The York County Sheriff's Office is asking a federal judge to throw out a Lake Wylie veteran's lawsuit over a Flock camera false hit at gunpoint.

Steven Melvin, an Iraq War veteran, sued the sheriff's office and three deputies after a Flock license plate reader misidentified his BMW as a stolen vehicle on Feb. 14, 2024.

Deputies ordered Melvin out of his car at gunpoint near a community mailbox center in his Lake Wylie neighborhood and held him on his knees for about five minutes, the Rock Hill Herald reported.

The sheriff's office has now moved the case from York County civil court to U.S. District Court in South Carolina and filed a motion to dismiss. Attorneys David Holler and Ross Campbell, representing the office and the deputies, argued in the filing that "a mistake of fact leading to a seizure under the Fourth Amendment does not amount to a Constitutional violation."

The transfer to federal court carries a practical consequence for local residents following the case. A statewide jury pool could hear the trial rather than jurors drawn only from York County. No trial date has been set.

Melvin's lawsuit alleges excessive force, false imprisonment and negligence. It seeks punitive damages and states Melvin feared for his life during the stop. He was released after deputies discovered the plate mismatch and received only a warning for an alleged illegal license plate cover.

The sheriff's office acknowledged the error in its own internal affairs report, completed nine months after the stop. The report said the stop resulted from erroneous information tied to a Flock alert, the Post and Courier reported in August.

The case adds a federal courtroom dimension to a Flock debate already playing out across York County. As we reported Sept. 13, Fort Mill and Tega Cay face their own scrutiny over the cameras. Tega Cay's police department operates nine Flock cameras under a five-year, $22,500-per-year contract signed in August 2023, according to the city's Flock Safety page.

Sheriff Tony Breeden has defended the technology. In a July 21, 2026, video posted to the sheriff's office Facebook page, Breeden said the cameras helped resolve more than 250 incidents in the past year, the Post and Courier reported.

"It doesn't affect citizens going about their day-to-day business … It only impacts a criminal in the act of committing a crime," Breeden said in the video.

Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based manufacturer of the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), has partnered with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, according to the Herald. The ACLU estimates as many as 120,000 Flock cameras are in use across the country. Flock places its error rate at nine per 1 million alerts, according to the Post and Courier.

Online groups in York County and Chester County have gathered petitions with thousands of signatures seeking to stop use of the cameras, the Herald reported. Two Rock Hill teens face charges for damaging Flock cameras in York and Chester counties, with a third teen facing Chester County charges. Those cases remain pending.

The Herald reported that neither Melvin's attorneys nor the sheriff's office attorneys responded to requests for comment as of Monday, Sept. 14.