Sheriff addresses Flock camera concerns, asks for $3.9 million budget boost for deputies
The short version: At a St. Johns County budget hearing, residents showed up to grill Sheriff Rob Hardwick on Flock cameras, not his $3.9M deputy-pay request, and reporters got stonewalled.
Our Take
Credit to News4JAX for showing what a lot of these budget hearings actually look like once Flock Safety cameras enter the picture: officials ask taxpayers for more money, and the public shows up asking who's watching the watchers. In St. Johns County, Sheriff Rob Hardwick wanted $3.9 million for deputy raises, but the room full of residents wanted straight answers about the ALPR network quietly blanketing their roads. That's not a distraction from the budget conversation — it's the budget conversation. These cameras cost money to deploy, money to maintain, and often come with vague answers about who can access the data and why.
What's telling is what happened when the station tried to follow up with the sheriff directly. Dodged questions from elected officials on camera policy are a pattern we see over and over in these local fights: departments want the funding and the tech, but not the scrutiny that's supposed to come with deploying a mass-surveillance system on public roads using public dollars. Residents showing up in force to a budget hearing specifically to talk about license plate readers is itself a signal — people are paying attention, even when the agencies would rather they didn't.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has been wired up the same way St. Johns County has, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at your next county meeting, our take-action page has the tools to help you ask the questions this sheriff tried to avoid.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of News4JAX The Local Station, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.