‘A Law-Abiding Citizen Trapped’ — Kansas Man Sues City Over Warantless Spy Cams

A Kansas privacy advocate is suing the City of Wichita over its warrantless Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system, saying the spy cams violate the Kansas Constitution.

Mason Grimmett, a long-time Wichita resident represented by the Kansas Justice Institute (KJI), filed the lawsuit in the Sedgwick County District Court Thursday, according to The Kansas Sentinel. The machinist, a member of Kansas’ Sunflower Privacy Alliance, is raising concerns about the government tracking, analyzing and storing his movements in a long-term database.

The lawsuit “challenges the government’s indiscriminate and warrantless dragnet surveillance of anyone, and everyone, driving in the City of Wichita,” according to court documents. It accuses Wichita of using ALPRs for “continuously tracking, surveilling, monitoring, and compiling a searchable database on law-abiding Kansans—without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion.”

Flock Safety has become one of the country’s largest providers of ALPR systems. Flock’s website markets its cameras as crime-fighting devices that give “investigators a lead they can actually close” through a 49-state network and vehicle attribute-matching capabilities.

But Grimmett and other citizens are now questioning whether the mass-surveillance is a constitutional way to keep people safe.

“Mason is a law-abiding citizen trapped in Wichita’s warrantless ALPR dragnet surveillance program. He’s done absolutely nothing wrong, but he’s still being tracked, monitored, and databased. That’s unconstitutional,” said KJI litigation director Sam MacRoberts, according to a KJI webpage. “If Wichita wants to track its citizens, it needs to go to a judge and get a warrant.”

Wichita began placing ALPR cameras from Flock Safety, Inc., around the city in 2020. KJI now describes the city as “saturated” with them — almost 200 AI-powered cameras are now snapping pictures of every car, all the time.

Beyond reading license plates and enforcing traffic laws, ALPR cameras send the pictures they take to Flock’s servers, KJI said. AI then analyzes the car’s make and model, its bumper stickers, bike racks, dents and scratches, forming what Flock has designated a “Vehicle Fingerprint.”

Flock stores this data in a database that allows law enforcement to reconstruct a vehicle’s movements, note if the person has gone to any “location of interest,” and figure out the identity of the driver’s friends and family via a “convoy analysis tool” that shows vehicles seen near the designated vehicle. Police departments across the country who have Flock memberships can access this data and use it without Wichita’s control or supervision, KJI added. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Keith Self Seeks To Bar Federal Agencies From Obtaining Flock Surveillance Data — Without A Warrant)

“Due to the ubiquity of Wichita’s Flock ALPR network, Mason cannot go to work, the gym, a doctor’s appointment, a polling place, or a meeting of the Sunflower Privacy Alliance without being tracked and cataloged by the Wichita Police Department and Flock Safety, Inc,” the KJI webpage said.

KJI is arguing that the city cannot use efforts to control crime as validation for tracking every citizen.

“The Kansas Constitution does not authorize the government to place every single law-abiding citizen under persistent, AI-powered surveillance just because it might help catch a few criminals after the fact,” the website reads. “Kansans do not sacrifice their right to be free from government surveillance and tracking every time they walk out the door.”

Grimmett previously testified against ALPR cameras at a Wichita City Council meeting in June 2026, saying they must “set the boundaries” for police and private corporations’ use of technology.

“We have caught this overreach early enough to where we can limit its oppression before it happens,” he said.

Flock’s website describes every search for ALPR data as “logged, justified, and auditable” to protect individual’s privacy. But that hasn’t stopped multiple individuals from using Kansas Flock cameras with malicious intent.

Former police officer Victor Heiar was convicted of computer crime and stalking in 2023 after using the Flock system to keep track of his estranged wife’s whereabouts. Former Sedgwick Police Chief Lee Nygaard admitted to using the Flock system to track the vehicles of his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend 228 times in 2023, according to The Wichita Eagle.

Flock cameras can also get it wrong. Police confronted Kansas couple Matthew and Leah Spurlock at gunpoint after Flock cameras flagged their mini-van’s license plate as identical to the plate of a stolen pick-up truck, according to a 2024 KAKE article. The license plates were duplicates, and the Flock camera was not able to distinguish between the different tags on the plates, according to the outlet.

The Daily Caller reached out to Flock Safety and the Wichita Police.