Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered every state agency to pause funding for Flock Safety's license plate camera network, a sweeping move that comes after at least six Texas police departments and sheriff's offices reported officers placed on leave, investigated, or criminally charged over misuse of the system this August. The order, confirmed by Abbott's spokesman on Friday, halts state money for a surveillance program that has grown to roughly 3,200 cameras installed since 2023 with help from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority.
The pause follows the indictment of a Lufkin police officer on 100 counts of misusing official information, with Abbott saying the officer allegedly used area Flock cameras to surveil 11 people for more than a year. As reported by Chron, which first published the story via the Texas Tribune, Abbott described the move as a crackdown on Flock cameras across the state and said the technology will be required to be used responsibly if it is used at all. The Lufkin case prompted the department to take its entire Flock camera network offline, and Angelina County authorities confirmed a second officer was placed on administrative leave during the investigation, according to CBS19.
The Lufkin indictment wasn't an isolated case. In Fort Bend County, former Katy Police Department officer Sergio Rodriguez was indicted in April on felony stalking and misuse-of-official-information charges after allegedly making more than 2,300 unauthorized Flock searches to track a woman over 11 months, as detailed in earlier Hoodline coverage. Rodriguez was fired after admitting to the unauthorized queries. Texas Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike have raised concerns about the scale of Flock's network and its data collection, and reports of misuse have increased substantially in recent months.
How a $1 Insurance Fee Built a Statewide Camera Grid
The money behind Texas's Flock expansion traces back to a 2023 law that the Texas House and Senate passed unanimously, adding $1 to auto insurance policies specifically to combat catalytic converter theft. Lawmakers have said the legislation never discussed using that money for license plate cameras before it passed. The Texas Department of Insurance had described the underlying bill, Senate Bill 224, as raising the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority's annual insurance fee from $4 to $5 starting in May 2023 while also boosting criminal penalties for catalytic converter theft.
That authority went on to devote at least $30 million to grants supporting the state's Flock surveillance network, according to a Texas Tribune investigation cited in the Chron report. The agency also holds a three-year, $15.9 million contract with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is installing almost 1,200 Flock cameras of its own. DPS separately expanded its vehicle surveillance data-sharing network by 69% in five months, growing from 122 partner agencies in February to 206 by August, per High Plains Public Radio.
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said state agency funds can no longer be used for Flock cameras under the new directive. Flock cameras themselves are AI-powered license plate readers that capture vehicle make, model, color, bumper stickers, and dents, and departments running them can allow other agencies to access their devices through the company's National Lookup Program, which lets participating agencies search one another's data nationwide.
Lawmakers and Local Leaders Push Back
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa called Flock cameras a method of warrantless surveillance and asked Abbott to stop turning Texas into a surveillance state, releasing an ad blaming the governor for the technology's spread across the state. Texas residents have raised similar privacy concerns for months, and cities and counties have begun canceling their Flock Safety contracts outright.
That local backlash has already played out across the state. Pflugerville's city council voted unanimously to terminate its $87,500 Flock contract and deactivate 28 cameras after a public records request showed 459 outside agencies had run over 1.6 million searches through the city's database, according to Hoodline's earlier reporting. Wylie killed its own Flock deal after residents rallied more than 700 signatures, and the mayor of Manvel has pushed to exit the city's lease amid similar privacy concerns.
Not every city is walking away. El Paso's city council voted 6-2 in March to keep its contract, which funds about 150 cameras through $693,334 in state grants alongside $138,666 in municipal tax dollars, though the city has since required future grant proposals to avoid naming Flock as the exclusive vendor. Because Abbott's order only blocks state agency spending, cities relying on municipal tax dollars or federal grants are not legally barred from continuing to pay for the cameras themselves, leaving Texas's surveillance landscape fragmented city by city.
Federal Scrutiny Grows Alongside State Action
The state-level freeze arrives as Congress ramps up its own inquiry into the company. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, opened a formal investigation into Flock Safety this week, demanding internal records on data retention, security safeguards, and unauthorized searches, and citing multiple cases of officer misuse and erroneous arrests tied to Flock database queries, according to KCUR.
U.S. Rep. Keith Self introduced the Protecting Rights in Video and Equipment Acquired Discovery Act in July, which would ban federal funds for automated license plate readers and require federal agencies to obtain warrants before querying local systems like Flock. Self said the legislation would restore privacy rights and argued that Americans' Fourth Amendment protections do not disappear because of artificial intelligence, according to Texas Scorecard. Self has characterized Flock's own response — shortening its default data retention window from 30 days to seven days and adding an Evidence Mode requiring case numbers for queries, announced August 13 — as cosmetic without a statutory warrant requirement.
Flock Safety has described its technology as a public safety tool for Texas law enforcement that helps officers solve serious crimes, find missing people, and recover stolen vehicles, and the company says it supports thoughtful legislation with privacy guardrails. The Atlanta-based firm now operates more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states in over 5,000 communities, processing more than 20 billion vehicle scans monthly after reaching an $8.4 billion valuation in April, per Mashable. For now, Abbott's order cuts off one funding stream, but it leaves the broader question of whether Texas police can keep buying the cameras with local dollars unresolved.
