Williamson County Sheriff | The Sheriff's plate readers

There are 285 plate readers standing in Williamson County on the volunteer map. The county government’s own record accounts for seven devices: two plate reader trailers and five cameras.

What the county bought

In November 2018 the Sheriff’s Office bought two plate reader speed trailers for $116,890, on a federal supply schedule rather than through a local bid. In March 2022 it bought five Vigilant plate reader cameras for $6,975.60, through a regional council purchasing contract, as one item inside a consent block of forty-four. In May 2022 it signed an agreement with Flock Group for a yearlong study of plate reader technology, which names no number of cameras, no price and no term beyond the word “yearlong”. In August 2023 a contract acknowledgment with Vigilant carried on consent, naming no equipment at all, with a redacted quote filed beneath it.

In September 2020, between the trailers and the cameras, a $12,070 quote for more trailer cameras was listed on consent and pulled from the agenda. The minutes record no reason and no later vote.

The part that was not in public

On 8 March 2022 the Court listed an item reading “Discussions regarding an Automatic License Plate Reader Program for the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office” and took it into executive session under the Texas Government Code’s provisions for deliberation regarding security devices. The minutes record that no action was taken there. Fourteen days later the five cameras passed on consent.

That exception is one the Court uses often: it appears in 238 of the 913 sets of minutes we read, usually for courthouse and Justice Center security. What is particular to this item is the subject named inside it.

The one time the public got a say

On 3 May 2022 the Flock agreement was listed as consent item 14, which would have passed it in a single motion with twenty-six other items. It was moved to the regular agenda instead. Three residents addressed the Court, along with the Sheriff, the Court’s General Counsel and a Sheriff’s Lieutenant, and the agreement then carried.

That is the only occasion in thirteen years of this county’s minutes on which a member of the public is recorded speaking before a plate reader vote.

What the record does not say

No Williamson County record we read states how many readers the Sheriff’s Office operates, where they are, how long a read is kept, which agencies can search them, or whether searches are logged. The Court has never been shown a usage policy for them. The words “license plate reader”, “plate reader”, “ALPR”, “LPR” and “license plate recognition” appear in six meetings across thirteen years, and all six are above.

What stands in the county

The readers on the map were mostly not bought by the county. The EFF Atlas attributes plate readers in Williamson County to the police departments of Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Taylor, Hutto and Liberty Hill. Twenty of the mapped devices carry the operator name of a single retirement community, three a municipal utility district, and seventeen two national hardware chains. None of those councils or districts has been researched for this project and this page makes no claim about what any of them approved. The community map shows where contributors have put them.

What a resident can ask for

The gap between 285 readers on the ground and seven in the county’s record is why the first request on this county’s list asks the Sheriff’s Office for the reader inventory, the retention period, the sharing list and any query audit, and the second asks for the one number the county has never published: how many Flock cameras the May 2022 agreement put up.