Abbott Halts State Funding for Flock Surveillance Cameras After Texas Tribune Finds $30 Million in Grants

Since Tempe, Arizona pulled the plug on its Flock Safety camera system on August 26, a wave of cities and counties has moved to cancel contracts with the company, and on Thursday night Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined the retreat by ordering all state agencies to stop funding the cameras.

Abbott's office confirmed the order to Fox News Digital, with spokesman Andrew Mahaleris saying that "to the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras." Mahaleris noted that most Flock cameras in the state are run by cities using federal money, not state funds, so the order's direct reach is limited. Cities, he said, "are increasingly canceling their contracts with Flock" on their own.

The order landed just after a Texas Tribune investigation, cited by Breitbart, found that the state had quietly built out a large chunk of its Flock network using a $1 fee added to every car insurance policy in Texas, ostensibly to fight catalytic converter theft. That fund, run through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, funneled at least $30 million to local police departments and helped pay for roughly 2,000 cameras, according to the Tribune. The Texas Department of Public Safety separately signed a three-year, $15.9 million contract for another 1,200 cameras, bringing the state's own Flock footprint to around 3,200 cameras installed since 2023, per figures cited by Ground News.

Cities Are Walking Away Faster Than the State

The funding pause follows, rather than leads, a broader municipal exodus. The Pflugerville City Council voted unanimously earlier in the week to end its Flock agreement and shut down all 28 camera readers covered by its contract, according to Fox News. Hood County commissioners voted the same way, and constable John Shirley posted on Facebook August 15 that he'd personally cover the cameras until they could be removed, writing that "these cameras were constantly scanning and recording regular folks just going about their day."

Outside Texas, Tempe Mayor Corey Woods announced August 26 that his city was ending its Flock contract even though, he acknowledged, the cameras "helped police officers do their jobs." Cave Creek, Arizona, and Bellingham, Massachusetts, made similar moves this month, according to the Epoch Times. Bellingham Police Chief Kenneth Fitzgerald said his department discovered during a criminal investigation that Flock's cameras came with a feature called Free Form, an AI tool that can search video using plain-language queries, something he said went well beyond what he'd told the public the system could do. "I had previously told the public, based on our understanding of the system, that our Flock technology was a license plate reader only," Fitzgerald said.

A Genuinely Bipartisan Fight

The pushback against Flock cuts across party lines in a way few surveillance stories do. Sen. Ted Cruz told Bloomberg's Balance of Power that he doesn't "like government surveillance" and doesn't want America building the kind of "espionage and surveillance state" he says China has constructed. Texas state Rep. Mitch Little, a Republican from Lewisville, told the Tribune that "the sheer volume of information captured is not something that is entertained, in my view, by the Fourth Amendment." Republican Rep. Keith Self has introduced federal legislation that would require a warrant before law enforcement can access Flock data, arguing the Fourth Amendment "does not disappear just because of new technology or artificial intelligence."

On the Democratic side, Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa released an ad this week, according to Ground News, demanding Abbott "stop turning Texas into a surveillance state," framing the governor as slow to act on a problem Democrats say he helped create.

Law enforcement's case for the cameras has merit. The Dallas Police Department's Major Felony and Vehicle Recovery Division says it uses hundreds of Flock cameras to track suspects in violent crimes, hit-and-runs and auto thefts, and that clearance times on many of those cases fell from days to hours. Breitbart's reporting notes the systems have helped recover kidnapped children. A Flock spokesperson told the Epoch Times the company has "built the most accountable tool in police technology," pointing to configurable data retention limits, access controls and audit logs, and said Flock "respects" Tempe's decision even though the city found no misuse of its own system.

Several of the cities dropping Flock, including Tempe, say they found no evidence their own cameras were misused. Their objection is to the system's design and its potential for abuse elsewhere, not a documented incident on their own turf. Whether that's a prudent precaution or an overcorrection based on other agencies' problems is a genuine, unresolved argument, not a settled fact.

What remains unresolved is whether Abbott's order changes much on the ground. Since most Flock funding in Texas flows through federal grants and local budgets rather than state agencies, cities can keep their contracts if they choose to. Rep. Self's federal warrant bill has not been scheduled for a vote, and no state or federal investigation into misuse of Flock data has been announced. The next test will be how many more Texas cities follow Pflugerville and Hood County's lead before the legislature reconvenes.