Residents in Carrollton are calling on the city to end its partnership with Flock Safety as more communities around North Texas push back on the controversial surveillance technology.
The Carrollton Police Department uses Flock’s license plate readers, and last year worked with the vendor to launch an initiative allowing residents to voluntarily send police their live security footage from tools like Ring to CPD’s feed.
Now, a group of residents is circulating a petition to remove Flock cameras from the city altogether.
"When we're speaking to residents ... they're unaware," said Hannah Foust, a member of the DeFlock Carrollton group, part of the national DeFlock initiative. "And once they find out about it, they're very on board with saying, we're not comfortable with this agreement."
Foust said a friend first noticed a Flock camera in their residential neighborhood a couple of months ago. At the time, they didn’t know what it was.
"It makes me uncomfortable because it's on the road where our kids would be walking to middle school next year," Foust said.
She worries that someone could get unauthorized access and track her family.
Foust and other group members have requested emails between the police department, the city manager, the mayor and Flock Safety from the city but were given an invoice of $32,000.
Last week, other members of the group expressed their concerns to the Carrollton City Council during the public forum.
"With enough location data, you can reconstruct someone's life, where they work, worship, receive medical care, whom they visit, which political meetings they attend, and the routines of their family" said Kenneth Feagins, the chair of the Libertarian Party in Collin County. "The burden belongs to government to justify surveillance of a specific individual, not to residents to justify their privacy.”
Christian Hernandez told council members she is worried for the safety of women such as her younger sisters. She said she’s counted seven cameras on her commute to work. "That's one camera for every one minute of my commute, and the most disconcerting fact of all is that there's no assurance of who is behind that camera,” she said.
KERA reached out to Flock for a response to the concerns but did not hear back by deadline.
Carrollton Mayor Steve Babick told KERA the city has between 50 and 60 Flock cameras placed in “thoroughfares, intersections, and then areas of traditional high crime” and has no plans to remove them. He said they’ve been a valuable tool.
"In the last 30 days, we've had 1,710 alerts, " Babick said. "That includes 43 stolen vehicles that includes 76 warrants for arrest that were outstanding and that includes six missing people on the list."
The Carrolton Police Department recently updated its Flock Transparency page, saying, "Cameras are positioned to capture vehicles entering and exiting high-risk areas—not to monitor shoppers or residents. The focus is on identifying suspect vehicles connected to crimes, not on recording where people shop or live."
According to the website, data is automatically deleted after 30 days unless it is linked to an active investigation.
Other communities across North Texas, including Grand Prairie, have raised similar concerns about the use of Flock technology.
In Dallas, there have been 25 reported incidents since March in which Flock cameras were vandalized or removed, the Dallas Morning News reported, and in June, five cameras in Carrollton were reported missing.
Avery Escamilla-Wendell is KERA’s news intern. Got a tip? Email Avery ataescamillawendell@kera.org. You can follow her on Instagram @by_avery_escamilla.
