism and acknowledged the new technology as helpful. He promised to seek a balance between surveillance and privacy.

It was a classic non-sequitur. His logic does not follow.

A success story proves utility. It does not prove legality. The issue is whether police and local governments are complying with the Fourth Amendment and Florida law.

Success stories don’t cure violations under Fla. Stat. 316.0777, which makes license plate reader images and data confidential and exempt when combined with Flock’s AI Fingerprint technology.

That technology allows police to track individuals even without a license plate, classifying it as personal identifying information (PII).

By law, the data collected by automated license plater readers (ALPR’s) can ONLY be shared with the person associated with the license plate or with law enforcement in the course of official duties.

Police sharing Flock images on social media does not fall into either of those categories, and is therefore prohibited by Florida law.

That means even in urgent cases like an Amber Alert or violent-crime manhunt, the statute supports narrow law-enforcement sharing for official duties, not public posting, PR use, or unlimited network dissemination.

In other words, emergency use does not erase confidentiality.

If, in fact, the Panama City Police Department posted an actual license plate reader photo to Facebook, that appears to conflict with the law. These records are not supposed to become publicity material just because officials think it helps an investigation or public messaging.

And success stories certainly don’t erase the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Carpenter (2018) or Chatrie (2026), which are about the danger of applying powerful digital location tracking systems to the entire population.

The Carpenter decision held that powerful digital location tracking can trigger Fourth Amendment protection precisely because it’s so revealing and comprehensive. This month’s Chatrie decision continues the trend.

If anything, those cases matter more when the government points to a tool’s effectiveness as a reason to normalize broader surveillance on everyone.

And the argument that cars are in public so there’s no expectation of privacy falls short.

Older cases allowed limited public-road tracking, but the Carpenter decision recognized that prolonged, aggregated, technology-enabled tracking is different from ordinary observation.

The problem isn’t about a single snapshot. The problem is mass, searchable, historical movement tracking stored in a database.

Commissioner Warrick’s vague rhetoric about seeking common-sense policy is not a legal analysis. It’s political word candy. The rules are already in place, and they must follow them even if it’s expedient to break the law.

He says he supports oversight, but that’s not true.

At the last town hall, DeFlock Lynn Haven pointed out that 25 percent of Flock searches by Lynn Haven Police did not include the required reason or case number.

Commissioner Warrick dismissed the violation by explaining that when police try to enter that information, “the system goes down.”

I’ll end with this:

Success stories are often used as part of what I call The Set-Up: How Government Uses Other People’s Bad Behavior to Control You.

Good police work does not require the police to be lawbreakers themselves.

And being good citizens sometimes requires seeing through the bullshit as government justifies its totalitarian surveillance state.

July 9, 2026 - Marsy’s Law Attorney Hoot Crawford Loses Appeal. Here’s what it means.

July 10, 2026 - Mike Watkins gets nearly $800K salary to run nonprofit overseeing foster care and adoption at the NW Florida Health Alliance.

Arthur Cullen and Rendy Lovelady vote on his salary.

Cullen is the Treasuer and Secretary of the nonprofit that manages almost $300 MILLION a year.

July 9, 2026 - What is the TDC, County Commission, and Clerk of Court up to now?!

July 9, 2026 - Arthur “Dumpster Diver” Cullen is the TREASURER and Secretary of a nearly $300 MILLION nonprofit that oversees foster care, adoptions, and child protective services.

That’s how much the NW Florida Health Alliance receives annually.

Sheriff Ford’s made-man Cullen wears two hats on the board of directors. Let that sink in.

He and other board members like Rendy Lovelady and Reggie Johns provide oversight and make policy decisions over the fate of children and families.

CEO Mike Watkins gets an almost-$800K salary.

COO Courtney Stanford’s salary is nearly $300K.

The office is on Harrison Avenue in Downtown Panama City. Right across from the marijuana store and just a few blocks from Bay High School.

July 6, 2026 - This reform would fix Congress lickety-split!

I call it the Mission Impossible Act.

July 9, 2026 - These people are on the board of directors who oversee foster care and adoptions with a nearly $300 MILLION budget:

Arthur “Dumpster Diver” Cullen (Treasurer & Secretary) and Rendy Lovelady.

Watch out for the NW Florida Health Alliance and Twin Oaks.

Also known as Big Bend Community Care.

That’s who DCF contracts to place kids they take away from their parents.

July 10, 2026 - Watch out for the Gulf Coast Children's Advocacy Center, otherwise known as the Venus Flytrap of Bay County.

The amended federal complaint is a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit alleging constitutional and state law violations by state actors operating under the color of law. It was filed on October 16, 2025 in the Northern District of Florida.

Thompson has hosted The Burnie Thompson Show since 2007 and, since 2015, has focused most of his work on local watchdog journalism. He used his platform to report on corruption, abuse of power, and misconduct in local government and law enforcement. Moon, his wife, is described as an active part of that effort (“the brains behind the outfit”). She helped with research, investigations, reports, and online commentary that supported the show’s work.

For several years, Thompson and Moon had a cooperative relationship with Bay County Sheriff’s Office leadership. They shared information with Chief Deputy Joel Heape (the undersheriff who posed as a friend) and Major Jimmy Stanford (third in command) concerning a joint BCSO-FBI corruption investigation. But the complaint alleges that they ended this relationship once Thompson’s reporting began including court documents alleging misconduct involving Stanford.

The lawsuit points to the Lynn Haven corruption case (2020-2023) as a turning point. According to the complaint, Thompson began publicly questioning the integrity of that investigation and the conduct of Major Stanford who led the Sheriff’s high-profile crackdown on public corruption.

Stanford’s role in the case became controversial after it was learned in federal court that he had accepted gifts from local developer Derwin White (VP of GAC Contractors) who was a main target of the investigation.

Thompson reported that the federal Judge rebuked the Government’s multiple flawed indictments as “unprofessional, haphazard, and reckless.” This led to the Judge unsealing Grand Jury testimony, which showed several false allegations.

Beginning in April 2022, Thompson began calling the case against Anderson and Finch “malicious prosecution” and said it was politically compromised.

The lawsuit describes a pattern of escalating hostility soon after that.

On January 6, 2022, Thompson communicated through Facebook Messenger with former Mayor Anderson, who was then a defendant facing dozens of federal charges. They discussed court filings and information that supported his reporting on alleged misconduct by BCSO officials, including Stanford.

Just hours after that communication, BCSO Corporal Nicholas Macias accessed Thompson’s personal information in law-enforcement FCIC and NCIC databases even though Thompson was not under investigation and had no contact with police that would justify such a search.

The complaint says this was done in retaliation for Thompson’s journalism and source contact.

The lawsuit also describes a series of public posts Thompson made in April 2022 criticizing the conduct of BCSO and local officials. He publicly predicted that the Lynn Haven corruption case might collapse, accused investigators and prosecutors of making false statements and manipulating evidence, and criticized Sheriff Ford for supporting elected officials tied to the broader corruption controversy.

According to the complaint, these posts angered BCSO leadership.

One of the complaint’s key factual allegations is that on May 4, 2022, Chief Deputy Heape and Major Jimmy Stanford confronted Thompson in person at his office

and expressed anger about his reporting. This encounter marked a complete break in the relationship between Thompson and BCSO demonstrating a retaliatory motive.

The central event in the case occurred at the Plaintiffs’ home less than four months later on August 19, 2022. It was a Friday afternoon at 4:40 p.m.

There had been a string of vehicle burglaries in the North Lagoon area of Panama City Beach. BCSO later claimed it had received a tip that stolen AirPods were pinging from the Plaintiffs’ residence. But the complaint alleges that this story was false, pretextual, and contradicted by the timeline and by video evidence.

Earlier that day, at 12:46 p.m., a man named Zachary Roark came to the Plaintiffs’ house and aggressively knocked on the front door. She was alarmed, and didn’t answer.

According to the lawsuit, no actual exchange of AirPods occurred at any residence at that time, despite Roark’s later sworn statements indicating otherwise.

Almost four hours later, at 4:40 p.m., investigators and deputies swarmed the Plaintiffs’ front yard and surrounded their home. Two of them opened the wooden privacy gate and entered the backyard for eight minutes while five law-enforcement officers questioned Sara Moon at her front door.

Sergeant Rhinehart asked if someone had come by looking for AirPods. She said no but explained she had security video of some guy banging on the door. She described his white Infinity SUV and a woman in the passenger seat.

That’s when their demeanor changed.

Five minutes after surrounding Plaintiffs’ home, BCSO Dispatch was notified for the first time. Corporal Macias called in a “Signal 14” (information call) at 4:45 p.m. while searching the backyard with Investigator Alvin Iler.

Forty-five minutes earlier, BCSO Sergeant Stephen Rhinehart called Panama City Police Lieutenant Richard Thore at 4 p.m. They spoke for nine minutes. The lawsuit indicates that Lt. Thore is the Plaintiffs’ neighbor. He had surveillance cameras aimed at the backyard area. Plaintiffs allege that Thore had previously told them he monitors comings and goings in the neighborhood.

According to the complaint, no warrant was issued to search the residence. The Plaintiffs say there were no exigent circumstances and no consent to enter their private backyard.

The lawsuit alleges that Moon was not free to leave as her driveway was blocked with law-enforcement vehicles lining her street. She was effectively detained with five officers looking for stolen AirPods.

The contact at the front door was not a harmless “knock and talk,” but a coordinated distraction. BCSO Sgt. Rhinehart was directing the on-scene operation while PCPD Lt. Thore played the friendly neighbor, occupying her attention during the backyard search.

Lt. Thore later claimed he tried to tell deputies they had the wrong house. But the Plaintiffs say that explanation is false and contrived. They allege that Thore knew which house was theirs, and had conspired to target them with Rhinehart beforehand during their nine-minute phone call.

Three weeks later, Plaintiffs met with Sheriff Ford, Major Stanford, and Captain Jason Daffin for an hour to ask about the incident. Sheriff Ford and his top investigators told Plaintiffs that deputies had exigent circumstances to enter their private backyard. They cited officer safety and the need to prevent a possible escape out the back door.

The Plaintiffs allege that the August 19 incident did not happen in isolation.

It was the culmination of months of escalating retaliation in early 2022 for their reporting and criticism of local law enforcement. Only four months earlier, Major Stanford and Chief Deputy Heape ended their relationship with Thompson when they left his office in frustration over his coverage of the prosecution against the former Lynn Haven mayor and contractor.

After the August 19 incident, the Plaintiffs filed several public records requests. But instead of receiving transparency, they allegedly encountered obstruction.

The amended complaint accuses BCSO of delaying or denying records for months, redacting important information, withholding body-camera footage, and altering or omitting key details from transcripts and records.

Sheriff Ford himself sent Thompson letters explaining the decisions involving public records, and the actions of his deputies in Plaintiffs’ neighborhood on August 19, 2022.

In January 2023, the Plaintiffs filed an Internal Affairs complaint. Three months later, Sheriff Ford decided the IA complaint was not sustained and he exonerated the officers without explanation.

Plaintiffs allege this was part of a broader effort to conceal misconduct and protect those involved in violating their rights.

In March 2023, Major Stanford sent a text asking Thompson to give him a call, during which Stanford lashed out about his courtroom coverage and called him a liar.

Plaintiffs say this confirms his animus toward Thompson’s journalism, strengthening the inference that Stanford had a retaliatory motive and either directed, encouraged, or ratified earlier actions taken against the plaintiffs by his direct subordinates.

The amended complaint names both agencies and individuals.

Defendants Named in the Amended Complaint

• Tommy Ford, in his official capacity as Sheriff of Bay County, Florida

• City of Panama City, Florida

• Jimmy Stanford, individually

• Nicholas Macias, individually

• Alvin Iler, individually

• Stephen Rhinehart, individually

• Ryan Nelson, individually

• Krista Chastain, individually

• Richard Thore, individually

The lawsuit claims that some defendants personally participated in the conduct, while others directed it, approved it, covered it up, or allowed it to happen through official policy, custom, ratification, or failure to supervise.

Counts in the Amended Complaint

The amended complaint includes sixteen counts:

• Count I – Fourth Amendment unlawful search and seizure against Stanford, Rhinehart, Iler, Thore, Chastain, Macias, and Nelson

• Count II – Fourth Amendment unlawful search and seizure against BCSO

• Count III – First Amendment retaliation against Stanford, Nelson, Macias, Iler, Chastain, and Rhinehart

• Count IV – First Amendment retaliation against BCSO

• Count V – Fourteenth Amendment deliberate falsification and concealment of evidence against Nelson, Iler, Macias, Rhinehart, Chastain, and Stanford

• Count VI – Fourteenth Amendment deliberate falsification and concealment of evidence against BCSO

• Count VII – Fourteenth Amendment equal protection against BCSO

• Count VIII – Abuse of process under Florida common law against Rhinehart, Macias, Iler, Thore, Nelson, Chastain, and Stanford

• Count IX – Trespass under Florida common law

• Count X – Conspiracy to violate constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against all individual defendants

• Count XI – Civil conspiracy under Florida common law

• Count XII – Fourth Amendment false imprisonment against Rhinehart, Iler, Chastain, Nelson, and Thore

• Count XIII – Fourth Amendment false imprisonment against BCSO

• Count XIV – Common law false imprisonment against BCSO

• Count XV – Common law false imprisonment against Rhinehart, Iler, Chastain, Nelson, and Thore

• Count XVI – Common law false imprisonment against the City of Panama City

In Ordinary Terms

The complaint accuses the defendants of violating the Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights by:

• targeting them because of protected journalism and criticism of government officials;

• searching part of their home property without a warrant;

• detaining Sara Moon without lawful justification;

• using a false or pretextual explanation to justify their presence;

• covering up what happened afterward through false, incomplete, or manipulated records;

• and acting together as part of a coordinated plan.

What Relief the Plaintiffs are Seeking

The Plaintiffs ask the court for damages and other relief, including:

• garden-variety emotional distress damages;

• punitive damages where allowed;

• constitutional damages;

• nominal damages;

• attorney’s fees and costs;

• and other available relief permitted by law.

The complaint also seeks declaratory, injunctive, and equitable relief.

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July 4, 2026 - That time they passed a law to arrest people on the beach after dark.

Here’s what I told former PCB Mayor Mike “Pay-to-Play” Thomas and attorney Cole “Son” Davis.

July 4, 2026 - Here's how city and county commissions are a greater threat to the people than the state legislature.

July 2, 2026 - The least likable candidate for Congress to replace Neal Dunn just did the most likable thing.

July 2, 2026 - The Supreme Court just told police they cannot capture your phone’s location history and call it business as usual. It’s not a Flock case. But it gives us better law and better language.

In 2019, Virginia police investigating a bank robbery got Google to hand over the location history of every phone that passed through a 150-meter circle near the scene. Google logs location roughly every two minutes. Innocent people got swept in before police had a suspect. One of them, Okello Chatrie, ended up as the defendant.

The Court decided 6-3 that a Fourth Amendment search occurs when they obtain Google Location History through a geofence warrant, even though the data sits with a third party.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cellphone location data.” That matters because it rejects the easy move of saying mass digital tracking is harmless so long as someone else stores the records.

But the Supreme Court didn’t finish the job.

They sent it back to the lower court to decide whether the warrant itself was valid.

Here’s the difference between what Flock and Google does: Google creates a continuous location history; Flock captures fixed-location snapshots on public roads.

Lower courts are already treating those systems differently. Still, the pressure on Flock just went up.

The fundamental Fourth Amendment violation in both systems is the same: collect first, sort later, and sweep in everyone along the way.

Expect this new SCOTUS decision to appear in every serious ALPR lawsuit filed this year. And expect the next big fight to be whether enough snapshots create a location history.

July 2, 2026 - Especially in Bay County, FL.

July 4, 2026 - Remembering George Washington’s forgotten quote on this Independence Day.

In 2019, Virginia police investigating a bank robbery got Google to hand over the location history of every phone that passed through a 150-meter circle near the scene. Google logs location roughly every two minutes.

Innocent people got swept in before police had a suspect. One of them, Okello Chatrie, ended up as the defendant.

The Court decided 6-3 that a Fourth Amendment search occurs when they obtain Google Location History through a geofence warrant, even though the data sits with a third party.

That matters because it rejects the easy move of saying mass digital tracking is harmless so long as someone else stores the records.

But the Supreme Court didn’t finish the job.

They sent it back to the lower court to decide whether the warrant itself was valid.

Here’s the difference between what Flock and Google does: Google creates a continuous location history; Flock captures fixed-location snapshots on public roads.

Lower courts are already treating those systems differently. Still, the pressure on Flock just went up.

The fundamental Fourth Amendment violation in both systems is the same: collect first, sort later, and sweep in everyone along the way.

Expect this new SCOTUS decision to appear in every serious ALPR lawsuit filed this year. And expect the next big fight to be whether enough snapshots create a location history.

June 24, 2026 - The $50,000 bell rang as James Finch left the Lynn Haven Commission meeting.

Former City Manager Vickie Gainer bought it without Commission approval to place on the giant $5,000 clock at the Taj Mahal.

June 24, 2026 - I’m pretty sure Lynn Haven is going to adopt my creative idea during public comments!

All cities and counties in America should do the same.

June 25, 2026 - Florida Legislature: License Plate Reader Dat Threatens Safety, Tracks Movements, Invades Privacy.

June 26, 2026 - The Florida Supreme Court just stuck it to people charged with a crime when police break the law.

Under this decision, police can violate the knock-and-announce rule while executing a valid warrant, unlawfully force entry into a home, and prosecutors get to present the evidence. It’s no longer suppressed.

The Court says prosecutors may charge the officers with a misdemeanor, but that remedy already existed and police are almost never charged.

Suppression of evidence was the one consequence that actually mattered because it denied the government the benefit of its own misconduct.

This decision blesses the use of fruit from the poisonous tree, even if the Court would never phrase it that bluntly.

When judges let prosecutors keep the evidnece from an unlawful entry, they weaken the incentive for police to follow the law at the front door.

And the front door is exactly where constitutional liberty matters most. The home is supposed to be the place where government power meets its clearest constitutional limits.

This ruling shifts that balance in the wrong direction: away from deterrence, away from accountability, and toward a system where police violations are acknowledged but they get to keep the ill-gotten gains.

Only the defendants now pay the price for police misconduct.

June 27, 2026 - Imagine a stranger taking a photograph of everyplace you drove today. Now imagine he did it yesterday too. And the day before.

And then shares digital copies with 6,000 of his friends.

That’s Flock.

June 28, 2026 - That’s Flock. It’s a big distinction.

Citing the Plain View Doctrine to justify Flock cameras is like calling a Polaroid camera a drone. Sure, it’s legal to point a camera at whatever your eye can see in public. But that ignores the rest of the story.

A snapshot is not a movement history. If you shuffle through enough photographs frame by frame, it becomes a movie. And you’re the leading actor in more than 6,000 police AI databases across the country. Only you don’t know if you’ve hit the big time until it’s too late.

Take Brandon Upchurch, for instance. In Ohio, police pulled him over with guns drawn. A Flock camera misread the “7” on his license plate as a “2.” There are a lot of folks like Upchurch driving around with transposed plate characters sitting in the Flock files.

Like mine.

Earlier this month, I made a public record request for Flock data on my license plate. The photo clearly shows a “1” on my plate but the metadata text converted it to a capital letter “I.” These OCR errors are not uncommon since a zero in the photo can be converted to the letter “O.” Or when an “8” becomes a “B.”

A one-off OCR error becomes a systemic liability. A false identifier distributed across a national network is harder to retract, harder to trace, and harder to defend as “official duties” when the underlying data was corrupted before it was shared.

In Florida, Lynn Haven’s new police chief understands this problem. So he has implemented a policy that officers must run a database check with FCIC/NCIC before acting on a Flock hit. It’s a good faith effort.

But it’s not enough.

Here’s the problem: Police all over the country are entering license plates into a shared “hot list.” FCIC and NCIC checks require a lawful purpose. Flock is supposed to supply that lawful purpose but an AI error creates a mismatch.

That’s a significant and avoidable due process violation. And the police chief’s redundancy protocol only exacerbates Flock’s mismatched license plate problem.

And then launders it.

If Flock cameras simply provided photos of license plates on public roads then none of this digital dragnet would exist. The nightmare begins when the data is stored on AI databases that create a searchable movement history. A mosaic, as the Supreme Court called it.

And it gets worse because Flock catalogs more than just license plates. The company encourages police to use its Vehicle Fingerprint technology that provides personal identifying information such as make, model, color, scratches, bumper stickers, roof racks, tool boxes, and more. That’s PII.

Even without the license plate number, it creates a red carpet right to your doorstep.

The Florida Legislature’s own statement of public necessity for Statute 319.0777 says this data enables tracking of movements, threatens safety, and constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

The Statute designates all data collected by license plate readers as confidential when paired with PII, which Flock’s Fingerprint clearly provides.

Agencies are violating Florida law by sharing it across state lines and with the federal government. Nobody believes that more than 6,000 agencies are safeguarding our confidential information.

The most recent audit shows that Lynn Haven Police failed to enter the mandatory reason or case number for Flock searches 25 percent of the time. City Commissioner Jamie Warrick explained at a recent town hall that sometimes “the system shuts down” when police try to enter the reason for their searches. That’s all.

Proponents of Flock cameras say police need this edge in technology to fight crime. They ignore that in 2018 Supreme Court affirmed in Carpenter that storing a searchable movement history via cellular data requires a search warrant.

As though the reasoning somehow changes when it’s collected by cameras.

Which brings us back to the Plain View Doctrine. Police can photograph what their eyes can see in public, but they need a warrant to monitor our travel history over time.

A Flock subscription and a working keyboard won’t do.

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Only three in most cases, a simple majority (depending on how many members sit on the board).

These local politicians can ban your entire business as well. Or have you arrested for drinking beer on the beach. Or make it too painful and expensive to acquire an occupational license to earn a living and practice your craft. The list goes on and on.

What’s worse is that local governments can do it all year long.

Supporters of this arbitrary tyranny call it “Home Rule.” And it has become such a problem that state lawmakers are targeting this abuse and threatening to yank the rug out from under local governments.

Residents and business owners are being abused by local politicians across the state.

A judge slapped a restraining order on the Miami Beach City Commission for attacking owners of short-term rental properties. Panama City Beach is being sued by scooter companies for outlawing rentals, even though the state recognizes scooters as street-legal vehicles.

Home Rule has allowed local governments to regulate activities not already governed by the state for about 40 years. But lately local politicians have been passing ordinances attacking our leftover freedoms like sharks at a feeding frenzy.

Proponents of Home Rule are slick. They present it as local government protecting us against out-of-touch state lawmakers.

Not true.

Local ordinances don’t supersede state statutes. That’s just basic civics. Local governments can’t resist state laws and make us more free. Instead, they do just the opposite. Home Rule gives local governments authority to pass more laws and make us less free.

Yet another layer of laws and taxation against the people is no virtue, even if it comes from local government.

Home Rule violates the Rule of Law because Floridians can’t possibly know how to comport ourselves from city to city if the laws are different everywhere we go.

And the threat of Home Rule is ever-present. It only takes a handful of local politicians to pass new ordinances every couple weeks year-round to change the rules and ruin your business.

The Florida Legislature is working to stop this kind of abuse, and remove legal barriers imposed by local governments.

It’s important to note that state lawmakers have less opportunity to pass new laws than local politicians because they only convene once a year for a couple months. Bills have to go through several committees and need matching bills in both chambers. If legislators pass a bill, it then goes to the governor to sign or veto it.

This burdensome process makes it much harder for the state to pass new laws than it is for local governments.

And considering most laws don’t expand freedom or protect the family budget, that’s a good thing.

Yes, in United States v. Knotts (1983), the Court said a person traveling on public roads has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another in the context of short-term, limited tracking (a beeper). But the Court has never endorsed mass, automated, long-term, database-archived tracking of everyone.

In United States v. Jones (2012), the Court held that installing a GPS device on a vehicle and monitoring its movements (even on public roads) constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment (trespass on an “effect”). Justice Alito’s argued that longer-term GPS monitoring of public movements impinges on reasonable expectations of privacy.

This is the mosaic theory: the whole reveals far more than the sum of individual public observations.

The third-party doctrine (you “voluntarily” gave data to your carrier) has limits when the surveillance is comprehensive, retrospective, and inescapable in modern life. ALPR databases raise the same concerns: they do not record one public moment—they create a persistent, time-stamped catalog of where your vehicle has been.

A single cop with a cellphone taking one photo of one car on one occasion is not the same as thousands of high-resolution AI cameras feeding a centralized, queryable system that lets any authorized user rewind and review anyone’s movements over weeks or months. Conflating a snapshot with a database is like comparing a footprint to an ankle monitor.

A cellphone picture is a moment. Flock is a movement history. The scale, automation, retention, and ease of access transform it from a snapshot into a digital dragnet.

The Fourth Amendment rejects general warrants and suspicionless searches, which is akin to the colonial writs of assistance that allowed officials to rummage through lives without particularized cause. James Otis called them “the worst instrument of arbitrary power.”

These systems are their modern, AI-enhanced equivalent. And the totalitarian effect is compounded by its ability to remember, index, and share the whole of our movements.

Elected officials with integrity wouldn’t wait for the next court ruling to strike down the latest surveillance technology. They should act on principle and show respect to the people they swore an oath to represent under the Constitution.

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