The Macon County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in a three-day span announced the termination of two employees following separate instances of misconduct.
New details reveal that one former detective is under state investigation for Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) misuse, while a former deputy faces domestic violence charges in Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tribal court.
“We’re not going to tolerate misuse of any sort,” MCSO Chief Deputy Dereck Jones said of ALPR misuse.
MCSO announced via Facebook on Oct. 20 Det. Jonathan Bean’s termination after an internal investigation found he’d misused the agency’s Automatic License Place Reader system.
MCSO received information from a credible outside agency on Friday, Oct. 16, and immediately placed Bean on administrative leave. Jones said an internal affairs investigation concluded the allegations were founded and that MCSO terminated Bean the following Tuesday.
Jones said MCSO is cooperating with the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI) in an ongoing investigation of the misuse.
Three days later, MCSO announced Corporal David Blanton’s termination on Facebook shortly after an outside agency contacted MCSO regarding Blanton. The same day, Cherokee Indian Police arrested Blanton on three charges: domestic violence and dating violence, harassment, and telephone harassment.
Macon County commissioners in July voted to defund and remove the county’s Flock cameras, which Jones says was the last time the system was used in the county. In the July commission meeting, Sheriff Brent Holbrooks also answered commissioners’ questions about the agency’s Flock system access privileges, where he said that the investigation team and the four patrol sergeants within the sheriff’s office had access to the Flock system, which included mobile phone access.
The nonprofit public-interest law firm Institute for Justice maintains an ALPR abuse database, and attorney Michael Soyfer, who leads the organization’s ALPR litigation efforts, said what started as just 19 known cases of misuse across the country at the beginning of the year has since grown to nearly 300 known cases of abuse.
He believes this is just the tip of the iceberg.
To conduct a Flock search, users must include their reason for searching, but Soyfer said the reasons are often vague, and even if someone downloaded an audit log, it would be difficult to assess each search’s legitimacy.
As public attention on ALPR cameras has increased, so have reporting and investigations into the technology and the subsequent unearthing of abuse cases.
“For years, it was really just swept under the rug, and we were told we were crazy,” Soyfer said. “And I think this is just evidence that we weren’t crazy.”
In September, the NCSBI, in conjunction with the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, N.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, and the N.C. Police Executives Association, issued a memorandum for best-practice ALPR use to law enforcement agency heads across the state. The memorandum recommended practices like establishing strict rules for searches, setting data retention limits, and establishing explicit prohibited uses to “ensure that the technology is being used for the sole purpose of public safety while recognizing the privacy interests of their citizens.”
N.C. Sheriff’s Association Executive Vice President Lauren Earnhardt said when new technology like ALPR cameras come along, agencies often field an influx of questions from the public.
“I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding in the public about what ALPR systems do and don’t do,” Earnhardt said. “And I think that’s a bigger concern, is really the myths that are out there on social media about these systems, that they can track you as a person.”
She also mentioned that the world is changing, and law enforcement needs to adapt and make sure these systems are used for solely investigative purposes. The fact that MCSO responded to credible allegations of ALPR camera misuse so quickly and definitively is a sign of an agency that is doing the right thing, Earnhardt said.
“That is swift action taken by the sheriff; that should give the public some trust [that] if the agency heads find out about it, they will not keep that deputy employed,” she said. Furthermore, Earnhardt said license plate readers have been around for over 10 years and that they’ve proved to be a valuable tool to law enforcement in cases of catching kidnapped children and finding dementia patients quickly, before any harm happens.
Still, experts like Soyfer say the national trend indicates that law enforcement agencies have begun redacting more and more information from audit logs in public records requests, which has made it harder for the public to discover abuse.
The Smoky Mountain News has requested audit logs associated with Bean’s account in the Flock system, but since they are subject to an ongoing criminal investigation, the audit logs do not fall under public record statues.
“These are departments that aren’t even discovering their own misuse, they’re being told about it by third parties,” Soyfer said. “And at the same time, there’s this movement to sweep more things under the rug to make the search reasons more generic … I think the second that public pressure goes away, you will see much less commitment on the part of police to ferreting out all of this misuse.”
Not much else is known about the NCSBI’s investigation into Bean and the Cherokee Indian Police Department’s charges against Blanton.
According to public records obtained by SMN, MCSO hired Bean as a part-time deputy in November of 2016, and he was promoted to full-time deputy in 2018. In 2021, Bean was then promoted to detective. Through various cost-of-living adjustments and step-increases, he was making around a $56,000 salary at the time of his termination.
Posts on the MCSO Facebook page show Blanton was a K-9 officer and that he received an advanced service award from the state in January 2026. Other MCSO Facebook posts also show Bean receiving an advanced law enforcement certificate and an intermediate deputy certificate from the state in July 2025.
Jones said that although the county doesn’t have Flock cameras anymore, it’s still an issue that has divided people across the country. He hopes MCSO can push forward and regain the trust of the community.
He’s telling his employees, “Don’t let this discourage you from what your end goal is, and that’s to provide the best services to the community in which you’re serving.’”