Sherman's City Council will decide Monday whether to walk away from the company that supplies its automated license plate cameras.
Resolution No. 7682, posted Tuesday on the agenda for the council's Oct. 19 meeting, would direct the city manager not to renew or extend the term of Sherman's agreement with Flock Group Inc. for automated license plate recognition devices "and to take other action related thereto."
It is listed as its own item rather than on the consent agenda, so it will be taken up and voted on separately. The meeting starts at 5 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 220 W. Mulberry St.
The agenda does not say how many cameras the city has, what the contract costs, when its current term ends or why the change is proposed. The text of the resolution was listed as an attachment but was not available for download from the city's meeting portal Tuesday evening.
A state move the same day
The item landed on the same day Texas Comptroller Don Huffines announced that grants administered by his office can no longer be used to buy, contract for, extend or renew license plate reader systems. The ban covers cameras, sensors, software, subscriptions and data platforms sold by Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions, Axon Enterprise and others, and applies to future grants.
"The government has no business tracking where law-abiding Texans drive," Huffines said in the announcement, adding that doing so without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment.
Law enforcement officials in the region have defended the technology. In August, Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told KXII that his county's roughly 16 Flock cameras were a "force multiplier" for a department that may have four officers covering 900 square miles, and that an audit system tracks every time an officer pulls the data.
That same month, the council in Marietta, Okla., canceled its Flock contract after residents packed a meeting; its police chief said he had learned the company kept data longer than the city's 30-day policy.
