Flock Cameras in San Marcos, Texas

The short version

San Marcos, Texas discontinued its contract with Flock Safety after a December 2, 2025 City Council vote, according to the city's official automated license plate reader page.

The same city page says all city-contracted Flock cameras had been deactivated and removed as of February 1, 2026.

That makes San Marcos one of the cleanest Texas examples of a city moving from Flock use to cancellation, while also publishing detailed rules about retention, sharing, and audits.

What San Marcos said the cameras did

The San Marcos Police Department's official ALPR page says the department used automated license plate readers to assist investigations and enhance public safety.

The page says ALPR cameras captured images of vehicles as they drove by and that San Marcos Police officers could access those images for up to 30 days.

The city also says the cameras helped increase recovered stolen vehicles and assisted investigations throughout the city. That matters because the public record does not say the cameras had no investigative value. It says the city still decided the contract should end.

What the city promised ALPR would not do

San Marcos says its ALPR cameras did not use facial recognition, did not capture personal or biometric information, did not enforce traffic laws like speeding or red-light violations, and did not track where a car had been or where it was going.

Those limits are useful, but they do not answer every resident concern. A system can avoid facial recognition and traffic tickets while still creating a searchable plate-location database.

That is why the San Marcos fight became about governance. Residents and council members were not only asking what the hardware captured. They were asking who could search it, how the searches were audited, and whether outside agencies could reach local data.

The sharing rule changed before removal

The city's page says that effective June 9, 2025, the Police Department stopped automatic sharing of license plate reader data with other law enforcement agencies.

After that change, San Marcos said it would share data only after a request and confirmation of a specific criminal investigation or prosecution. The city also required each requesting agency to complete an ALPR Sharing and Non-Disclosure Agreement.

The city listed request categories including Class B state offenses and above, missing or endangered persons, stolen vehicles, hate crimes, sex crimes, and BOLO reports such as Amber and Silver Alerts. That kind of public list is the detail other councils should demand before a vote, not after backlash.

The audit lesson

San Marcos says audits of LPR data were not mandated in its April 2022 policy but were added in March 2025 revisions proposed by staff.

The current city page says the policy requires monthly audits. It says the department would select 30 random inquiries per month and check for lawful use, a proper reason, and a case number.

That is a concrete oversight model. It gives residents a way to ask whether each search had a documented purpose instead of relying on a broad promise that the system would be used responsibly.

Why council members turned against renewal

A May 2026 Texas Observer piece by San Marcos Council Member Amanda Rodriguez said the council voted to let the Flock contract lapse in December 2025.

Rodriguez wrote that residents raised concerns about indiscriminate collection of personal data, nationwide law-enforcement access, Flock's business practices, due process, and potential use involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.

She also wrote that local police raised concerns about how they would keep residents and businesses safe without Flock. That is the real shape of the debate: police described a useful tool, while residents and council members weighed whether the data network created too much civil-liberties risk.

How Flock frames control

Flock's Trust Center says access is managed by the local agency, limited to authorized users with role-based permissions, and that every search is tied to a specific user and recorded automatically.

The same Trust Center says agencies control their own data independently and may choose to share information through a broader network, but that nothing is shared automatically.

Those statements are important because they show the policy dispute clearly. Flock frames control as local and opt-in. San Marcos still decided that local control needed to include ending automatic sharing, adding monthly audit checks, and ultimately discontinuing the contract.

What other cities should learn from San Marcos

Before approving Flock, a city should publish its exact sharing settings, outside-agency request rules, audit process, retention period, user-access rules, and cancellation path.

The San Marcos page is useful because it gives specific audit and sharing mechanics: no automatic sharing after June 9, 2025, request-based access, a non-disclosure agreement, monthly audits, and 30 random inquiries checked each month.

Those details should exist before the first camera goes up. If residents only learn them after the contract is under pressure, the city has already made the trust problem harder.

The bottom line

San Marcos did not merely debate Flock. It changed sharing rules, published audit details, voted to discontinue the contract, and removed the city-contracted cameras.

That makes it a useful Texas case study for every council considering license plate readers. The hard question is not just whether ALPR can help police. The hard question is whether the city can prove control, auditability, retention, sharing limits, and public trust before the contract becomes a political fight.

San Marcos shows what happens when those questions arrive late: the city may still decide the cleanest path is to shut the system down.

Sources used

City of San Marcos, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR): https://www.sanmarcostx.gov/4530/Automated-License-Plate-Readers-ALPR

Texas Observer, Why My Texas Town Took Action Against Flock Cameras, May 13, 2026: https://www.texasobserver.org/san-marcos-city-council-end-alprs/

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

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