The cities of Hewitt and Kyle are the latest in a slew of Texas localities opting out of involvement with Flock Safety cameras.
Hewitt’s recent decision to take down its Flock cameras comes as the Kyle City Council voted 4-3 to cover its cameras.
Flock’s automated license plate readers (ALPRs) use AI to scan license plates and save information about a vehicle, such as make, model, color, and other identifiers like cosmetic damage or bumper stickers.
Flock allows law enforcement officers to access its database without acquiring a warrant. This has raised concerns over potential violations of citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“We ended our agreement with the ALPR vendor, which is Flock, and it’s due to the grant funding,” Hewitt City Manager Jim Devlin said. “We wanted to ensure that we didn’t later on receive a bill for funds that we didn’t have available.”
Devlin noted that Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent pause of state funding for Flock cameras played a crucial role in the decision.
“If it comes back and it’s something that’s viable for the city of Hewitt, it’s something that we’ll end up looking at,” Devlin noted.
In the city of Kyle, Mayor Yvonne Flores-Cale and Councilmember Melisa Medina were some of the most outspoken critics of the cameras, citing concerns surrounding how much data is collected and where the data is stored.
Police Chief Jeff Barnett noted that one camera had previously been cut down, and Flores-Cale and Medina both addressed opinions from residents in the decision.
The Kyle City Council voted in September against ending two of the city’s three Flock contracts. Residents may get to voice their opinions on the city’s involvement with the cameras via a non-binding question on a May 2027 ballot.
The decisions from Kyle and Hewitt come as the technology is also under scrutiny for abuse. Former Lufkin patrolman Zachary Klein was recently sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to 100 counts of misuse of official information involving abuse of the Flock system.
Klein used the system to track his former romantic partner, her family, and her romantic partners, and is believed to be one of the most prolific abusers of the Flock system in the nation, having conducted more than 25,000 license plate searches for non-law enforcement purposes.
In late September, Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to pause permit issuance for ALPR technology on state-owned roads.
Texas lawmakers are expected to consider potential regulations for Flock’s automated license plate readers and other ALPR systems during the 2027 legislative session.
