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A Brevard County resident and former professional baseball player was unexpectedly arrested in front of his child’s youth sports team last month after a FLOCK license-plate reader camera flagged his vehicle for an outstanding warrant tied to a misdemeanor alcohol-possession case from 2004, a case the man believed had been resolved more than two decades ago.
The warrant, according to records obtained by The Space Coast Rocket, remained active despite the fact that the underlying charge was nonviolent, minor, and had been handled at the time through an attorney in Tallahassee. The man had since undergone multiple background checks to coach youth sports, travel internationally, obtain work visas, and even play baseball overseas. None of those processes ever indicated a problem with his record or an outstanding warrant.
But on November 12, 2025, while pulling into a local park to coach his son’s T-ball team, sheriff’s deputies were alerted by a FLOCK camera hit showing a “warrant match” linked to his license plate. According to the State Attorney, deputies approached him immediately, handcuffed him in front of the team and parents, and booked him into the county jail overnight.
What neither he nor the arresting deputy knew was that the original case had been eligible for dismissal for years and should never have resulted in a modern-day custodial arrest.
According to a Nolle Prosequi filed by the State Attorney’s Office for Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit, the case began on August 1, 2004, when the then-18-year-old was stopped by state Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco agents at a Tallahassee condominium parking lot while holding a 12-ounce can of beer.
He was charged with possession of alcohol by a person under 21 and later hired a Tallahassee attorney who advised him the matter had been taken care of. At the time, he was a college baseball player preparing for the MLB draft.
The State Attorney’s filing states the man “played baseball at Louisiana State University at the time and hired a Tallahassee lawyer to attend court for him. The lawyer told him everything had been taken care of.”
The case, however, was later reset, a capias was issued, and no one — not the attorney, not the court system, and not the defendant — ever took additional action. Despite multiple background checks over the next 20 years for employment, youth sports coaching, and international travel, the capias never surfaced.
The modern-day arrest happened because Brevard County uses automated license-plate reader systems — specifically FLOCK Safety cameras — which scan every passing vehicle and instantly alert deputies to possible warrants, stolen vehicles, or other law-enforcement flags.
FLOCK systems have come under intense scrutiny statewide in recent weeks after several high-profile misidentifications, wrongful stops, and concerns about data retention and accuracy. Civil-liberties organizations have warned that the cameras can “magnify old clerical mistakes into real-time police action,” creating situations like this one.
That appears to be exactly what happened here.
On November 17, 2025, five days after the arrest, State Attorney Jack Campbell filed a Nolle Prosequi formally dismissing the 21-year-old charge.
Campbell wrote that the defendant “has had background checks every year to coach kids and to coach at local schools” and that he “obtained visas to play baseball for pay in South Korea” — none of which revealed the outstanding capias. The filing also notes he had been “living in South Florida and no efforts were made to execute the capias issued in his name.”
After being notified of the arrest, the State Attorney concluded that pursuing a prosecution for a decades-old misdemeanor that had clearly fallen through administrative cracks would serve no purpose.
This case highlights a growing statewide tension:
In this situation, the individual was publicly arrested in front of children, parents, and other families not for new misconduct, but because the criminal-justice system failed to reconcile a 2004 paperwork issue before ALPR technology magnified it into an “active warrant hit.”
Privacy advocates argue that FLOCK cameras are only as accurate as the underlying data they rely on, and that outdated or incorrect records can instantly lead to high-stakes law-enforcement actions, even decades later.
The man, who no longer lives in the Tallahassee area and has no criminal history beyond the 2004 incident, was held overnight before being released. Those who know the family say the incident was humiliating, confusing, and deeply upsetting, especially given that he had every reason to believe the matter was handled long ago.
Because the individual is not accused of wrongdoing in this incident, The Space Coast Rocket is not publishing his name and has redacted identifying information from the documents reviewed.
This case raises several issues local residents and policymakers may expect answers to:
With FLOCK cameras expanding across Brevard County and much of Florida, this case highlights the need to ensure that high-tech policing tools do not amplify low-tech recordkeeping failures.
