Three felonies for a few dollars of filament: Oviedo's decoy Flock camera sting

The charging theory does not run on what was destroyed but on what the man who destroyed it guessed it was worth. The arrest report offers Evan Meyer's own estimate of $1,000 to $5,000 as proof "that Meyer knew it was an expensive real piece of equipment and not a fake replica" ^[7], and the report implies that his belief is what supports attempted grand theft rather than a lesser count ^[9]. What he actually cut off the pole was a shell that Mayor Megan Sladek describes as free ^[14], and that 404 Media puts at several dollars of filament at most ^[22].

Then there is the arithmetic the report leaves alone. One count is criminal mischief of property damage worth more than $1,000 ^[5]. The department's own figure for replacing a real Flock camera is $800 plus installation fees ^[8], which is $200 short of the threshold before you account for the fact that the genuine article was not on the pole that night ^[18]. The installation fee is doing structural work in that charge.

The third count is the strange one. Property crimes against computer equipment supplies ^[5] was applied to a device the arrest report itself describes as one that "did not collect any data within the device" ^[4][21]. The clone was built to resemble a camera closely enough to draw a vandal ^[4]. It appears to have been treated as a computer for charging purposes on the same basis.

The records answer follows from how the thing was made. An officer printed it at home on a personally owned printer and donated it, and the department says it owns no 3D printer at all ^[10]. That arrangement leaves the design and planning outside the agency's custody, and the department's position is that no meeting minutes, text messages or emails about producing the decoy exist prior to the August 20, 2026 arrest ^[11]. It then took a second position: that any and all records are exempt because there is an active criminal investigation ^[12]. Both answers were given to the same publication ^[12], and records that do not exist do not need an exemption ^[20]. The mayor, who says she had no idea and was speechless, learned of the operation from News 6 Orlando's report ^[13][15].

The closest precedent went nowhere. Police departments that ran Amazon package stings, leaving empty boxes on porches while officers watched, produced zero known arrests ^[17]. This one produced three felony counts within 17 days of the last camera theft the report cites ^[19], off bait that cost the city nothing and can be reprinted indefinitely. Meyer told police he had been hearing about the misuses of Flock cameras online and knocked down the one nearest his house ^[16]. The department spent days watching a piece of plastic ^[2] and got a better return than a real camera would have provided, because the value in the file is the value in the suspect's head.