The Hays County Commissioners Court became the first in the state to end its contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate reading cameras (ALPRs) on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
The decision came after months of delaying votes, an open house held for community feedback and learning and State Rep. Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood) urging commissioners to vote to end the contract. The vote was 3-2 along partisan lines, with the Democratic commissioners voting against and the Republicans for the contract.
“I’m proud to have led the effort for greater accountability in how surveillance is used in Hays County,” Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra wrote in a Facebook post. “In times like these, we must be vigilant about who has access to information about the people in our community. I support public safety technology, however, never at the expense of privacy, transparency or public trust.”
ALPRs are cameras that read the license plates of cars for law enforcement purposes, such as finding stolen vehicles or missing persons.
Hays County Sheriff Anthony Hipolito said the Sheriff’s Office had been using ALPRs since 2022 during an August open house at the San Marcos Library. The open house was hosted by Commissioners Debbie Ingalsbe and Michelle Cohen to discuss ALPRs after the vote had been tabled multiple times.
According to Sam Benavides, an organizer with the Hays Caldwell Education Fund, the movement to end the Flock contract started in July. It came as a natural continuation of a movement to block a Flock expansion in San Marcos.
Benavides said the contract had previously been approved by the court, but came back for another vote due to a clerical error.
“I know that this was passed in February, when very little was known about Flock Safety, but since then, groups like EFF have worked tremendously hard to sound the alarm on this shady company, and now we know better,” Benavides said.
Critics of Flock Safety raised concerns about how ALPRs track data, who has access to that data and how the data is stored. One of the major concerns that critics of the contract raised was access to the data by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
During the August open house, the Sheriff’s Office said ICE doesn’t have direct access to Hays County ALPR data, but they can access it through their partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“We already know that it’s been used by ICE to track immigrants. It’s been used by cops to track people in Texas seeking abortions,” Benavides said. “We know it’s been used to target political dissenters, and as people who have been very outspoken against police abuse and the attacks on free speech … It’s just not the time to expand these tools of mass surveillance.”
While critics of Flock, such as Benavides and organizations like Ground Game Texas, have celebrated the vote as a win, law enforcement groups have denounced the move.
“The Hays County Law Enforcement Association and Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) are deeply disappointed in the recent decision by the County Commissioners to yield to pressure from activist groups and move forward with eliminating the use of Flock Safety cameras in our communities,” CLEAT wrote in a statement on the vote.
Before the vote, Hipolito criticized Zwiener’s letter and critics of Flock, saying critics didn’t know how challenging his office’s job is and how necessary he feels tools such as Flock are.
“Public safety should be guided by experience, training, and a commitment to service, not outside agendas,” Hipolito wrote in a Facebook post. “I was elected to lead, and I will continue to do just that with integrity and accountability to the people of this county.”
CLEAT wrote that activists have wrongly claimed that there is a growing movement opposing Flock ALPRs. The only example provided to contradict the claim was that Dallas increased the number of ALPRs they have, while it claimed ALPRs were expanding in Central Texas.
The claim of expansion in Central Texas may be true; however, the vote against Flock in Hays County is in fact part of a movement opposing ALPRs. In June, the San Marcos City Council voted against expanding the technology. According to Benavides, Lockhart also rejected ALRPs and there is a movement opposing them in Kyle.
“I’m really proud that our commissioners and judge finally saw the light, and I expect that this is just going to be one of the first dominoes to fall in the region,” Benavides said.
