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Yet another South Carolina officer has joined the growing list of cops accused of abusing Flock Safety cameras. This time, it’s a now-former officer of the Mauldin Police Department (MPD) who purportedly used the system to track her ex-lover nearly 200 times.
The name behind the latest scandal is Ellie Anna Hammond, 24, whose two-year stint with MPD came to a screeching halt on August 3, 2026, when she was terminated for reasons involving misconduct and subsequently stripped of her law enforcement certification.
As for the sordid details behind her ouster, separation papers submitted to the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy (SCCJA) allege Hammond used Flock to track a “former significant other” at least 166 times between March and July of 2026.
That’s around one search every day for five months…
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?? MAULDIN POLICE OFFICER USED FLOCK TO TRACK EX-LOVER 166 TIMES
— Andrew Fancher (@RealAndyFancher) August 10, 2026
Yet another South Carolina officer joins the growing list of cops accused of abusing Flock cameras. This time, it's a now-former officer of the Mauldin Police Department (#MPD) who purportedly used the system to… pic.twitter.com/lLFUVovYXU
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Beyond the sheer volume of these searches, her separation papers allege she used false and fraudulent entries to track her ex-lover’s license plate. The paperwork further states Hammond logged each and every entry under “Warrant Check, Traffic Infraction and Welfare Check.”
It was further reiterated — by the lieutenant who filed Hammond’s paperwork — that the justification behind her Flock entries was never the “real reason.”
And while MPD deserves some credit for terminating Hammond after her alleged, prolonged abuse of taxpayer-funded surveillance, the agency deserves scorn for failing to inform a public that’s already had its fill of Flock.
Across the Palmetto State and beyond, the third-party surveillance company has become a lightning rod for controversy. Not only are privacy concerns mounting, but the agencies charged with using this all-seeing network responsibly answer to virtually no one.
While examples supporting the public’s concerns have piled up nationally for months, South Carolina’s own reckoning didn’t arrive until last month, when FITSNews exclusively reported on the state’s first known cases of officers allegedly abusing Flock.
And it happened not even 20 miles down the road from Mauldin…
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RELATED | TWO GREER POLICE OFFICERS TERMINATED FOR ABUSING FLOCK
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The dubious honor belongs to the Greer Police Department (GPD), where two officers were quietly terminated in June 2026 after an internal audit found both had similarly falsified Flock database searches to secretly track their exes.
Like Mauldin, though, GPD didn’t disclose the alleged Flock abuse on its own. Instead, it took weeks after the two officers were terminated, and just hours after FITSNews broke the story, before the city was compelled to say anything at all.
Since our initial reporting, one of those former officers has come under investigation by agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) following allegations of “stalking, harassment and assault,” according to a SLED spokesperson via email.
Revelations about Flock misuse have only continued from there, with agencies from Greenville to Richland counties getting out ahead of the headlines to announce terminations of their own.
But for every agency that discloses Flock abuse voluntarily, the overwhelming majority, like Greer and Mauldin, appear far more committed to staying silent and hoping the public never notices.
On the same day Hammond was terminated, the South Carolina Sheriff’s Association (SCSA) issued a statement on license plate readers (LPRs), like Flock, arguing that “isolated misconduct” should never be mistaken as “evidence” that the technology itself is improper.
The same association further emphasized that all 46 of the state’s sheriffs (minus prison-bound ex-Spartanburg County sheriff Chuck Wright) support “responsible use of LPR technology because it has repeatedly proven its value.”
Write to Andy Fancher at andy@fitsnews.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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