Fort Myers Beach pulled the plug on its Flock Safety license-plate cameras three weeks before a recent report on the matter, paying $3,000 to end the contract early. Some of the cameras are still bolted to the town's bridges, and nobody has said when they're coming down.
The town signed its original agreement with Flock Safety back in 2022, paying $15,000 a year for a six-camera system that included two mobile cameras, according to gulfcoastnewsnow.com. Officials told the outlet that Flock Safety has not set a date for removing the hardware from the bridges. Separately, Fort Myers Beach Talk reported the cameras remained installed as of Tuesday, deactivated but not gone, with the town waiting on the vendor to act.
Why the Town Manager Pulled the Plug
Town Manager Will McKannay recommended ending the contract, citing concerns that the town did not have an agreement with the Lee County Sheriff's Office to review how deputies used the data the cameras collected, the same report notes. McKannay said the town paid to install the cameras but had no role operating or monitoring them and no oversight of who used them, and he warned the town could be exposed to liability if a user misused the system without any indemnification in place. He added he wasn't opposed to license-plate readers in principle and could bring council a better agreement down the road, while also describing the sheriff's office's authorized-use policy as very thorough.
The data-access gap was more than a hypothetical concern for McKannay. According to the same report, the data collected by the cameras is monitored by Lee County deputies, but the town does not have an agreement with law enforcement to access information on how that data is used. Fort Myers Beach officials said the town has no current plans to stand up another license-plate-reader system to replace Flock Safety's.
A 2021 Vote Set the Cameras in Motion
The cameras trace back to a Wednesday vote, when the Town Council authorized then-Town Manager Roger Hernstadt to contract with Flock Safety for six license-plate readers and mobile cameras, according to a report from Fort Myers Beach Talk. The system went live the following year, paid for under that original annual contract.
Fort Myers Beach's Dilemma Fits a Statewide Pattern
Fort Myers Beach's predicament is landing amid a broader reckoning over license-plate readers across Florida. The Department of Transportation ordered all license plate readers removed from state highways and rights-of-way, giving local law enforcement agencies 30 days to pull the cameras or face having FDOT's own crews take them down, per WEAR-TV. The Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office told the station it would also begin removing its remaining devices on county rights-of-way beyond what the state order covered.
Several Florida law-enforcement agencies have said they are discontinuing or suspending license-plate-reader use. Responses have varied widely even within the same region: Pembroke Pines chose to shut off all of its more than 100 license-plate cameras, while several other Broward County police departments say they will remove only the cameras necessary to comply with the state order, according to GovTech. Collier County, meanwhile, announced it would begin removing 72 plate readers from state highways in its jurisdiction, Florida Weekly has reported.
Just across the water, Cape Coral's Flock Safety cameras have been removed. That contrasts with Fort Myers Beach's deactivated but still-mounted hardware.
What Florida Law Says About the Data
The surveillance debate is playing out against a broader state action: FDOT has ordered license-plate readers removed from state highways and rights-of-way within 30 days.
Flock rolled out an audit tool in August and is requiring every law enforcement customer to use it by the end of the year, according to Yellowhammer News, a sign of the broader scrutiny law enforcement agencies are under for how deputies and officers use the systems. For now, Fort Myers Beach's cameras sit deactivated on its bridges, with the town still waiting for Flock Safety to remove them.
