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Residents urge Bandera council to cancel Flock camera agreements, cite privacy and surveillance risks
Summary
Multiple residents told the council the community did not consent to intrusive private surveillance, cited patents and FOIA findings, and urged the council to end city ties with Flock and not approve future agreements.
Several residents used the meeting's public-comment period to urge the Bandera City Council to end any existing agreements with Flock and to oppose future installations, citing privacy concerns, patent disclosures and reported access to community video feeds.
Alan Jaley, who identified himself as a full-time Bandera resident and a cloud/operations engineer, told the council "the residents of Bandera do not need a privately held company with no public accountability or oversight capturing and recording every time they leave the city" and asked the council to revoke or refuse approvals for devices or services operated by Flock or affiliated entities.
Dr. Randy Mellon argued the company answers to investors not the community, described cameras as collecting more than license plates and said the system's AI can capture identifying details beyond plates. Jason Mayhew reviewed patent language and said the technology could be used to compile searchable databases of identifying attributes; he warned that mass surveillance would affect a large majority of residents to address a very small subset of motor-vehicle offenders.
Other commenters said vandalism and replacement costs have burdened taxpayers and pointed to recent county-level terminations of similar systems and pending lawsuits elsewhere. Council members and staff clarified at the meeting that several cameras on state highways are owned by TxDOT and not the city; the motion passed later in the meeting applied only to city-owned, grant-related cameras.
