Bastrop City Council to consider ending Flock Safety contract, cover cameras immediately
The short version: Bastrop's City Council ordered Flock cameras covered immediately and will vote on killing the contract outright, a rare reversal worth watching.
Our Take
Credit to CBS Austin for catching a genuinely uncommon move: a city council not just debating ALPR policy in the abstract, but ordering the cameras physically covered the same night it raised concerns. That's a council acting like the burden of proof belongs on the surveillance vendor, not on the residents being watched — which is exactly the posture every city should default to.
We don't know yet what tipped Bastrop's hand — cost, a data misuse incident, public pressure, or just a council finally reading the fine print on who else gets access to that license plate data. What we do know is that this is the playbook other towns should be following: pause first, interrogate the contract, then decide, rather than renewing on autopilot year after year. Too many jurisdictions treat Flock deployments as a one-time vote that nobody revisits once the cameras go up.
If you want to see whether a Flock camera is watching your street right now, check our map, and if you'd rather push your own council toward a Bastrop-style reconsideration than a rubber stamp, our take-action page has the steps to get that conversation started locally.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS Austin, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.