A Flock camera in Laredo picked up a black Honda on August 3. The car was near a restaurant on San Bernardo Avenue. The driver had been wanted for almost two years. Officers went to the parking lot and made an arrest.

El Tejano told that story. Here is what we did not know then.

These cameras do not just read plates. Flock builds what it calls a vehicle fingerprint. It stores the plate, the make, the model and the color. It stores dents and bumper stickers, too. That record goes into a database. Police across the country can search it. They do not need a warrant.

You helped pay for that camera. So did every driver in Texas who has car insurance.

In 2023, state lawmakers added $1 a year to car insurance bills. The bill was Senate Bill 224. It is named for Harris County Deputy Darren Almendarez. That dollar goes to a state board. It is called the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority.

The fee has raised about $81 million. At least $30 million of it went to Flock cameras.

That money paid for at least 95 grants to police departments. Those grants paid for about 2,000 cameras. Laredo got 165. Grants paid for all of them. El Paso got 150 the same way. Dallas got $1.7 million for 201.

The man who chairs that board is Miguel Rodriguez. He is also the Laredo police chief. At a board meeting in August 2023, he said the goal was to cover the whole state.

The board is one DPS official plus six members picked by the governor. Two come from police work. Two come from the insurance business. Two speak for drivers.

That is the money. Here is the reach.

In early 2025, the authority signed a $15.9 million contract with the Texas Department of Public Safety. It funds almost 1,200 cameras. Another $3 million went to 583 more Flock cameras. Those go on seven Texas toll roads. At least 940 DPS cameras have been installed so far.

Texas is thought to have at least 13,000 Flock cameras. It has about 1,000 more devices like them.

On average, some police agency searches the DPS network once every four seconds.

Almost half of those searches do not come from Texas.

The Texas Tribune pulled one month of search records. In June, the DPS network was searched roughly 615,000 times. Forty-eight percent of the queries came from outside Texas. In all, 3,075 agencies ran searches. Only 396 were in Texas. The other 2,679 were not.

The biggest user in Texas was the Houston Police Department, at 13 percent of all searches. DPS officers accounted for just under 9 percent.

A sheriff's office in Coweta County, Georgia, ran 6,700 searches in June.

More than 58,000 searches were run over traffic tickets.

A much smaller group was tied to immigration. That was 111 searches. Those listed Homeland Security Investigations, Customs and Border Protection and other immigration details.

For a while, almost anyone could look. DPS says more than 2,800 agencies searched its network with no agreement in place.

The system can be aimed at people, too. A Lufkin police officer was indicted on August 24. He faces 100 counts of misusing official information. The counts are tied to Flock camera data.

On August 27, Governor Greg Abbott moved to cut off state money for the cameras. He said most of the money actually comes from the federal government. He said it is spent at the city level. So it is up to city officials to unplug the cameras. He said cities across the state are already doing that.

Some are. El Paso has 150 Flock cameras. Dallas has 321 paid for by the state. Killeen has 76 and is waiting to hear from the state.

Killeen Police Chief Pedro Lopez said it is too early to say. He said that until the state gives more guidance, it would be premature to speculate. He does not know if any cameras will have to be shut off. He does not know if the city will have to find other money.

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa wants the cameras down. She says they can be abused too easily. She says state lawmakers never approved them. She has said that using them on the border for border security would be different. But that is not her understanding of how they are being used.

The June numbers speak to that. Traffic tickets came up in more than 58,000 searches. Immigration came up in 111.

Not everyone at DPS sees a problem. Sharon Jones is a DPS major who sat on that board.

"This project, yes, it's under the Texas Department of Public Safety, but this was done for the locals," she said. "This was done for those agencies in the cities or in the counties who do not have the authority to install cameras on state highways, state roadways. So that's what that project is for."

Both things are true at the same time. The network led Laredo police to a murder suspect. That person had been wanted for almost two years. The same network let a Georgia sheriff's office run 6,700 searches in one month.

You can read our Laredo story here: https://www.eltejanorgv.com/tattoos-give-away-laredo-murder-suspect-hiding-at-a-restaurant/

For drivers in Starr, Hidalgo and Webb counties, the question is not whether cameras are watching them. They are. The question is who gets to pull up where your car has been. And whether anybody has to say why.

Right now the answer to that second part is thin. A traffic ticket was reason enough more than 58,000 times in one month. And it started with a dollar on your insurance bill.

Everyone is presumed innocent until proved otherwise.