3D-Printed Camera Sting Ends With Reduced Charges in Florida

OVIEDO, Fla. — Evan Meyer, 24, was initially arrested in late August by the Oviedo Police Department after a covert operation involving a 3D-printed decoy camera. Prosecutors have now reduced the case from three felonies to two second-degree misdemeanors, amid growing legal and public friction over automated license plate recognition hardware deployed across the United States.

A formal filing by an assistant state attorney charges Meyer with criminal mischief involving property damage valued at $200 or less and petty theft involving property worth less than $750. In Florida, each second-degree misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail and a fine of up to $500. Felony convictions could have brought potential multi-year state prison sentences.

The operation began after several operational license plate readers mounted throughout Oviedo disappeared or were destroyed. The Oviedo Police Department manufactured plastic 3D-printed camera shells, attached them to utility poles and organized multi-night stakeouts to watch the decoy installations in Seminole County.

The city’s mayor had not been informed about the covert operation before Meyer’s arrest. The mayor acknowledged that both the police tactic and the original felony charges had generated significant controversy.

Police records and court filings allege that Meyer used garden shears to knock one of the 3D-printed decoys from a pole and then destroyed the shell. Later evaluations found that the plastic decoy and the associated damage had a combined physical value of $200 or less.

The devices that prompted the operation are standard cameras made by Atlanta-based surveillance vendor Flock Safety. Municipal clients pay approximately $800 per unit each year under hardware lease agreements, not including installation, mounting and maintenance fees.

Flock’s roadside systems use solar panels, cellular connections and high-speed optical sensors running machine-learning software. They capture images of passing vehicles and automatically index license plate numbers, state jurisdictions, vehicle make, model, color and distinguishing details such as roof racks or bumper stickers. Law enforcement agencies across multiple jurisdictions can access the information through searchable networks.

Flock Safety was founded in 2017 and has expanded into more than 4,000 communities. Its stationary roadside tracking technology has also been followed by civil liberties lawsuits, municipal contract disputes and repeated acts of physical vandalism.

The controversy has reached rival vendors. Police departments asked Axon Enterprise to change the physical design of its own license plate cameras because citizens were mistaking them for Flock equipment.

Documented database misuse and oversight failures have contributed to hostility toward automated license plate monitoring. Audit reports and internal investigations have found cases in which police officers used ALPR networks to track former romantic partners or obtain personal location data without a law enforcement purpose.

Public records disclosures also found that officers frequently bypassed mandatory reason prompts when entering queries into ALPR databases by typing non-descriptive text, including “LMAO” and “idk.”

Local governments and surveillance companies have faced their own administrative and legal disputes. In California, one municipality voted to cancel its Flock Safety contract and ordered the surveillance grid removed. The company reinstalled cameras without city authorization, leading to disputes over municipal authority and vendor compliance.

As more city councils vote to cancel ALPR contracts or decline to renew them, surveillance vendors have moved into adjacent technical markets. Flock Safety has devoted significant resources to camera-equipped police drone systems operated through “Drone-as-a-First-Responder” programs, which deploy autonomous aircraft to active calls and currently represent the company’s fastest-growing line of business.