A 20-year-old man from Gerrardstown, West Virginia, is facing two felony charges after deputies say he was involved in cutting down automatic license plate reader cameras made by Flock Safety. The man, Wesley Jackson, was identified by Monongalia County deputies as one of the people responsible for the damage.
As found by Brobible, a Facebook post about the case from WDTV News drew more than 29,000 comments. Many of the comments were not serious. Instead, people flooded the section with joking claims that Jackson was somewhere else doing good deeds at the time the cameras were destroyed.
The comments described Jackson volunteering, helping strangers, and doing chores, all offered as tongue-in-cheek alibis. Some commenters said he was fixing a roof on a homeless shelter, saving dogs from a burning building, or performing other acts of kindness instead of damaging the cameras.
Comments described Jackson performing dozens of unrelated activities at the same time
According to deputies, investigators found evidence connecting Jackson to the camera destruction after searching his phone with a warrant. They say the search turned up a group chat about the Flock cameras in the area, along with details about the alleged act and photos taken during it.
Two men face two felony charges each in connection with the case, according to officials. West Virginia does not have a law that specifically addresses the destruction of surveillance equipment, and this may have led some people to question whether the felony charges match the alleged crime. Jackson’s case is not an isolated one; a Virginia Air Force mechanic was separately accused of cutting down more than a dozen Flock cameras over concerns about privacy.
Online, the joking response to the arrest grew quickly. One commenter wrote, “Man is innocent. I saw him serving at a soup kitchen at the time of the incident.” Another commenter claimed a much more personal alibi, writing, “I know for a fact he was at his grandma’s house making her spaghetti and switching the channel for her on her Zenith. I was there with him the entire day.”
Others leaned into humor with pop culture references. One comment read, “Free my boy he ain’t do it, we were playing Halo 2 at the specified time.” Commenters also claimed Jackson was watering someone’s lawn, teaching Muay Thai, fishing, painting a house, tending to a flock of geese, mowing a lawn, canoeing, and tubing down a river, all supposedly at the same time as the alleged crime.
A separate batch of comments on the same post kept up the same pattern. One person wrote, “That couldn’t have been him, he was helping me make a tank setup for some snakes.” Another wrote, “He was saving my neighbors dog from a fire all day couldn’t be him.” The backlash against Flock’s cameras has taken other forms, too, including a widely viewed video of a driver who believed a roadside speed sign was concealing a camera.
Some commenters framed their remarks as broader statements about the case rather than personal alibis. One wrote, “Arrested for doing community service is wild.” Others kept the joke going with simple, direct denials. One person commented, “Couldn’t be, he was canoeing with me that day,” while another wrote, “Couldn’t be him. He had dinner at my house.”
Deputies have not commented publicly on the wave of online alibis. The case remains open, with Jackson and a second man both facing felony charges tied to the alleged destruction of the license plate reader cameras.
Published: Aug 11, 2026 08:17 am