Six Flock cameras owned by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office have aided the department in roughly 800 “serious arrests” and a slew of other criminal matters, Sheriff Bill Waybourn said Tuesday as scrutiny over the license plate reading devices grows across the state.
Since January 2025, the cameras have helped county law enforcement recover 259 stolen vehicles and seize 100 pounds of methamphetamine and 150 fentanyl pills, Waybourn said. Flock cameras also helped the department identify suspects for capital murder, the sexual assault of a minor and aggravated robbery and kidnapping.
“Flock, today, at an overall 30,000-foot level, is one of the best law enforcement tools that we’ve ever had,” Waybourn told county commissioners during a Sept. 1 briefing, answering questions on how his office uses and protects the data collected by the artificial intelligence-driven surveillance software.
Commissioner Matt Krause requested the presentation days before Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to pause all funding for Flock cameras. A former state lawmaker who helped approve the 2019 law banning red light cameras, Krause said he wanted to address public concern that Flock cameras contribute to a “24-hour, seven-day-a-week surveillance state.”
“There’s a fine line between privacy and safety, a fine balance that you have to walk,” Krause said.
Flock Safety is based in Atlanta and nearly 10 years old but has faced increased scrutiny over the past year as local law enforcement and homeowners associations across the country increasingly use them in the name of making neighborhoods safer. The cameras take a photo of every passing vehicle, capturing its license plate, make, model and color.
The governor’s announcement last week came as The Texas Tribune reported that a state agency spent at least $30 million helping law enforcement install at least 3,200 Flock cameras across the state. A 2023 law adding $1 to Texas car insurance policies to combat catalytic converter theft generated the money used to pay for the cameras, the Tribune reported.
A Flock camera sits near the corner of New York Avenue and East Pioneer Parkway on Sept. 1, 2026, in Arlington. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Waybourn did not specify how Tarrant County paid for its six Flock cameras but said they’ve been in use for five or six years. He told commissioners the cameras played a “serious part” in last year’s 14% reduction in crime, adding that he would expect crime to increase if his department stopped using them.
He used the 1996 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington — a case that inspired the Amber Alert system now used when children are abducted — as an example of how Flock could potentially help law enforcement. The chances of finding Hagerman “would have gone up tremendously,” had police used Flock cameras, said Waybourn, who was police chief in neighboring Dalworthington Gardens at the time.
“For the next baby that’s kidnapped like that, I sure ain’t one to want to stand at the door and say ‘No ma’am, mama, we turned off our Flock cameras.’ I wouldn’t want to do that,” Waybourn said.
The sheriff said he recognizes community concerns around privacy, opening his presentation by sharing recent federal court decisions ruling that individuals are not legally entitled to privacy when in public. He cited a federal appeals court upholding in March a Mississippi court’s ruling that local police did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they used a license plate reader to identify a vehicle associated with someone on a warrant for aggravated assault.
“That’s the law we stand on as far as operating Flock,” Waybourn said.
The sheriff’s office owns the data collected by its Flock cameras and may only use it for law enforcement purposes but can also share it with other agencies, Waybourn said. That data is deleted every 30 days unless marked for use as evidence.
County Judge Tim O’Hare and Commissioner Alisa Simmons, opponents on the November ballot, asked questions about privacy for residents and how to prevent law enforcement or Flock from misusing data collected by the cameras.
“Sharing people’s data is frightening. I 100% see the legitimate law enforcement use for it,” Simmons said. “But we have to ask some serious questions about privacy, transparency, oversight and how that information is used.”
O’Hare cited recent examples across the country of law enforcement officers using Flock data to stalk ex-partners and co-workers, asking how such behavior is prevented or caught.
Waybourn said best practices for managing the data include manual audits, as well as artificial intelligence-driven audits, to identify “unusual activity” and alert the chain of command. All activity is traceable to a specific user.
In the sheriff’s office, 130 staffers have access to the Flock camera data, Waybourn said. Audits have not detected unusual or prohibited activity within the department’s use, he said.
Flock also has access to the data its cameras collect but deletes that data every seven days, said Ian Leslie, the agency’s regional public affairs manager who works with local and state elected officials on legislation and regulations over the software.
Krause asked Waybourn to explain how the use of Flock cameras is different from the red light cameras Texas declared unconstitutional.
“The red light cameras (were) there to get a civil violation of somebody running a red light. That was their sole purpose,” Waybourn replied. “Sole purpose of Flock is not that at all, it’s completely different. It’s tracking bad guys, who we think are bad guys.”
Leslie, the Flock representative, told commissioners the cameras only collect license plate information, not personal identifiable information. Law enforcement already has access to that type of information, Waybourn said, promising that misuse hasn’t and won’t be tolerated.
The Fort Worth Police Department has used Flock cameras since 2020, and other law enforcement agencies in the county may also have contracts with the company.
Flock skirted city regulations when it installed dozens of its cameras in public rights-of-way across Fort Worth without required permitting, mostly at the request of neighborhood associations that said they wanted to crack down on crime around their homes, according to a 2024 Fort Worth Report investigation. City officials said at the time that negotiations were ongoing to establish a right-of-way use agreement with the company.
Krause said he expects lawmakers to discuss statewide regulations when the Texas Legislature convenes in January, but in the meantime, he’s interested in adopting a policy to guide county best practices. Waybourn said he’s not against guardrails and would be “excited for leading the way for the country.”
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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