Flock Cameras in Hillsborough, North Carolina

The short version

Hillsborough, North Carolina canceled its Flock Safety license plate reader camera contract in October 2025. The town's official notice said the Board of Commissioners decided to terminate the contract for 10 license plate reader cameras because of data-privacy concerns.

The town said five cameras had already been installed and would be removed. An update on the same official notice said all Flock Safety cameras contracted by the town had been removed by December 3, 2025.

This is why Hillsborough belongs in the Flock camera controversy file. It was not framed as a claim that license plate readers never help police. It was a city deciding that contract language and public privacy risk outweighed the benefits.

What Hillsborough bought

Hillsborough's official notice says the town entered into a two-year contract with Flock Safety for cameras that take still images and focus on a vehicle's distinguishing features.

The same notice says the cost for installation and two years of operations was about $81,500. It also says installation had begun in October 2025 before the town reversed course.

That puts the Hillsborough deal in the common small-city Flock range: not a giant public-safety technology overhaul, but big enough to create a real policy decision about surveillance, retention, disclosure, and public trust.

Why the town canceled

The official town notice says leaders became concerned after a closer review of the contract. The concern was language that could be interpreted as allowing Flock Safety to disclose data to any government entity or third party if the company had a good-faith belief of a need to do so.

Police Chief Jason Winn and Mayor Mark Bell said in a joint statement that the town and Police Department agreed it was in the community's best interest to stop installation and use of the cameras.

Their statement also said the technology had been shown to help solve crimes, find missing persons, and help patrol officers deter crime. That is important because Hillsborough did not cancel by pretending there was no law-enforcement value. It canceled after deciding privacy rights and community impact had to carry more weight.

The approval path matters

The town said the Flock technology had been authorized in June as part of the annual budget. That detail should make other councils pause.

A line item inside a budget process can approve real surveillance infrastructure before residents understand the data-sharing and contract questions. By the time cameras are installed, the debate is harder because the city has already spent money and staff time.

The better path is to treat a Flock purchase as a public surveillance vote from the start. The order form, camera count, contract language, retention period, sharing settings, data-disclosure clauses, and removal terms should be public before approval.

How Hillsborough fits the national pattern

NPR reported in February 2026 that cities around the country were debating whether to keep automatic license plate readers, with privacy and federal immigration-access concerns driving many of the fights.

The same NPR report specifically cited Hillsborough's official cancellation notice, saying town officials ended the relationship after becoming concerned about language that could be interpreted as allowing Flock to disclose data to a government entity or third party under a good-faith-belief standard.

NPR also reported that Flock says cities control their sharing settings and that each customer has sole authority over if, when, and with whom information is shared. That is the core tension for city buyers: local control sounds strong, but the contract still has to prove what happens when disclosure, access, sharing, or legal demands collide with local promises.

What Flock's public terms say now

Flock's public customer terms, last updated February 16, 2026, define applicable law as federal, state, and local laws and regulations related to recording or sharing data, video, photo, or audio content, to the extent directly applicable to each party's performance.

Flock's license plate reader policy says LPR data gathered on behalf of a customer is owned by that customer. It says customers choose whether to share LPR data with other customers in accordance with their laws and policies.

Those public policies are useful, but they do not replace local contract review. Hillsborough's lesson is that a city should not rely on broad trust language when specific disclosure clauses, sharing controls, and termination rights are what residents will care about later.

Questions other cities should ask

Before approving Flock cameras, a city should ask what data the vendor can disclose, who can request it, what legal standard applies, and whether the city receives notice before any disclosure not directly initiated by local officials.

Officials should also ask how quickly cameras can be removed, whether unused service time is refundable, who pays removal costs, what data remains after termination, and whether all local and shared access ends immediately when the contract ends.

If the city cannot explain those answers in public, the purchase is not ready. A camera network may be useful to police and still be too vague for public approval.

The bottom line

Hillsborough canceled Flock after the purchase had already moved from budget approval into installation. That is exactly the stage where most cities do not want to discover a contract problem.

The town's decision shows that Flock debates are not only about whether license plate readers catch suspects. They are also about whether city leaders fully understand the data path before they approve the cameras.

For other councils, the Hillsborough rule is simple: read the contract like the public will read it later. If one sentence could allow wider disclosure than residents expect, fix it before installation or do not buy the system.

Sources used

Town of Hillsborough, Hillsborough Cancels Contract for License Plate Reader Cameras, October 28, 2025, updated December 3, 2025: https://www.hillsboroughnc.gov/Home/Components/News/News/856/14

NPR, Why some cities are ditching their Flock license plate readers, updated February 19, 2026: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts-canceled-immigration-survillance-concerns

Flock Safety, Customer Terms and Conditions, last updated February 16, 2026: https://www.flocksafety.com/legal/terms-and-conditions

Flock Safety, License Plate Reader Policy: https://www.flocksafety.com/legal/lpr-policy

Flock Safety, Privacy, Data & Civil Liberties Policies: https://www.flocksafety.com/trust