Savannah will continue using Flock Safety license plate readers despite revelations that a former police department employee shared her login credentials with her husband, an agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mayor Van Johnson said Tuesday. Former department employee Amber Harp was fired after an internal investigation found that she had shared access to her city-issued account. The account was used from January through July to conduct 983 searches involving 97 license plates across Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina. South Carolina accounted for 788 of those searches, and most of the vehicles were registered to Hispanic owners. The City of Savannah did not give ICE permission to access the city’s Flock data, Johnson said. Outside agencies must contact the police department and enter into an agreement outlining how they may use the system. “We did not authorize this information to be accessed by ICE,” Johnson said. “And so because it was unauthorized use of our technology, she was fired.” Savannah reportedly shares Flock information with nearly 1,700 agencies, but ICE is not among them. Johnson said he did not know whether ICE had formally requested access. Johnson also said he did not know why the Georgia Bureau of Investigation declined to pursue criminal charges. He suggested the decision could have been related to the searches not being conducted for Harp’s personal benefit, though he emphasized that he did not…
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