Burnet County takes down fixed Flock cameras after 2 get damaged
Burnet County takes down Flock cameras
Burnet County has taken down all of its fixed Flock cameras after two were damaged. Some argue they should not go back up. FOX 7 Austin's Meredith Aldis has more.
BURNET COUNTY, Texas - Burnet County has taken down all their fixed Flock LPR cameras after two incidents of damage.
Now, some argue they should never go back up.
Burnet County takes down fixed Flock cameras
What they're saying:
The Burnet County Sheriff's Office posted an August 3 memo on social media, saying that all fixed Flock LPR cameras deployed in the county by the Heart of Texas Auto Theft Task Force had been removed.
The memo said that the task force has had two incidents involving damage to cameras.
One was damaged by someone cutting the mounting brackets and cables to the camera, and the other by someone striking the camera and battery with a blunt object and cutting the cables.
The task force has reportedly initiated criminal investigations into the damage, but no suspects are known at this time.
The backstory:
The Burnet County Commissioners Court approved a contract with Flock in March 2025 which included two Flock portable license plate readers and two Flock portable, solar-powered mobile units.
Some say the cameras should stay down
Local perspective:
With cameras now off the roads, some question if they should stay down.
Other Central Texas communities have already answered that question.
Last year, Austin shut down its license plate reader program. Hays County and Lockhart also stopped using flock cameras after raising concerns over how the company stores drivers’ data and shares information with other law enforcement agencies, including immigration enforcement.
Groups like Institute for Justice said Burnet County should consider doing the same.
"The way these systems work flips the Fourth Amendment on its head because, instead of police focusing on people for whom they have probable cause, instead of them going to a judge before they surveil people and getting that sign off, they're just surveilling everyone, tracking everyone's movements and feeding that into an AI-assisted database that they can mine for insights. That's just fundamentally inconsistent with our constitutional order in this country," Institute for Justice attorney Michael Soyfer said.
Law enforcement argues the cameras are not designed to track people, but rather, help solve crimes.
"They've historically been a very powerful tool for law enforcement, for obtaining leads, for tracking down stolen vehicles, and for solving sometimes violent crime," Austin Police Association president Michael Bullock said.
Burnet theft and fraud ring bust
A theft ring that's been fraudulently buying trailers across Central Texas has been busted. This comes after a multi-month investigation.
Burnet County said they have already seen that firsthand. Earlier this year, the Sheriff’s Office credited license plate readers with helping investigators identify suspects connected to a theft and fraud ring spanning Central Texas.
"We're just tracking if something happens, we have a source to say, hey, we're looking for a particular vehicle that matches this description at this time and this location, which helps us solve the crimes, which helps the victims," Burnet County Sheriff’s Captain Howard Stinehour told FOX 7 Austin in January.
The Source: Information in this report comes from the Burnet County Sheriff's Office