On November 3, 2026, 54% of voters in League City, Texas, rejected keeping their police department's license plate readers, according to results reported by Houston Public Media. At least 10 local governments and police departments in the United States have limited or ended contracts with Flock Safety since the summer of 2026, TechCrunch reported.
Flock Safety, founded in 2017, sells license plate readers, drones and acoustic sensors; more than 100,000 of its cameras operate in that country, according to the same report. The pullback runs along three tracks: privacy, other agencies' access to data, and doubts about the procurement process. Tatiana Rice, of the Future of Privacy Forum, told TechCrunch that a camera installed at the end of the street feels tangible compared with the everyday exchange of personal data online. For Mexico the point is one of institutional design: municipal and state police operate video surveillance networks and license plate readers, and the US record documents what city councils scrutinize when a renewal comes to a vote.
The list of cancellations is scattered:
- Monroe, Ohio; Newburgh, New York; Richmond, Virginia; Hopkinton and New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Lansing, Michigan ended their contracts between August and November.
- Asheville, North Carolina, voted to terminate in August, and the sheriff's office of El Paso County, Colorado, announced in September that it would stop using the cameras.
- Florida banned license plate readers on state highways and Texas suspended state funding for Flock.
- In August Flock cut its default retention from 30 to 7 days and requires a case code to query its database; the company maintains that it does not sell data.
In League City, an October resolution requires the removal or covering of 55 cameras within 72 hours of the November 17 certification, and 16 more units are awaiting state permits. Mayor Nick Long asked for them to be covered immediately with nylon bags while the contract is resolved, Houston Public Media reported.
On November 17 the city council certifies the result and that 72-hour deadline begins. The record stands as a documentary reference for other jurisdictions reviewing video surveillance contracts: what is bought, how long the data is kept and who can query it.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.