The Texas freeze on Flock cameras along state roads

The Texas Department of Transportation has stopped issuing the permits that allow Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers to be installed along state roads, acting at Gov. Greg Abbott’s direction.¹ The agency’s own wording covers every vendor, not only Flock: “Under the direction of Governor Greg Abbott, TxDOT has suspended issuing approvals for Flock cameras or similar devices installed by third parties in our ROW” — its right-of-way, the land along state highways.²

The freeze reaches past new applications. “This suspension also includes agreements that are approved but not yet installed,” TxDOT said, so a project with a permit in hand and no camera yet on the pole is stopped as well.¹ The Texas Tribune reported the pause on September 17, 2026. A presentation by the police chief in Schertz put its start at September 8, a date TxDOT did not immediately confirm.¹

TxDOT describes its part narrowly. “TxDOT’s role is to review permits to ensure license plate readers are installed correctly and safely along state-owned roadways,” a spokesperson said. “TxDOT does not have access to the data collected from the license plate readers, and these cameras are placed at the request of law enforcement.”²

It takes no camera down. The suspension “does not affect cameras already installed along state rights-of-way, including more than 900 cameras operated by the Texas Department of Public Safety.”¹ DPS, which runs the state’s own network, said it would pause installing additional cameras but keep using the ones it has.⁸

It is not a ban. The pause governs state right-of-way. Nothing in TxDOT’s statement addresses cameras on city streets, on county roads, or on private property such as store parking lots and homeowners associations’ land.²

It changes nothing about the data. Cameras that stay up keep reporting to the agencies that own them, and those agencies set how long plate reads are kept and who else can search them. Both are covered in how long Flock cameras keep data and whether Flock shares data with ICE.

A city or county that wants a plate reader beside a state highway needs TxDOT’s permission for the right-of-way. When McKinney planned citywide cameras in 2025, the plan included a multi-use agreement with TxDOT to install them on state right-of-way.³

Those approvals take time, which is why the freeze lands hardest on projects still in the pipeline. In Stephens County, the sheriff’s camera project was expected to need about eight months for permitting; the sheriff canceled it after the state acted.⁴

How many Texas cameras stand on state right-of-way is not something we could find published, and this site’s data cannot answer it either: volunteers record where a camera stands, not whose land it is on. What the data does show is scale. As of September 28, 2026, this site documents 17,173 license plate readers in Texas, about 91% of them made by Flock Safety.

The permit freeze followed a broader order. On the night of August 27, Abbott directed state agencies to stop paying for Flock cameras. “To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras,” his spokesman, Andrew Mahaleris, said.⁵

State money had built a significant part of the Texas network. The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, funded by a $1 fee lawmakers added to car insurance policies, “has turned the $1 fee hike into at least 3,200 Flock cameras.” Another $15.9 million is helping DPS add almost 1,200 more, and in early August the authority approved $3 million more for 583 cameras along Texas tollways.⁶ The author of the bill that raised the fee, Sen. Carol Alvarado, said she was surprised to learn it was paying for plate readers: “I did not have that in mind when we passed the bill.”⁶

Abbott framed the crackdown around misuse and privacy. “Flock cameras are being reduced dramatically,” he said in an interview with Glenn Beck. “They’re going to be required to be used responsibly if they’re used at all.” He pointed to a Lufkin police officer facing 100 counts of misusing public information for allegedly using the area’s Flock cameras to surveil 11 people for more than a year.⁵ “Citizens are concerned about their Fourth Amendment rights,” he said in August. “They have to be protected. Their privacy must be protected.”⁷

Flock responded that its technology “is an important public safety tool for law enforcement agencies across Texas, helping officers solve serious crimes, find missing people, recover stolen vehicles, and support safer communities.”⁵

The funding cut, more than the permit freeze, is what has been switching cameras off. At least 14 Texas cities and counties had shut off more than 900 Flock cameras by September 24.⁹ El Paso said it would stop using all 150 of its Flock cameras, every one of them installed and supported with state grants, and Dallas police said they would shut down 321 state-funded cameras,⁸ leaving much of the rest of their network running.⁹ Plano stopped using its cameras when the state grant that paid for them was frozen, with a year left on its contract.¹⁵

Others are weighing whether to pay for the cameras themselves. Laredo’s council voted 7–2 to hold a nonbinding referendum in May on whether to spend $1 million a year keeping 165 cameras running, and Kyle, College Station, Conroe and Carrollton have rejected calls to end their partnerships with Flock.⁹ Smaller departments describe the uncertainty itself as the problem: an assistant police chief in Schertz said the lack of information about the freeze was causing “major havoc,” and the governor’s office has not said how long the funding pause will last.⁹

Not every decision is about money. Robinson’s council voted against renewing its contract, and the mayor said the decision would have been made whether or not the city had grant funds.¹⁶ Kendall County commissioners voted not to renew theirs on August 25, two days before the funding order; County Judge Shane Stolarczyk said the issue was “the credibility and trustworthiness of Flock.”¹⁷ Bastrop’s council ended its contract after residents raised privacy concerns. Decisions like these, with their dates and stated reasons, are collected in our tracker of cities that dropped Flock.

Florida did not pause; it reversed. On August 31 its Department of Transportation began “revoking all previously issued approvals for license plate readers” on state rights-of-way,¹¹ and halted future approvals. Its memo cited “concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes” and gave local agencies 30 days from August 31 to remove their devices, after which the department will remove them itself.¹² Florida law requires a reader to come down within 30 days of the department notifying the law enforcement agency that requested it.¹³

As with the Texas freeze, the order stops at the state’s own land. It does not reach cameras on private property or on local rights-of-way, “where 98% of the surveillance cameras are located, DeSantis said.”¹¹ Some localities followed anyway: Tallahassee suspended its readers in early September, as the tracker records. Flock’s response: “Rather than banning a critical public safety tool, we support thoughtful legislation and strong privacy, transparency, and accountability guardrails.”¹¹ This site documents 9,753 readers in Florida, about 76% of them Flock's.

South Carolina did something similar earlier and on a smaller scale. In April 2025 its transportation department halted new plate-reader installations on state roads, saying it was “unclear to SCDOT whether or not these devices are authorized in the state-owned right-of-way.”¹⁴ We could not confirm whether that halt is still in effect.

How long it lasts. No end date has been reported for the permit pause, and the governor’s office has not said how long the funding pause will last.⁹

The Legislature. State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst has called for an outright ban on license plate readers in Texas, and State Rep. Paul Dyson, who represents the Bryan–College Station area, told KBTX the issue is already shaping plans for next year’s session.¹⁰ The next regular session opens in January 2027.

The courts. Whether a warrantless plate-reader network amounts to a Fourth Amendment search is before a federal appeals court. That case, and the states that limit how long plate data can be kept, are covered in license plate reader laws, state by state.