Flock Safety cameras: League City voters order removal in Texas referendum

Voters in League City, a city near Houston in Texas, rejected their police department's use of Flock Safety licence-plate cameras in a referendum on Tuesday, 3 November 2026. Unofficial results show a little under 54% of those who voted on the question, Proposition A, chose to stop using the cameras. On Thursday, 5 November, the city began covering the cameras after Mayor Nick Long asked staff to bag the fixed units along public roads straight away. The city council had earlier made the vote binding, and the cameras are to be removed within 72 hours of the official canvass of results at its meeting on 17 November.

Flock Safety is a US technology company, founded in Atlanta, that sells cameras which read vehicle number plates automatically and store the plate, time and place in a searchable database. Police use the system to look for stolen cars or vehicles linked to crimes. Critics worry about how widely that data is shared. In one case cited in earlier reporting, the city of Santa Cruz in California found its local camera data had been shared with Flock's national network without city officials knowing or intending it.

The company's business depends heavily on contracts with city governments and police departments. That is what makes League City's vote notable. Most decisions about Flock have been made by city councils or police chiefs. Here, residents voted directly, and the council chose in advance to treat the result as binding. Other cities considering similar contracts now have an example of voters, not officials, deciding the question.

Flock's position is that cancellations are a small part of its business. In response to earlier cancellations, it pointed to nearly 800 US cities that had voted to approve Flock contracts, and said it has made the controls for sharing data clearer for its customers. Supporters on the League City council also defended the system: council member Scott Higginbotham said the police department had seen no cases of the technology being abused.

The vote also shows what a start-up building tools for governments must plan for. Products that collect data about the public face local politics, state privacy laws and public opinion, not just a sales process. Earlier reporting counted at least 30 localities across the US that switched off Flock cameras or ended contracts between the start of 2025 and February 2026, citing data-sharing worries, immigration enforcement and state limits on sharing.

Peepals calculation: on the reported counts, 47,109 people voted on the question (25,436 + 21,673), so the side against the cameras won by 3,763 votes, or 54.0% to 46.0% (25,436 ÷ 47,109 ≈ 0.540). The canvass on 17 November comes 14 days after the vote, and the 72-hour window means the cameras must come down by 20 November at the latest. Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: League City's fixed Flock cameras are covered and will be removed once the result is made official. The city's resolution also asks staff to deal with privately owned plate readers on city land, review existing Flock contracts and look at other uses for the public-safety money.

Long-term: if more cities put such contracts to a public vote, companies selling surveillance technology to governments may face slower sales and stricter terms on data sharing.

Who is affected: League City residents and drivers, the city police department, Flock Safety, and other cities in Texas and elsewhere that are deciding whether to keep similar cameras.

What to watch next: the official canvass of the result at the League City council meeting on 17 November 2026, which starts the 72-hour removal period.

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