Fort Worth PD and Flock introduce drone program trial

Our Take

Credit to Nightcrawler Media for getting cameras rolling on this announcement, because Drone as First Responder programs deserve just as much scrutiny as the fixed ALPR cameras we usually track. Flock isn't just bolting license plate readers to poles anymore — it's expanding into airspace, and Fort Worth is the latest department to hand over the keys to that expansion. A drone launching automatically from a dock in response to a 911 call sounds efficient on paper, but it also means a private company's hardware and software are making real-time decisions about where police attention goes, feeding footage into the same data ecosystem that already stores your travel patterns.

The pitch is always the same: faster response times, better situational awareness, safer officers. What rarely gets mentioned in the press conference is retention policy, who can pull the footage later, and whether flight logs will ever be subject to meaningful public oversight. Once a city buys into the drone-plus-camera bundle, the surveillance footprint doesn't stay confined to "emergencies" — mission creep is the norm, not the exception, and Flock's own sales materials openly market plate data sharing across agencies nationwide.

Fort Worth residents deserve public hearings on flight rules, data retention, and interagency sharing before drones are treated as routine patrol equipment. Check our camera map to see what's already watching in your area, and visit take action if you want to push back before the drones follow the cameras into permanent deployment.