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ORWELL INDEX
Approved Updated

Collin County Sheriff and Collin County Public Works | Flock Safety plate readers

A 2022 agreement put the Sheriff's Office on Flock's network at no cost. In November 2025 the Commissioners Court approved a county contract for 48 fixed Flock plate readers, two portable ones and four camera trailers, $572,000 over two years, on the consent agenda.

At a glance

The largest decision
10 November 2025: a contract with Flock Safety through the Omnia Partners purchasing cooperative, requested by Public Works, approved on the consent agenda 5-0 [3] [5] [6]
The cost
$266,000 in year one and $306,000 in year two, $572,000 in total [4]
What it buys
48 fixed plate reader cameras, 2 portable plate readers, 4 mobile camera trailers, FreeForm search across up to 10 integrated video streams, and a traffic analytics package [4]
How long footage is kept
30 days, on the order form [4]
The Sheriff's earlier agreement
4 April 2022: access to Flock's system and recordings "in order to locate fugitives", five years, no cost to the county, approved on the consent agenda 4-0 [1] [2]
Which county office uses the 2025 cameras
Not stated in the agenda item, the Court Order or the attached agreement [3] [4] [5]
Where the cameras are
Not stated in any document attached to the item [4]

How it happened

  1. Decision

    The Sheriff's Office joins Flock's network

    On the consent agenda, the Court approves a "Memorandum of Understanding between Collin County Sheriff's Office and Flock Group, Inc. for access to the LPR System and Recordings in order to locate fugitives", 4-0. The signed agreement says no financial commitment by the county is required. [1] [2] [7]

  2. Procurement

    A county Flock contract

    On the consent agenda, the Court awards "Flock Safety Platform and Services (Contract No. 2026-060) to Flock Group Inc. d/b/a Flock Safety through Omnia Partners Coop Contract No. R250203", 5-0. The order form lists 48 fixed plate readers, 2 portable ones and 4 camera trailers, $572,000 over 24 months. [3] [4] [5] [6]

Flock Safety sells plate reader cameras on a subscription. Each camera photographs passing vehicles and records the plate and the vehicle’s appearance, and the images go to Flock’s cloud, where agencies with access can search them. In Collin County the Commissioners Court has approved Flock twice: an access agreement for the Sheriff’s Office in 2022, and a county contract for cameras of its own in 2025.

The Sheriff’s access agreement

On 4 April 2022 the Court approved a “Memorandum of Understanding between Collin County Sheriff’s Office and Flock Group, Inc. for access to the LPR System and Recordings in order to locate fugitives”.[1] It passed on the consent agenda, the block of items the Court approves in one motion without separate discussion, 4-0 with one commissioner absent.[7]

The signed copy is headed “Data Sharing Agreement”. It lets the Sheriff’s Office “view and search videos recorded by Flock”, which it says are “stored for no longer than thirty (30) days”. It states that “No financial commitment by the County is required to access the Flock Services or Recordings”, and it runs for five years.[2] It does not say whose cameras those recordings come from.

The county’s own cameras

On 10 November 2025 the Court awarded “Flock Safety Platform and Services (Contract No. 2026-060) to Flock Group Inc. d/b/a Flock Safety through Omnia Partners Coop Contract No. R250203”.[3][5] The item was listed for Public Works. It passed on the consent agenda, 5-0.[6]

Omnia Partners is a purchasing cooperative. The county bought under a contract another public agency had already put out to bid, rather than running its own solicitation.[9]

The order form attached to the item lists:[4]

The contract total is $572,000: $266,000 at signing and $306,000 for the second year. The initial term is 24 months, with a 36-month renewal term, and the retention period is 30 days.[4]

The master services agreement attached to the item says Flock “does not own and shall not sell Customer Data”. It also lets Flock make anonymized data from the county’s footage, including for “the training of machine learning algorithms”.[8]

What the record does not say

The agenda item, the Court Order and the attached agreement do not say which county office will use the cameras, where they will be installed, or where the trailers will go. We could not find a plate reader use or audit policy presented to the Commissioners Court in its agendas from January 2019 to September 2026.

Volunteers have mapped 705 plate readers in Collin County, and 613 of the county’s mapped devices record Flock Safety as the manufacturer. Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen, Celina, Prosper, Anna, Melissa, Wylie and Lavon run their own police departments, and the Atlas of Surveillance records Flock plate readers for several of them. The county record does not say which of the mapped cameras, if any, belong to the county.

On the map

The community has mapped 705 devices of this type in the county on OpenStreetMap. These are community reports: the vendor and operator of each point are unverified, and none is confirmed to belong to this system. See them on the map →

Street names from reverse geocoding — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

What we do not know

What you can do

Show up

Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have confirmed where each of them meets in Collin County and how public comment works there.

How to show up in Collin County →

Protect yourself

Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.

Surveillance Self-Defense →

Sources

  1. 1.
    Collin County Commissioners Court, agenda, 4 April 2022, consent item AI-51874, with the Court Order and the Flock memorandum of understanding attached · Meeting record · · accessed
  2. 2.
    Data Sharing Agreement between Flock Group, Inc. and Collin County, Texas, and its Sheriff's Office, signed, attached to AI-51874 · Primary document · · accessed
  3. 3.
    Collin County Commissioners Court, agenda, 10 November 2025, consent item AI-59104 · Meeting record · · accessed
  4. 4.
    Flock Safety proposal and Exhibit A order form for Collin County, attached to AI-59104 · Primary document · · accessed
  5. 5.
    Collin County Court Order 2025-1219-11-10, awarding Contract No. 2026-060 to Flock Safety · Primary document · · accessed
  6. 6.
    Collin County Commissioners Court, minutes, 10 November 2025 · Meeting record · · accessed
  7. 7.
    Collin County Commissioners Court, minutes, 4 April 2022 · Meeting record · · accessed
  8. 8.
    Flock Group Inc. Master Services Agreement, attached to AI-59104 · Primary document · · accessed
  9. 9.
    OMNIA Partners executive summary for Region 4 ESC solicitation 25-02, Weapons and Threat Detection Equipment, Services and Other Solutions, attached to AI-59104 · Primary document · · accessed

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