Houstonians are also NOT FOND of flock cameras
The short version: A Houstonian tore down a Flock camera in the Galleria, and Chron's report shows Texas frustration with ALPR surveillance keeps growing.
Our Take
Chron's report, built around footage from @avi_ously.713, captures something we've been tracking for a while now: ordinary people in Texas are done waiting for city councils to act and are just yanking these poles out of the ground themselves. The Galleria incident isn't an isolated prank — it's part of a pattern of DIY de-flocking happening in cities across the state, and it says a lot about how little trust residents have in these systems or the companies and departments that deploy them.
What's notable here is the gap between official messaging and ground truth. Flock and its police partners love to talk about these cameras as a quiet, consensual safety upgrade, but nobody consents to being tracked every time they drive through an intersection. When people start physically removing hardware instead of writing to their council member, that's a signal the normal channels for pushback feel broken or too slow. Houston joins a growing list of Texas communities where the backlash isn't theoretical anymore.
If you want to know whether there's a Flock camera on your route, or you're trying to figure out how to push back through legal, political channels before your neighbors start doing it with their hands, check our camera map and our take-action page. Credit to Chron and @avi_ously.713 for putting this on record.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Chron, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.