Several Central Texas cities no longer have license plate readers

AUSTIN, Texas - License plate readers played a key role in catching the Brown University shooting suspect. 

Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, 48, is identified as the Brown University shooting suspect. Authorities in Rhode Island got a tip about a Reddit post from a homeless man with a description of the suspect's car. The homeless man slept in the campus building's basement and saw the suspect the day of the shooting.

Police looked at surveillance footage and used license plate readers to identify the car, which led them to a car rental company in Massachusetts, where they got surveillance footage and the suspect's name through the rental agreement. 

License plate readers in Central Texas

Dig deeper:

The City of Austin got rid of its license plate reader program this year. The last of 40 Flock cameras recently came down.

We asked Tyler Latham, vice president of the Austin Police Association, if the lack of Flock cameras would slow down police's ability to track down a suspect in a mass causality event.

"For sure it will," Latham said.

He says license plate readers help with everything from murder suspects to kidnapping suspects. Without the license plate readers, investigators spend much longer on cases. 

"I was just talking with them, and they were telling me that we're sitting here using 2012 technology, the same stuff we were using back then to try to solve these crimes and apprehend these people that have committed these violent crimes, and it's taken way longer than it should, and it could be much faster," he said.

He says officers can go door-to-door to get surveillance video, but that video may not show suspects' license plates or direction of travel.

In a press conference over the summer, Council Members Mike Siegel, Vanessa Fuentes, and Zo Qadri said they had surveillance concerns and were worried about the company Flock sharing data with ICE. 

"Once the data is collected, it can be accessed by ICE or other departments out of state using Flock's network," Qadri said during the June 2025 press conference.

Latham said Austin police weren't sharing data with ICE, and they had agreed to stay within Council's restrictions, like only keeping data for seven days, when the cameras were up.

"It was still just taken away, which is unfortunate. It's going to slow down the response," Latham said.

The Hays County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 in October to end their contract with Flock. Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said then he wasn't against cameras, just Flock's reputation for data sharing. 

What they're saying:

We reached out to the three council members again about Austin ending its program when the cameras were of help in the Brown University case. 

Mike Siegel sent the following statement:

"License plate readers can be a powerful tool for public safety. We ended the program in Austin because the Flock contract put our residents’ privacy and data security at risk, and allowed a private corporation to use sensitive information for any purpose it wished. I remain open to supporting law enforcement tools that do not require us to sacrifice our safety and values."

Fuentes' office said she was unavailable to provide comment Friday. 

As of Friday afternoon, we hadn't heard back from Qadri's office.