Conroe City Council approved another year of its Flock license plate reader contract as Harris County Precinct 4 decommissions 61 cameras.
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Conroe City Council approved the next year of its Flock Safety operating system and license plate reader contract Thursday, moving forward with year three of a five-year agreement that runs through fiscal year 2028-29, according to the city agenda packet. The item passed as part of the consent agenda after one council member tried to pull the Flock item for a separate vote, but the request failed for lack of a second. One “no” vote was heard before the motion was carried.
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The vote came the same night Conroe police and a Flock representative gave a public demonstration of how the system works, what officers can search and what guardrails the city says it is putting around the technology.
What Conroe says Flock is doing
In the past 30 days, Conroe’s cameras captured more than 14.6 million vehicle reads, according to the presentation. Police Chief Jon Buckholtz said the more important number was unique vehicles detected: 872,484. Of those, he said Conroe police searched 375, or about 13 vehicles per day.
“That in my definition is not mass surveillance,” Buckholtz said. “That is a tool that’s being used very specifically for a very specific crime.”
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The city currently has 51 Flock cameras, according to the presentation. Buckholtz also pointed to the city’s transparency portal, saying residents can see searches, recoveries and other live data.
The Conroe vote comes as the debate over Flock is moving in the opposite direction in parts of Harris County. Harris County Precinct 4 Commissioner
Lesley Briones is decommissioning all 61 Flock cameras and license plate readers controlled by the precinct, citing concerns over privacy, data access and potential misuse, ABC13 reported. The shutdown affects Precinct 4 cameras, not privately owned Flock cameras or cameras used elsewhere in the region.
Please see my statement on the decommissioning of Precinct 4 Flock cameras.
—
Por favor, vea mi declaración sobre la desactivación de las cámaras Flock del Precinto 4. https://t.co/QJW2M1zoMu
— Commissioner Lesley Briones (@HCP4__Briones) October 8, 2026
Conroe’s presentation emphasized that the system is not one giant open database. Max Weinstein, director of public trust and technology at Flock Safety, told City Council each customer gets its own system and that sharing is turned off by default when the system is delivered.
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“There’s sort of this misconception that this is one homogeneous database, and you sign up and you get access to this giant nationwide database,” Weinstein said. “That is a fundamental mischaracterization of how Flock works. Each city, each customer gets their Flock system.”
Local police departments, he said, decide whether to share data, who to share it with and how far that access should go.
The demonstration also showed officers must enter an investigative purpose and case number before running a search. Weinstein said Flock changed the software after earlier versions allowed officers to type anything into an open text box to satisfy the search requirement.
Conroe City Council approved another year of its Flock license plate reader contract as Harris County Precinct 4 decommissions 61 cameras. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images)
The Dallas Morning News/Hearst N/The Dallas Morning News via Gett
Privacy questions remained
But council members still raised questions on privacy and Fourth Amendment protections.. One asked whether Flock could require an added step similar to getting a search warrant, saying the issue was not whether the cameras have benefits but how to balance those benefits with personal rights.
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“What I can say is this system grew to where it is today, and as law enforcement leaders and the technology company behind it, we did not do a good job at negotiating the social contract around this technology,” Weinstein said. “Without a shadow of a doubt, we could have done a better job.”
Still, he said public fear is sometimes shaped by misunderstandings about what the system can do.
“It is absolutely effective, but it is not predictive policing,” Weinstein said.
Buckholtz noted how Conroe is tightening access to the system. He said his goal is to restrict how many people can log in, rely more on crime analysts, require mandatory fields, update policy and audit use of the system. He also said Conroe had turned off broad outside access that once allowed agencies from across the country to search the city’s data, keeping access closer to Texas and some neighboring states tied to Conroe cases.
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He also said the department is studying whether to shorten data retention from the current 30-day default to 15 days, while weighing what cases could be affected if older data is no longer available.
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“Flock is an investigative tool,” Buckholtz said. “It’s designed to assist law enforcement, not replace traditional police work.”
That is the split now playing out across Texas: while some cities are keeping or expanding Flock cameras, while others are backing away over privacy concerns. Conroe, at least for now, is staying in.