Spartanburg Co. Sheriff clarifies statements on FLOCK cameras at council meeting

Our Take

When a sheriff has to go back in front of the council to "clarify" what he said about license plate readers, that's not a communications hiccup — it's a tell. FOX Carolina's Justin Dougherty caught Spartanburg County Sheriff Bill Rhyne doing exactly that, and it fits a pattern we see across the country: local officials pitch Flock Safety hard, get pushback once residents actually read the fine print on data retention, sharing, and access, then scramble to soften the message without changing the underlying program.

The real issue is never really the individual camera — it's the network. Flock's system quietly stitches together plate scans across jurisdictions, often with little public input on who gets to query that data, for how long, and under what oversight. A sheriff "clarifying" his statements after the fact should make residents ask what wasn't clear the first time, and demand that any future rollout come with real audit logs, retention limits, and public reporting before deployment — not damage control after.

If you want to see whether this kind of camera network is already watching your commute, check our map, and if Spartanburg County or your own county is moving forward with Flock, head to take action for tools to push back before the contract is signed.