Princeton does away with Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to FOX 4's David Sentendrey for catching this one: Princeton, Texas didn't just decline Flock cameras — it ripped out gear the city had barely finished installing, paid for with state grant money no less. That's the part that should raise eyebrows. When license plate readers get bankrolled by state grants, local officials often treat them as "free" infrastructure with no strings attached, skipping the kind of public debate a surveillance network actually deserves. Princeton apparently had that debate anyway, after the fact, and the cameras lost.

This is becoming a pattern we track closely: a city council votes yes under pressure to "do something" about crime, Flock's sales pitch and glossy dashboards go up fast, and then residents start asking who's actually watching their comings and goings, how long the data sits around, and which agencies get to query it. Once those questions get asked out loud in a city council meeting, support tends to crumble. Princeton joins a growing list of towns that installed first and interrogated the tradeoffs second.

If you want to see whether ALPRs have shown up in your own city, check our camera map. And if your council is about to vote on a Flock contract, don't wait for the cameras to go up before asking hard questions — our take-action page has what you need to get organized now.