Texas Communities Pulling Back From Flock Cameras

Our Take

Texas Scorecard's reporting on Bastrop points to something we've been tracking for a while now: once one city council starts asking hard questions about Flock Safety contracts, neighboring communities start asking the same questions. That's how accountability spreads in a state with thousands of small governments and almost no statewide rules on ALPR retention, sharing, or audits. A "growing list" isn't just a headline — it's local officials realizing they signed away data policy decisions to a private vendor with little public input.

What makes these reversals notable is that they're happening in conservative-leaning Texas towns, not just the usual coastal privacy-advocate strongholds. That cuts against the lazy framing that ALPR skepticism is a partisan issue. When fiscal conservatives start asking why their city is paying six figures a year to feed a nationwide license-plate database that cops in other states and even federal agencies can query without local oversight, that's a legitimate taxpayer and civil-liberties concern meeting in the middle.

If you live in Bastrop or anywhere else in Texas, check our camera map to see what's already been installed near you, and use our take-action page for a template on raising this at your next city council meeting. Credit to Texas Scorecard for keeping local accountability reporting alive — this is exactly the kind of coverage that pressures councils before contracts quietly auto-renew.