Cheektowaga is a suburban town of approximately 87,000 residents in Erie County, New York, bordering Buffalo to the east. This post covers two datasets released by Cheektowaga Town PD in response to a FOIL request: a network audit log showing every search made by outside agencies against Flock cameras in Cheektowaga from January 1, 2025 through June 5, 2026, and an org audit log showing searches by Cheektowaga Flock users over the same period.
The logs were provided via MuckRock.
#Metrics
#Network audit
- Type: Network audit
- Timespan: Jan 1, 2025 – Jun 5, 2026 (17 months)
- Records: 14,127,161
- Search types: lookup (8,599,217), search (2,893,567), lookup - Mobile (2,034,064), search - Mobile (568,735), convoy (27,576), other (3,988)
- License plate field: 12,834,076 redacted (
***, 90.8%); 1,293,085 blank (9.2%) - Case # present: 3,652,150 (25.9%)
- Organizations (network): 5,199 unique agencies
#Org audit
- Type: Organization audit
- Timespan: Jan 1, 2025 – Jun 5, 2026 (17 months)
- Records: 39,762
- Search types: search (18,444), lookup (14,547), lookup - Mobile (4,521), search - Mobile (2,239), other (11)
- License plate field: 29,784 redacted (
REDACTED, 74.9%); 9,978 blank (25.1%) - Case # present: 2,896 (7.3%)
#Search types
| Type | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| lookup | 8,599,217 | 60.9% |
| search | 2,893,567 | 20.5% |
| lookup - Mobile | 2,034,064 | 14.4% |
| search - Mobile | 568,735 | 4.0% |
| convoy | 27,576 | 0.2% |
| apiV1 | 2,507 | 0.0% |
| searchSummary - Mobile | 743 | 0.0% |
| freeform | 422 | 0.0% |
| multiGeo | 298 | 0.0% |
| freeform - Mobile | 18 | 0.0% |
#Top querying agencies
These are the outside agencies that ran the most searches against Cheektowaga cameras over the 17-month period.
| Agency | Searches | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| Houston TX PD | 971,775 | 6.9% |
| California Highway Patrol | 233,171 | 1.6% |
| Indianapolis Metro PD IN | 190,267 | 1.3% |
| Louisville Metro KY PD | 180,735 | 1.3% |
| Michigan State Police | 160,620 | 1.1% |
| Palm Beach County FL SO | 148,641 | 1.1% |
| Cleveland OH Division of Police | 132,644 | 0.9% |
| Hillsborough County FL SO | 126,493 | 0.9% |
| Missouri State Highway Patrol | 120,175 | 0.9% |
| Dallas TX PD | 114,411 | 0.8% |
| Joliet IL PD | 98,193 | 0.7% |
| Lake County IN SO | 94,261 | 0.7% |
| Harris County TX SO | 94,255 | 0.7% |
| Texas Department of Public Safety | 93,857 | 0.7% |
| Milwaukee WI PD | 89,174 | 0.6% |
| Florida Highway Patrol | 88,161 | 0.6% |
| Wichita KS PD | 85,297 | 0.6% |
| Sarasota County FL SO | 82,986 | 0.6% |
| Irvine CA PD | 81,221 | 0.6% |
| Lakeland FL PD | 77,084 | 0.5% |
Houston TX PD alone accounts for nearly 7% of all searches — nearly four times the next-highest agency. This reflects the Houston PD’s documented practice of running extremely high volumes of plate queries through Flock’s national network.
#Top operators (org audit)
Cheektowaga officers’ own searches, by officer name.
| Officer | Searches | % of org total |
|---|---|---|
| James Rutkowski | 4,631 | 11.6% |
| Anthony Filipski | 4,117 | 10.4% |
| Slade Miller | 1,571 | 4.0% |
| Jeffrey Filipski | 1,324 | 3.3% |
| Corey Helenbrook | 1,158 | 2.9% |
| Kristen Prusiecki | 1,063 | 2.7% |
| Eric Derby | 896 | 2.3% |
| Corey Snyder | 868 | 2.2% |
| Allison Balys | 844 | 2.1% |
| Jeffrey Scaglione | 830 | 2.1% |
| Jake Hillyard | 802 | 2.0% |
| Lauren Sieber | 785 | 2.0% |
| Nicholas Jakubowski | 708 | 1.8% |
| Nicholas Trent | 682 | 1.7% |
| Mark Fatta | 643 | 1.6% |
Two officers — James Rutkowski and Anthony Filipski — together account for 22% of all org audit searches over the 17-month period.
#Reasons (network audit)
| Reason (as entered) | Count |
|---|---|
| inv / investigation / Inv / INV / INVESTIGATION / invest / Invest | ~1,428,000 |
| Drugs/Narcotics - | 231,202 |
| Wanted Person (Arrest Warrant/Fugitive) - | 216,962 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft/Stolen - | 212,807 |
| stolen / Stolen | ~283,000 |
| Traffic Infraction - | 187,775 |
| warrant | 138,608 |
| Larceny/Theft Offenses - | 128,727 |
| Auto Theft / VCD Investigation | 123,603 |
| theft | 100,775 |
| Auto Theft / VCD Investigation - | 79,642 |
| Hit and Run/Car Accident - | 66,728 |
#Reasons (org audit)
| Reason (as entered) | Count |
|---|---|
| inv / INV / Inv / Invest | ~5,790 |
| uuv / UUMV / UUV | ~3,326 |
| Traffic Infraction - | 1,219 |
| . | 1,080 |
| ATL | 966 |
| Larceny/Theft Offenses - | 992 |
| s / S | ~1,334 |
| Hit and Run/Car Accident - | 706 |
| Assault/Battery Offenses - | 630 |
| HIT AND RUN | 594 |
| d | 521 |
| Larceny | 515 |
| REDACTED | 491 |
Single-character entries (., s, d) and entries like REDACTED suggest reason fields are being typed hastily or bypassed.
#Anomalies
#Case number coverage
Only 7.3% of Cheektowaga officers’ own searches include a case number (2,896 of 39,762). For network searches by outside agencies, case number coverage is 25.9%.
#Plate redaction
All license plates are withheld in this release. In the network audit files, outside agencies’ plates appear as ***; in the org audit, Cheektowaga’s own searches use the literal text REDACTED. In both cases, 9–25% of records have a blank plate field with no value at all.