Keller City Council: ALPR (Flock Camera) Presentation | Sept. 15, 2026

Our Take

Another month, another city council getting the standard Flock sales pitch: Keller Police Chief Brad Fortune and Deputy Chief Ryan Coe walked the dais through what automated license plate readers do and why the department wants them. Credit to the City of Keller, Texas for posting the full presentation publicly — that's more transparency than a lot of departments bother with. But a polished slideshow from the people asking for the cameras isn't the same as independent scrutiny of what those cameras will actually do once they're bolted to a pole.

These pitches tend to follow a script: officer safety, stolen cars, Amber Alerts, "just metadata, not surveillance." What rarely gets equal airtime is how long that plate data sits in a database, who else can query it, whether it's shared with federal agencies or other jurisdictions through Flock's network, and what happens when the system flags the wrong car. Once a council approves the hardware, the policy details that actually protect residents are usually hashed out later, quietly, with far less public attention than the initial vote.

If you're in Keller or anywhere else watching a council weigh this decision, don't wait for the system to go live to start asking questions. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push for real data retention limits, audit logs, and public reporting before the cameras go up — not after.