ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – St. Johns County commissioners agreed Tuesday to place the county’s use of Flock Safety automatic license plate reader cameras on the Oct. 20 agenda — a decision that capped a public comment period in which Flock cameras were again a topic.
Debra Campbell said she rarely leaves her house more than two or three times a week, told commissioners she had requested her own license plate records from the sheriff’s department and was alarmed by what she found.
“In just 30 days, cameras on the roads captured my plate 154 separate times,” Campbell said. “On one single afternoon when I just drove to a family birthday party, the system logged my plate 23 times.”
Campbell said she received 119 actual photos of her vehicle. But what concerned her most was the error rate.
“Eleven cars were not mine — but captured my licence plate as those cars,” she said.
Campbell also raised concerns about data retention, noting that while the sheriff’s office deletes records after 30 days, Flock Safety — the private company that owns the cameras — retains that tracking information indefinitely.
“Private companies building a permanent inventory database of our daily lives on public roads,” Campbell said. “Where do we draw the line?”
Campbell said more than 1,000 residents have signed her petition and her Facebook page has grown to more than 6,400 followers in just over two months.
Commissioner Christian Whitehurst asked the board to schedule the discussion, saying a roundtable with law enforcement that commissioners agreed to pursue Sept. 15 had not taken place.
“On Sept. 15, this board agreed in spirit of compromise we would have a roundtable with law enforcement to discuss Flock cameras,” Whitehurst said. “That meeting never materialized.”
The board agreed to give residents an opportunity to comment and discuss whether to permit the cameras on county rights-of-way.
Sheriff Rob Hardwick has defended the cameras as a crime-fighting tool and said he wants them to remain on county roads, while complying with the state’s order to remove them from state rights-of-way.
He has cited 2026 department figures that include 29 stolen vehicles recovered, 23 stolen license tags recovered, 35 wanted people arrested, 62 people charged, 132 felony charges and 54 misdemeanor charges cleared, and 35 missing people recovered.
Hardwick has said license plate reader data is one investigative lead among many. At a September budget hearing, he and sheriff’s office officials said the department had shortened its data-retention period to 30 days, limited system access and ended sharing data with outside agencies. They also said the system does not use facial recognition or collect cellphone data.
The sheriff’s office said roughly half of its approximately 182 cameras would be removed under the state directive. Hardwick said those cameras would not be relocated elsewhere. License plate readers on county roads remain in place for now.
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