Are Texas Republicans Unified?

Our Take

Texas Scorecard's latest roundup covers a lot of ground — a Shelley Luther rally, a water emergency in Corpus Christi — but the item that stops us cold is one line: a Baytown police officer is reportedly under investigation for misusing Flock Safety camera access. No further details are given in the clip, and we won't speculate on what happened. But the fact that it's happening at all is exactly the scenario critics of these networks have warned about since day one.

Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same: these cameras only flag stolen cars and wanted plates, access is tightly controlled, and the data disappears after a short retention window. Every one of those promises depends entirely on the people who have the login credentials behaving themselves. When an officer with access to a statewide license-plate database decides to use it for something other than its intended purpose, there's no technical safeguard that catches that in real time — it takes someone noticing, and then it takes a news outlet like Texas Scorecard actually reporting it.

That's the core problem with ALPR networks: the oversight is reactive, not preventive. Credit to Texas Scorecard for surfacing this instead of letting it slide. If your department has one of these systems, or you're not sure, check our map to see what's running near you, and head to our take-action page if you want to push your local council for real audit requirements instead of just taking the vendor's word for it.