Residents urge College Station to review Flock Safety camera contracts over privacy concerns

A string of public commenters at the March 26 College Station City Council meeting pressed the city to reconsider its use of Flock Safety surveillance cameras, saying the devices can create persistent travel records and that contract terms give the vendor broad rights to derivative data.

“Will you, mayor and council, please reconsider terminating your contracts with Flock?” asked James Don, a Texas A&M student and College Station resident, who described how the company’s cameras take images of every passing vehicle and upload them to remote servers that can generate travel histories.

Don said systems like Flock’s are “quite prone to errors and abuse,” citing cases in other jurisdictions in which misreads and data sharing produced false leads. He asked the council to place the contract on a future agenda so residents could debate its use in the city; councilors referred his remarks to staff for consideration and did not take formal action.

Cody Fox, another resident, told councilors he believed local reporting on the issue had misstated parts of the police department’s comments and read aloud passages from Flock’s vendor agreement to underline his point that the vendor retains intellectual‑property rights in the hardware and derived outputs. Fox said the new contract would add 72 cameras and cost “almost $300,000 a year in subscription fees.”

City staff did not debate the merits of the contract during public comment; the mayor repeated that items not on the posted agenda are referred to staff. Council members did not vote on procurement or contract termination at the meeting.

What happened next: Council directed staff to review the public comments and the contracts. The council packet and staff follow‑up will determine whether the item returns to an upcoming agenda with formal options (e.g., contract amendment, rescission, or continued use with new oversight).