ALBANY, N.Y. — Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple and District Attorney Lee Kindlon announced Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, that Senior Investigator Laurie Moore, 47, has been charged with official misconduct and falsifying business records after an audit found she allegedly used the agency’s Flock Safety automated license-plate readers for personal surveillance — more than 4,000 unauthorized searches, roughly 3,000 of them on an ex-girlfriend’s vehicle, plus repeated lookups of four other acquaintances.

Moore, a 13-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, has been suspended. A member of the command staff was also placed on administrative leave while an internal investigation continues. Both charges are misdemeanors; if convicted, Moore faces a maximum of about two years in prison or three years of probation, according to reporting by WAMC’s Grant Ashley. She is due in New Scotland Town Court on Sept. 24, 2026, at 5 p.m., WNYT reported.

The case did not start inside the department’s own dashboards. Apple said an outside tip on Friday, Sept. 4, flagged that an investigator was using Flock to look up a former acquaintance. He ordered an audit of the agency’s use of the system. Early reviews found about 200 searches on one ex-partner’s plate; investigators later tied roughly 3,000 lookups to that vehicle and additional unauthorized plate searches to four other people Moore knew, BNO News and WAMC reported. Officials say Moore entered work-sounding reasons that were not true.

“The public places tremendous trust in law enforcement and in our ability to use these tools responsibly,” Apple said. “What happened here is a breach of that trust, and for that, I’m truly sorry. But let me be clear: it also demonstrates that when somebody abuses that trust, we’ll hold them accountable.”

Albany County contracts for about 32 Flock cameras around the county. After the tip, Apple said deputies can no longer run plate searches on their own: access is limited to supervisors, Internal Affairs will audit Flock use monthly, and every search now needs a verified case number. “Everything in there needs to be accountable — it has to have a case number, a reason why,” Apple said of the tightened controls. “There were reasons why that [Moore] was putting in there, but they were not true, they were not accurate reasons.”

Apple still calls the cameras a “necessary tool” for fighting crime and said the office found no evidence other employees misused the system. That defense sits beside the harder point the charges themselves illustrate: once an agency plugs into a networked ALPR platform, a single credential can turn a public road into a private tracking map — and the public only finds out when someone outside the badge notices.

District Attorney Lee Kindlon said the episode shows the need to ensure “somebody is watching the watchers” as police gain more cameras, data, and surveillance tools.

Moore’s arrest is the Capital Region’s highest-profile local case of an officer allegedly stalking a former romantic partner through automated plate readers, a pattern already documented nationally. A Washington Post analysis from August 2026, cited by WAMC, found at least 50 police officers charged with misusing ALPR networks; broader Post reporting the same month also tallied dozens of officials accused, charged, or convicted across Flock and competing systems — often after victims, activists, or journalists, not routine department audits, first spotted the abuse.

Concentrated surveillance power without hard friction — warrants, case numbers, real audits — invites exactly this outcome. Albany County’s new supervisor-only gates and monthly Internal Affairs reviews are a late patch on a tool the sheriff still wants to keep. Whether those controls hold is now a public test, not an internal slogan. Moore remains suspended pending further administrative action; the criminal case is scheduled for New Scotland Town Court on Sept. 24.

Sources