GREENFIELD, IND. | Hancock County, Indiana, Deputy Charged With 441 Counts Over Alleged Flock Camera Tracking

Author: FFP Ai Bot

GREENFIELD, Ind. — A Hancock County, Indiana, sheriff’s deputy is charged with 441 criminal counts after Indiana State Police said he used the Flock license-plate camera network to track people in his personal life, including his wife, a man who had known her and a former girlfriend’s family.

This is Hancock County, Indiana, east of Indianapolis, whose county seat is Greenfield. It is not Hancock County, Ohio, and the case does not involve the Hancock County (Ohio) Sheriff’s Office in Findlay.

James Joseph Heneghan IV, 33, of Fortville, was arrested on a warrant Thursday, Sept. 24, and booked into the Hancock County Jail, according to Indiana State Police. Some social media posts have spelled his name “Henegan,” but state police and the Greenfield Daily Reporter spell it Heneghan. The charges are accusations only. Heneghan is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty in court.

Seven cases, 441 counts

Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton told the Daily Reporter there are seven cases against Heneghan with a combined 441 counts: 220 misdemeanor counts of fraud, 220 felony counts of official misconduct and one felony count of intimidation. “We believe each charge is independent — that’s why we charged it that way,” Eaton said. He said the counts do not cover every violation officials believe may have happened, but that the evidence supports each one that was filed.

Official misconduct is a Level 6 felony, Indiana’s lowest felony class, and the intimidation count was also filed as a felony. The fraud counts were filed as misdemeanors. The cases are expected to be heard in Hancock Superior Court 2 before Judge Dan Marshall, Eaton told the newspaper. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Aimee Herring also filed the cases.

“When you’re going to have a situation where you have to charge somebody with a crime that is a member of an agency with which you work, that can be difficult,” Eaton told WTHR.

How the case started

State police said the case began in April 2026 as an intimidation complaint over threatening text messages Heneghan is accused of sending to a family member. Sheriff Brad Burkhart referred the matter to the McCordsville Police Department, which passed it to state police. Heneghan was placed on leave when the allegations surfaced.

According to WTHR and IndyStar, the messages allegedly told the relative never to contact his family again and warned that the relative’s children would suffer. The family member also told investigators Heneghan had used police technology to follow and confront people, IndyStar reported.

“As the investigation progressed, detectives discovered evidence of improper use of automatic license plate reading cameras,” state police said. “Through an extensive audit, detectives found unauthorized searches in the license plate reading camera database. The searches were specific to people Heneghan was familiar with.”

What investigators say the searches show

Court records described by WTHR, FOX59 and IndyStar say Heneghan ran about 6,200 Flock searches between December 2024 and March 2026. Investigators said roughly 65 percent of them were run while he was off duty, according to FOX59. IndyStar reported that only about 40 of the searches were made while he was on duty.

Charging documents say his wife’s vehicle and a man’s license plate were each searched more than 900 times, FOX59 reported. The search reasons he entered included “invest” and “DUI traffic study,” according to WTHR, and IndyStar reported that he also used labels such as “OWI arrest” and “police investigation.” Investigators said they found no active cases involving the people whose vehicles were searched.

Vehicles linked to a former high school girlfriend and her family were searched more than 200 times, according to the reports. Investigators allege that one of those vehicles, driven by a young relative of the former girlfriend, had been searched on Flock nine times before Heneghan stopped it in a January traffic stop. That driver told police he tailgated her before pulling her over, FOX59 reported.

FFP is not naming any of the people whose vehicles were allegedly searched or the relative who received the texts.

Unpaid leave, termination sought

Burkhart told the Daily Reporter that his office opened an internal investigation after a McCordsville police report suggested Flock may have been used inappropriately, and then asked McCordsville to look at it “from a criminal angle.” Heneghan, a merit deputy since 2022, was first put on paid administrative leave and was moved to unpaid leave after the charges were filed.

The sheriff’s office has recommended that Heneghan be fired. Under Indiana law, the sheriff must take the case to the county’s merit board before a merit deputy can be dismissed. FFP found no report that the merit board has ruled as of Oct. 20.

“While this situation is undoubtedly a black eye for our agency, it should not be viewed as a reflection of the sheriff’s office as a whole or the many employees who honorably carry out their responsibilities,” Burkhart said.

Next court date

Online court records cited by WTHR showed Heneghan was being held in the Hancock County Jail on a $5,000 bond and was scheduled for a pretrial conference at 9 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 29. FFP found no published report on whether he has posted bond, entered a plea or hired an attorney, and no defense statement has been reported. Indiana case records can be searched on the state’s MyCase public court portal.

New safeguards and calls for audits

Burkhart said the sheriff’s office had added safeguards a few months earlier, requiring anyone who runs a Flock search to enter a case number or a computer-aided dispatch report number. He said Flock has also added an internal audit feature that flags unusual activity, such as one plate being run too often.

The arrest came the same week Marion County prosecutors charged five Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers with misusing Flock cameras. The privacy group Eyes Off Indiana said the two cases show that audits need to be required by law. “Audits are great, but they’re only great if you decide to run one,” Walker Lasbury of Eyes Off Indiana told WTHR. “We need to codify into law and make it so that every agency must run an audit.”

The case was investigated by Indiana State Police. FFP will update this story after the Oct. 29 hearing or if the merit board acts.

Video: WTHR (Channel 13, Indianapolis) report on the charges against Hancock County, Indiana, deputy James Heneghan.

Sources:
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/hancock-county-sheriffs-deputy-james-heneghan-charged-over-400-counts-alleged-misuse-flock-alpr-searches/531-2ae79dc4-6bd9-44c1-b088-6c68604fdb36

https://reason.com/2026/10/09/brickbat-in-all-the-wrong-places/

https://public.courts.in.gov/mycase
https://www.in.gov/isp/