Pflugerville Kills Flock Camera Deal After 1.6 Million Outside Searches Surface

Pflugerville's City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to terminate its contract with Flock Safety, pulling the plug on the city's network of automated license plate reader cameras after a resident's records request revealed that hundreds of outside law enforcement agencies had been quietly mining the system's data for months. Before the council even took its vote, City Manager James Hartshorn had already ordered staff to physically cover the camera lenses and shut the system down.

The move brings an abrupt end to a $87,500-per-year lease that had technically expired on July 31 but stayed operational while the city negotiated a temporary extension, according to Community Impact. City staff took the drastic step of covering the camera lenses ahead of the formal vote, as reported by KVUE, a physical fix meant to stop any further data capture while officials sorted out what had gone wrong. KEYE reported the city had discovered an issue allowing non-partner law enforcement agencies to access its Flock data.

A Resident's Records Request Blew the Lid Off

The discovery traces back to Pflugerville resident Sam Aly, who filed a Texas Public Information Act request and uncovered that between February 16 and August 15, 459 outside law enforcement agencies conducted nearly 1.6 million searches of the city's camera network. The same records showed a staggering imbalance: Pflugerville police ran 5,078 searches over that six-month span, while external agencies ran 1,597,918 — roughly 315 outside searches for every one conducted by local police, per the same audit data reported by Community Impact. City officials had previously assured residents that nationwide data sharing had been turned off.

That gap between what residents were told and what the network actually showed became the central problem for city leaders. Pflugerville originally installed 28 fixed Flock cameras after City Council approval in April 2022, operating under a policy that retained license plate images for 30 days before automatic deletion unless tied to an active criminal case, with data stored on cloud servers and shared with the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to the City of Pflugerville. Notably, the same cameras had aided local investigators before — Hoodline previously reported how Pflugerville police used Flock footage to identify a suspect's vehicle following a shooting at Connally High School.

Police Chief Withholds Support, Council Member Calls Flock 'Unreliable'

Pflugerville Police Chief Willie Richards, who took office in December 2025 after more than 30 years in law enforcement, formally declined to recommend renewing the contract at the meeting, saying he lacked clarity on how community data was being protected, preserved, and secured. His refusal to back the system marked a notable break from a department that had relied on the cameras in past cases.

Council Member Rudy Metayer denounced Flock Safety as an “unreliable partner” during the meeting, and Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel joined more than a dozen residents who testified against renewing the contract, arguing the technology posed severe civil liberty risks without proper oversight, per the same Community Impact account.

Part of a Wider Central Texas and National Retreat

Pflugerville's cancellation lines up with moves already made elsewhere in Central Texas. Austin, San Marcos, and Hays County have all ended, rejected, or refrained from expanding their own Flock Safety contracts in recent years, with municipal leaders across the region citing data governance and privacy risks.

The pattern extends well beyond the Austin area. At least 56 municipalities nationwide have canceled, deactivated, or rejected Flock Safety contracts in 2026 amid growing scrutiny over warrantless mass surveillance and improper data access, according to The Guardian, which noted that civil liberties groups say under 1% of scanned vehicles nationwide are ever connected to any crime. Hoodline has tracked similar reversals in recent weeks, including Minnesota surveillance trust crumbling and a former Katy officer facing charges after running more than 2,300 unauthorized Flock searches, a case Hoodline also covered.

Flock Safety, founded in Atlanta in 2017, maintains license plate reader networks across more than 4,000 cities nationwide, using machine learning to log vehicle license plates, make, model, and color into searchable databases, according to background compiled by Wikipedia and Business Insider. The company markets its subscription-based camera networks to police departments, local governments, and homeowners associations alike — the same pitch that once persuaded Pflugerville to sign on, and the one its council just walked away from.