‘You were spotted’: KS officer who used police cameras to stalk estranged wife sentenced
A former Kechi police lieutenant was sentenced Wednesday to probation for using Wichita police cameras to stalk his estranged wife, the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office said.
Victor Heiar, who accessed the cameras while working for the Kechi Police Department, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months of probation for misdemeanors in computer crime and stalking.
The 32-year-old Park City man was arrested Oct. 26 after the victim’s friend inquired about getting a protection from abuse order for her. The friend made the inquiry a couple of days after Heiar sent multiple text messages to her asking about his family’s location.
Heiar had asked on Oct. 23 where they went around 10 a.m., according to an arrest affidavit released in the case. She replied asking how he knew she wasn’t home.
“You were spotted on meridian,” he texted on Oct. 23.
She replied: “Spotted, by whom?”
And he replied: “Does it matter(?)”
The friend told a detective that the victim was scared of Heiar and would “often tell family where her kids were in case she were to come up missing or murdered,” a detective wrote in the affidavit.
Heiar worked for the Kechi Police Department from March 2019 to Oct. 26. Heiar and the victim had been together for 15 years, the affidavit said.
Heiar used Wichita Police Department’s Flock Safety license plate reader surveillance system on Oct. 23 to track the victim’s whereabouts between Sept. 23 and that day. Flock cameras use machine learning and artificial intelligence to search for specific license plates or the make and model of a vehicle.
The surveillance system was launched in 2017 and is used in more than 1,400 cities, the company says. Flock says the incident with the Kechi officer is the first report they’ve had about an officer abusing the system.
Law enforcement agencies with a subscription can access other departments’ Flock cameras. Wichita police say they revoked Kechi’s access to the city’s Flock database within minutes of discovering the unlawful search.
The victim later told a detective that she didn’t know how Heiar was tracking her, and that she felt “violated, and had no source of privacy, and unsafe,” the court document says.
She said there had been unreported domestic violence incidents, including when he backhanded her and another time when he strangled her, the document says.
Heiar told a detective that he knew he was misusing Flock.
“When asked how he believed it made (the victim) feel, he said that she probably said she felt threatened, and unsafe and that he was out to kill her,” the document says.