Texas Town Terminates Flock Camera Contract After Outside Agencies Run 1.6 Million Searches

Surveillance vendors market their automated license plate readers as closed, locally controlled tools that keep community data secure. But in Pflugerville, Texas, a resident's public records request revealed that the city's 28 cameras were operating as an open door for nationwide surveillance, prompting the city to abruptly sever its $87,500 annual contract.[1][3]

On August 25, 2026, the Pflugerville City Council voted unanimously to terminate its master services agreement with Flock Safety. Before the vote even concluded, City Manager James Hartshorn ordered municipal staff to physically cover the camera lenses with plastic bags and shut the system down entirely.[1][5]

The cancellation stems from an audit obtained by a local resident, which showed that between February 16 and August 15, 2026, 459 outside law enforcement agencies conducted 1,597,918 searches of Pflugerville's camera network. Over that same six-month span, the local Pflugerville Police Department ran just 5,078 searches.[1][3]

This means external entities queried the local cameras roughly 315 times for every single search conducted by local police. The out-of-state access included 480 searches by the Canadian County Sheriff's Office in Oklahoma, 242 by the Union Pacific Railroad Police Department, and 143 by the Miami Township Police Department in Ohio.[1][3]

Pflugerville Police Chief Willie Richards, who took over the department in December 2025, declined to recommend renewing the contract. He cited a lack of clarity on how community data was being protected and secured, marking a reversal for a department that had previously used the cameras to investigate local incidents, including a shooting at Connally High School.[1][2]

The local termination coincides with a broader statewide crackdown on the technology. On August 27, 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed all state agencies to immediately halt any further expenditures for purchasing or installing Flock cameras.[4][6]

Abbott's directive followed revelations that the Texas Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority was allocating roughly $30 million to local police departments for the technology. "To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras," Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris stated.[4]

That state funding originated from a $1 fee added to Texas auto insurance policies in 2023, which lawmakers originally approved to combat catalytic converter theft, not to build a statewide surveillance network.[4][6]

Pflugerville joins a growing list of municipalities retreating from the platform. In August alone, cities including Tempe, Arizona, and Grass Valley, California, canceled their contracts, while the Florida Department of Transportation ordered all automated license plate readers removed from state highway rights-of-way within 30 days.[6]

Pflugerville officials have formally requested that Flock Safety immediately and permanently delete all municipal data from its cloud servers. The city's 28 cameras remain bagged at their intersections, awaiting physical removal by the vendor.[1][5]