207 of those searches were off duty
Pinellas County commissioners declined Tuesday to pull license plate readers off county roads, deferring the rules to the 2027 Legislature — while Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he'd simply move the cameras if the county restricted its roads. The reason the cameras were on the agenda at all is an abuse file the sheriff's own audits didn't catch: one of his deputies searched a woman's plate about 300 times, and the agency started investigating only after a newspaper asked about the numbers.
- Former deputy Karl Gwynne, 57, allegedly searched one woman's plate ~300 times in the plate-reader system (381 queries across five law-enforcement databases) between January 2025 and July 2026 — 207 searches off duty. Per Sheriff Gualtieri: Gwynne had arrested the woman in 2010, reconnected in 2024, bought her jewelry, put her and her mother up at Indian Rocks Beach; she wanted to remain friends. Asked about the searches by supervisors, he called them 'official use.' Arrested Sept. 30: four counts of computer misuse, one of official misconduct. Charges are allegations.
- The failure: the Sheriff's Office says it audits the system regularly, but the investigation began after TCPalm asked on Aug. 20 about abnormal searches. Gualtieri: 'This high number of queries for this license plate was brought to our attention through a media inquiry.' And: 'The audits were there, but we were not focusing on high quantity.' Asked whether the agency would have found it without the inquiry, he couldn't say for certain. The written policy (General Order 12-16) doesn't specifically require a case number for each search — some searches need only a typed reason — and Gwynne entered no case numbers.
- A second deputy, Travis Stanton, 33, was arrested the same day for allegedly using law-enforcement databases to pursue a 17-year-old girl — not the plate readers, and also not caught by an audit: his case began when the girl filed an online complaint in August. Two deputies, two outside tripwires: a reporter's question and a teenager's complaint.
- Tuesday's outcome: no removal approved; the board deferred to the Legislature (2027 session), with Commissioner Latvala noting the county can revisit in May if Tallahassee doesn't act. Gualtieri counted just under 300 fixed readers plus readers in 560 patrol cars, supports statewide guardrails and stronger audits, and said of a county-roads restriction: 'I would just move them.' The symmetry writes itself: the county runs just under 300 fixed cameras on its citizens — and one deputy ran about 300 searches on a single woman. Pasco ended its Flock contract in September; the state already pulled readers off state roads.
Three hundred. Hold that number, because everything else in this story hangs off it. That's roughly how many times Pinellas County deputy Karl Gwynne searched the same woman's license plate in his agency's plate-reader system between January 2025 and July 2026 — 381 queries across five law-enforcement databases in total, 207 of them while he was off duty. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters what the searches were for: Gwynne had arrested the woman back in 2010, resurfaced in her life in 2024, bought her jewelry, and put her and her mother up at a place in Indian Rocks Beach. She wanted to remain friends. He kept searching. When supervisors finally asked him about the searches, he said they were 'official use.' He was arrested September 30 on four counts of misusing computer systems and one count of official misconduct. The charges are allegations; he is presumed innocent.
Now the part that should bother anyone who was reassured by the word 'audits.' The Sheriff's Office says it conducts regular audits of its plate-reader system. Those audits did not produce this investigation. A newspaper did. TCPalm asked the agency on August 20 about abnormal Flock searches by its personnel, and only then did the digging start. Gualtieri said it himself at the September 30 press conference: 'This high number of queries for this license plate was brought to our attention through a media inquiry.' He added the sentence that explains the whole failure: 'The audits were there, but we were not focusing on high quantity.' Asked whether his agency would have found 300 searches of one woman's plate on its own, he could not say for certain. The written rules weren't built to catch it either — the agency's General Order 12-16 doesn't specifically require a case number for every plate search, and on the in-house system a user enters a plate and a reason; Gwynne, per the sheriff, entered no case numbers at all. The safeguard against a deputy stalking a woman with a state database was, in practice, a text box he could lie in — and a log nobody was reading for volume.
Gwynne was not the only deputy arrested that day, and the second case rhymes. Travis Stanton, 33, allegedly ran a 17-year-old girl and her family through multiple law-enforcement databases after meeting her on duty, showed up at her high school and the fast-food restaurant where she worked, and called her his 'queen' after she told him she was a minor, the sheriff said; Stanton attributed the lookups to curiosity and coded at least one as an identity verification. His case didn't come from an audit either — it began when the girl filed an online complaint in August. He was arrested on one count of accessing a computer without authority and one of official misconduct; those charges are also allegations. Two deputies in one agency, arrested on one day, and the internal safeguard caught neither: the tripwires were a reporter's question and a teenager's complaint.
That's the file that landed in front of the Pinellas County Commission on Tuesday. Commissioner Vince Nowicki's resolution would have ended the county's plate-reader contracts and data-sharing and pulled the cameras off county roads within 30 days. It went nowhere: Chair Dave Eggers said a majority wouldn't support removal, and the board deferred — the county will set legislative priorities next month and wait for statewide rules in the 2027 session, with Commissioner Chris Latvala noting they can return to it in May if Tallahassee doesn't act. Gualtieri, who backs statewide guardrails and stronger audits, counted just under 300 fixed readers in the county plus readers in each of his 560 patrol cars — and answered the county-roads idea in one sentence: 'I would just move them.' Pause on the symmetry, because it's the story in miniature: Pinellas County runs just under 300 fixed cameras watching its citizens' movements. One of its deputies ran about 300 searches on a single citizen. The network and the abuse are the same size. Pasco County ended its Flock contract last month. The state already pulled the readers off state roads. St. Johns County voted this month to clear its county rights-of-way, and its cameras got reshuffled too.
So the question Tuesday actually decided wasn't whether the cameras stay — the sheriff settled that in one quote. It's who writes the rules for a system that tracks every driver, accused of nothing, and whose misuse at its largest Florida agency has so far been discovered by journalists and a complaining teenager rather than by the audits that were supposed to catch it. The Legislature gets the question in March. Three hundred searches — and 207 of them off duty — say the guardrails are the whole ballgame.