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Residents urge Garland council to remove ALPR funding from budget over privacy and security concerns
Summary
Multiple Garland residents urged the City Council to eliminate funding for automated license-plate readers (ALPRs)/Flock Safety from the proposed 2026–27 budget, citing alleged misreads, out-of-jurisdiction data access, security vulnerabilities and the expansion of surveillance beyond original promises.
Multiple Garland residents used the budget public hearing to press the City Council to remove funding for automated license-plate readers (ALPRs), saying the technology presents persistent privacy, accuracy and data-sharing risks.
"I just wanna urge this council to remove any ALPR funding, in this or future budgets," said Kelsey Capps, a Garland resident, during the council's public hearing on the proposed FY2026–27 operating budget. Capps said plate-reading systems create a warrantless, searchable record of routine travel and can be accessed by thousands of agencies beyond local control. Lisa Crawford, another Garland resident, added that the city has had ALPRs for about four years but cited "no independent audits, no public statistics on false alerts, mistaken stops and searches of innocent people."
Speakers repeatedly referenced Flock Safety, the vendor that operates license-plate reader networks in many U.S. jurisdictions. Janie Britton said the company's systems aggregate movements over time in ways she described as raising Fourth Amendment concerns, and she urged council to "defund the city's partnership with Flock Safety and any similar company that places safety ahead of protecting our liberties." Kirsten Miller and Louis Salazar described personal examples and security worries — Miller said an outside jurisdiction flagged her plate despite her not having traveled there in years; Salazar said neighborhood cameras were updated and began detecting people as well as plates.
Council did not take immediate action on the contract during the hearing. The mayor closed the public hearing after the speakers and reminded residents of two further public hearings on the proposed tax rate and budget (08/11/2026 and 08/17/2026) and a scheduled council vote on the budget on 08/17/2026 at 7 p.m.
Why it matters: Speakers framed the issue as both a civil-rights and a local-accountability problem — residents warned the technology can be repurposed, accessed by agencies outside Garland's control, and expanded without separate local approvals. Council members did not debate or vote on a contract cancellation at the meeting but will consider the budget at the upcoming hearings and vote.
