{"id":437351,"date":"2026-09-16T04:16:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T04:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/437351\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T04:16:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T04:16:40","slug":"dallas-police-chief-comeaux-says-he-thinks-paused-flock-camera-program-will-come-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/437351\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Police Chief Comeaux says he thinks paused Flock camera program ‘will come back’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Police Department officially sent notice of its intent to turn off about half of its Flock license plate cameras<\/a> Tuesday, but Chief Daniel Comeaux said that he expects the cameras will be back at some point.<\/p>\n

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced a pause in state funding for the Flock cameras last month, which affected about 320 cameras in the city — half of the 700 plus used by DPD. The funding ran out Tuesday — but the department said it has to give 10 business day notice to Flock to cancel those cameras. They will remain operational in the interim, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“We still have a certain amount of cameras up — over 300 cameras — that will be active and working and hopefully that’s enough to keep everybody safe like we’ve been doing,” Comeaux said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

He said the cameras make it easier for his officers to find suspects.<\/p>\n

“With less cameras it’s less pinpointing,” he said.<\/p>\n

But Comeaux said he expects this pause in funding will be only temporary.<\/p>\n

“My gut feeling is that it will come back [with] as many people in law enforcement that are letting everyone know how much of a positive tool this is to really keep everyone safe,” he said.<\/p>\n

The automated license plate readers have come under nationwide scrutiny in recent months. Privacy advocates argue they take in data on tens of thousands of drivers not suspected of a crime and are subject to misuse by officers. A recent Washington Post report found several used the technology to track their ex-wives and ex-girlfriends.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that no one will ever misuse the Flock system, but if they do they’re going to have to come see me and they’ll pay a penalty,” Comeaux said.<\/p>\n

He argues DPD has safeguards in place to protect against misuse.<\/p>\n

Comeaux also spoke about the city’s improving 911 response times, which are now nearly at the goal of 8 minutes or less for the most urgent calls. He credits staffing changes, new drone as first responder technology and “empowering” officers on the ground.<\/p>\n

“The empowerment of sergeants being able to monitor what officers are doing and helping them get back into service when they need to get back in service, really helpful,” Comeaux said.<\/p>\n

He said the department is still working on striking the right staffing balance between violent crime deterrence and responding when people call 911.<\/p>\n

“When is the highest number of calls? What days are the highest numbers of calls? What times are the highest amount of calls? And what I want to do is make sure we have the right amount officers working on those days and at those times,” he said.<\/p>\n

Comeaux also addressed last month’s crime numbers which show violent crime down nearly 9% compared to last year — but an uptick in the homicide numbers by about 3%.<\/p>\n

“You might have one week where it ticks up or one month where it ticks up and you can get those numbers down the next month, you can end up in a better place,” Comeaux said. “And right now we’re still in en route to another year in reduction in crime.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Police Department officially sent notice of its intent to turn off about half of its Flock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,4081,9294,45688],"class_list":["post-437351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-dallas-police-department","tag-daniel-comeaux","tag-flock-cameras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}