Dallas City Council rejects budget proposal to end Flock camera funding

Our Take

CBS Texas lays out a split-screen moment for North Texas: while Hood County, Carrollton, Wylie, Anna and Princeton have all been reassessing or pulling back on Flock Safety contracts, Dallas City Council just voted to keep the money flowing. That's a notable divergence, and it says something about how uneven local oversight of ALPR systems really is — the same technology, the same company, wildly different levels of scrutiny depending on which dais you're standing in front of.

Budget votes like this one are where the real decisions about mass surveillance get made, often with far less public attention than a splashy town hall. A line item surviving a council vote means another year of license plates in Dallas getting logged, time-stamped, and routed into a searchable database — one that other agencies can query, and one that exists whether or not residents ever had a real say. When smaller cities nearby are hitting pause and a major metro doubles down, it's worth asking what due diligence actually looked like behind closed doors.

Credit to CBS Texas for keeping a running tally of how these votes are landing city by city — that kind of local tracking is exactly what keeps this issue from disappearing into the background. If you want to see where Flock cameras are already deployed near you, check the map, and if you want to push your own council toward a real vote, start with take action.