REMOVE FLOCK FROM COOKE COUNTY — Our Roads Are Not Checkpoints.
REMOVE FLOCK FROM COOKE COUNTY — Our Roads Are Not Checkpoints.
The Issue
Remove Flock License Plate Surveillance Cameras from Cooke County, Texas
We, the residents, taxpayers, property owners, workers, and visitors of Cooke County, Texas, call upon Cooke County officials to terminate the county's contracts and participation agreements with Flock Safety and to remove all Flock automated license plate reader cameras and mobile Flock equipment from Cooke County.
We further demand an immediate halt to the purchase, installation, expansion, or use of any additional automated license plate readers until the public receives a complete accounting of the system and an opportunity to participate in an open public hearing.
What follows is not speculation. It is a chronology assembled entirely from Cooke County's own agendas, check registers, and financial reports, and from a state grant board transcript. Every date, dollar figure, account number, and quotation below comes from a public record.
Part I: How it happened
February 10, 2025: a surveillance network passes between a skid steer and two cremations
At 10 a.m. on February 10, 2025, the Cooke County Commissioners Court convened in the courthouse on South Dixon Street and worked through a consent agenda.
Consent agendas exist to move routine business quickly. The county's own document says so. These are "non-controversial and routine items that the Court may act on with one single vote."
Item I was an extended warranty for a Kubota skid steer. Item J accepted a $723.01 insurance settlement for a damaged 2017 Honda Civic. Item M approved cybersecurity training. Items P and Q authorized two indigent cremations.
Item L authorized the County Judge to sign a contract with Flock Safety "to provide high speed vehicle license plate recognition cameras and equipment to the Cooke County Sheriff's Department for use in crime detection and prevention."
That single line, bundled into one vote with the skid steer warranty and the cremations, is how Cooke County acquired a system that photographs vehicles, records where and when they passed, and makes those records searchable by law enforcement agencies across Texas and potentially the country.
Nothing was withheld from the agenda. The item was posted, as the law requires. But no presentation was made, no discussion was held, and no separate vote was taken. Residents were never told, before the authorization:
How many cameras would be installed
Where cameras would be placed
What information would be collected
How long records would be retained
Which agencies could search the information
Whether federal and nationwide sharing would be enabled
What the system would cost after grant funding ended
What protections would prevent misuse
For the Commissioners Court: why was a countywide vehicle surveillance system classified as non-controversial and routine, rather than given its own posted agenda item, its own public presentation, and its own recorded vote?
June 23, 2025: the county pays for cameras with property it seized
This is the part of the record most residents would not guess.
The county check register for June 23, 2025 shows a $4,250 payment to Flock Group Inc for "FLOCK SAFETY LPR FLEX." Of that, $376 came from the Sheriff's general fund equipment line. The other $3,874 came from account 058-560-457.
Fund 058 is the Sheriff Forfeiture fund. Its revenue lines read "SHERIFF FORFEITURE FUNDS," "FEDERAL FORFEITURE FUNDS," "SALE OF ASSETS," and "INSURANCE RECOVERY."
That is money and property taken from people through forfeiture, used to buy cameras that watch everyone.
The same fund bought the drones. On February 28, 2022, the county paid W S Darley & Co $13,241.10 for "DRONES," charged to account 058-560-570, purchase order 033554, check 149916 or 149917.
Neither purchase appears to have been debated in a public budget hearing, because forfeiture money does not pass through the tax rate conversation.
July 2025: the expansion is presented in Austin, not in Gainesville
Five months after the consent agenda vote, a Cooke County Sheriff's Office investigator appeared before a state grant board and described the program in more detail than county residents have ever received at a Commissioners Court meeting.
The county sits "at the crossroads of 35 and 82," he explained, one mile south of WinStar Casino, covering 900 square miles.
Five cameras had already been funded. "Four of those are in the final phase with TxDOT right now, to be applied. So one camera is up."
He asked for six more: "four of those are long range. Two are regular." Plus "two of the speed trailers." Thirteen cameras and two mobile units in total.
He was candid about the appeal of the trailers: "the speed trailers are going to be mobile. That can not only be TxDOT friendly, so that way, we don't have to go through the permitting process." He named the destinations: west Cooke County, near Muenster, for GermanFest and OktoberFest.
The state awarded $66,292 under a grant listed as the "Flock Safety Development Program."
He also described what the grant money actually bought, which is larger than cameras: "the ability to access the Flock system in general. That is what the money has brought to our agency, to be able to leverage with other local agencies, Collinsville being one of those."
Questions: when was the expansion from five cameras to thirteen plus two trailers presented to Commissioners Court, rather than to a state grant board? Who authorized it, and under what authority? Where are the cameras? What do the mobile trailers record besides a speed readout?
January and March 2026: the county learns it is renting
Two later payments show what kind of arrangement this is.
On January 12, 2026 the county paid Flock $24,100, of which $20,700 was coded to line 001-560-460, RENT. On March 23, 2026 it paid another $24,000, also rent.
Cooke County owns no cameras, no software, and no data infrastructure. Grant money paid to get in. Local property taxes will pay to stay in.
That same budget year, Commissioners Court raised the tax rate from $0.3155 to $0.3355 and adopted the budget on a 4 to 1 vote, with County Judge John Roane, the official statutorily responsible for preparing it, voting against.
Questions: what is the county's annual obligation after the grants end? Will the cameras be removed, or paid for entirely with local taxes? And what does the county have if it stops paying?
January 2026: one line nobody has explained
The same January 2026 check register contains a $400 payment to Nortex Communications on the county information technology account. The description reads: "VLAN FOR HOMELAND CAMERA" and "CHANGED OUT SWITCHES."
A VLAN is a walled-off segment of a computer network, the kind you build when a system needs to be isolated from ordinary traffic.
No vendor product name. No location. No camera count. No retention period. No approving vote. Nothing else in any public record explains what the Homeland camera is or who watches it.
Questions: what is the Homeland camera system, where are its cameras, who operates it, how long is footage kept, and who approved it?
Part II: What these systems collect
Flock cameras do more than photograph vehicles suspected of crimes. They automatically capture vehicles traveling on public roads, including vehicles belonging to people who have done nothing wrong.
The system may collect or generate:
License plate numbers and issuing states
Images of vehicles
Vehicle make, model, color, and body type
Date and exact time of each sighting
Camera location
Direction of travel
Temporary, partial, obscured, or missing plate information
Visible features such as trailers, racks, decals, damage, or modifications
Records showing where a vehicle has appeared over time
Possible associations between vehicles traveling together
When multiple cameras and multiple agencies are connected, separate vehicle sightings can be assembled into a history of a person's travel and routines.
That history may reveal when someone leaves home, where that person works, which family members they visit, which churches they attend, which medical facilities they use, which political meetings they attend, and which attorneys, businesses, hotels, or organizations they visit.
Cooke County residents should not have their movements placed into a searchable surveillance network merely because they drove on a public road.
Part III: Nobody has written any rules
Search the record for a Cooke County policy governing any of this and you find nothing.
No license plate reader policy. No drone policy. No retention schedule adopted by the Court. No requirement that a deputy visually confirm a plate before pulling someone over on an automated alert. No misuse complaint procedure. No audit of who has been searching the system and why.
The records reviewed have not established that Cooke County adopted a complete public policy covering any of the following:
Authorized and prohibited uses
Search requirements
Case number requirements
Supervisor approval
Custom hotlists
Sensitive investigations
Data retention
Agency sharing
Federal access
Nationwide searches
Visual confirmation before vehicle stops
False alerts
Public complaints
Misuse investigations
Employee discipline
Routine audits
Public reporting
State law does not fill the gap. House Bill 961, which would have regulated license plate readers in Texas, was filed in November 2024, referred to committee on March 6, 2025, and died there without a hearing.
Courts have not filled it either. In March 2026 the Fifth Circuit held that police do not need a warrant to search license plate reader data, reasoning that such a system "does not 'faithfully follow[]' individuals 'beyond public thoroughfares.'"
So the rules that govern how long Cooke County keeps records of your vehicle, who can search them, and what justification a search requires are currently set by the vendor's default configuration.
The vendor's public statements have not always held up. In April 2026 the Oshkosh, Wisconsin city council approved a Flock contract after the company's chief information security officer told members the system did not "create a pattern or heat map of an individual's movement." The council learned the next morning that was untrue, reconvened, and revoked the contract the same day. Flock later acknowledged the system does produce a heat map covering up to a month of a vehicle's sightings, and called its own false statement "one small misconception."
Technology should not be trusted merely because a company says searches are logged. Audit logs protect the public only when independent officials regularly examine them and act on evidence of misuse.
Questions: is there a written policy? If not, who chose the current settings, and when? Must a deputy see the plate with his own eyes before making a stop?
Part IV: Who can see Cooke County's data
The county has not answered this, and it could answer it with a single screenshot.
The only sharing partner named in any public record is Collinsville, a small city in Grayson County, identified in the Sheriff's investigator's grant testimony.
Beyond that, the roster is unknown to the public. Roughly three quarters of Flock's law enforcement customers enroll in nationwide search, and independent audits in other states have found hundreds of agencies querying data they were never authorized to reach.
The Texas Department of Public Safety holds its own agreement with Flock running through March 2028 with a maximum value of $26,914,417.
This is not an abstract concern. About 90 minutes south, in Johnson County, the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained the sheriff's own incident report and the lead detective's sworn affidavit showing that a nationwide license plate search logged with the reason "had an abortion, search for female" arose from a death investigation into a reported abortion, not the missing person welfare check that the sheriff and Flock had publicly described. The district attorney's office told deputies the state could not charge the woman. Johnson County holds a $208,333 state license plate grant.
Nationally, the accountability mechanism is a required "search reason" field. The ACLU examined 11.4 million searches over six months and found that more than 14 percent gave only the word "investigation."
Questions: can Johnson County search Cooke County's records? Is nationwide sharing on? Is federal sharing on, and what is the complete history of that setting? Which federal watch lists are enabled? And of the searches Cooke County deputies have run, how many gave a real reason?
Part V: Texas law does not leave forfeiture spending unsupervised
Cooke County bought part of this system, and all of its drones, with seized property. State law attaches conditions to that money, and the public record does not show them being met.
Before the money is spent, Article 59.06(d) of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires that a budget for the expenditure be submitted to the commissioners court, and that budget "must be detailed and clearly list and define the categories of expenditures."2
After it is spent, Article 59.06(g)(1) requires an annual audit accounting for "the seizure, forfeiture, receipt, and specific expenditure of all the proceeds and property." The audit must be completed on a form provided by the Attorney General and "must include a detailed report and explanation of all expenditures." Certified copies must reach the Attorney General no later than the 60th day after the annual period ends.1 If the county misses that deadline and cannot show good cause, the Comptroller performs the audit instead and the agency is liable for the Comptroller's costs.1 An agency that received no forfeiture proceeds in a given year must still file a report saying so within 30 days.1
Enforcement exists. The State Auditor may audit or investigate forfeiture receipts and expenditures at any time, with access to any book, account, voucher, or record.3 If an audit indicates a knowing violation, the Attorney General may sue in district court for injunctive relief, a civil penalty, or both.3
No forfeiture audit for Cooke County appears anywhere in the public record. Neither does any detailed expenditure budget submitted to Commissioners Court before the camera or drone purchases.
Money and property obtained through forfeiture should not quietly finance an expanding surveillance network without detailed public review, audits, policies, and accountability. Cooke County residents deserve to see every required forfeiture audit, every surveillance-related expenditure, and every agreement governing the use of those funds.
For the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and the Commissioners Court: where are the annual forfeiture audits and the Attorney General reports for the last ten years? Where are the detailed expenditure budgets required before the money was spent? What is the written agreement between the Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney governing forfeited money? And why was surveillance equipment purchased with seized property rather than with budgeted funds the public could see and debate?
Part VI: The danger of abuse is real
Automated license plate reader technology can be abused to:
Track former spouses, romantic partners, neighbors, or personal enemies
Monitor people who criticize law enforcement
Identify people attending protests or political meetings
Track visitors to churches or religious gatherings
Identify visits to medical or mental health facilities
Create secret local watchlists
Conduct searches without a case number
Use vague search reasons such as "investigation"
Share information with outside agencies without local oversight
Perform broad fishing expeditions involving innocent drivers
Make stops based on incorrect or outdated alerts
Retain, download, screenshot, or export information beyond the stated retention period
Target particular neighborhoods or groups
Use another agency to bypass local restrictions
Conceal how a person or vehicle was originally located
These are possible forms of misuse. This petition does not claim that every listed abuse has occurred in Cooke County.
The problem is that the public has not received the records needed to determine whether misuse has occurred.
Part VII: What is fair to say, and what is not
Nothing in this record establishes that anyone in Cooke County broke a law. It is worth stating clearly what the county does well.
Cooke County obtains an independent financial audit every year from an outside firm and received clean opinions for both 2024 and 2025. Texas law appears not to require an annual independent audit of a county this size that has a county auditor. Cooke County obtains one anyway. Its county auditor is appointed by the district judges rather than by the Commissioners Court, which is the independence the Legislature intended. And it publishes budgets and biweekly check registers online going back to 2009.
That is better transparency infrastructure than many Texas counties maintain, and every number in this petition came from it.
One housekeeping note in the same spirit: dozens of dates on the county's check register index appear as plain text with no working link, including the entire 2021 to 2022 fiscal year and, as it happens, February 28, 2022, the register containing the drone purchase. The file sits on the county's server and opens if you type the address by hand. That is a broken link, not a cover-up, and it should simply be fixed.
The problem here is narrower than a scandal and more consequential than a paperwork error. A powerful surveillance system was adopted without public debate, funded in part with seized property, expanded through a state grant board rather than the Commissioners Court, and is running today with no local rules at all.
Part VIII: What we demand
We call upon Cooke County officials to:
Terminate all Cooke County contracts and subscriptions with Flock Safety.
Remove all fixed, mobile, trailer-mounted, or otherwise deployed Flock equipment from Cooke County.
Disable Cooke County access to the Flock national network.
Prohibit Cooke County agencies from asking another department to perform Flock searches on their behalf.
Preserve all contracts, invoices, emails, text messages, audit logs, searches, hotlists, alerts, sharing records, deployment records, and setting change histories before the system is disconnected.
Release the full agency sharing roster, including local, state, federal, tribal, and out of state access.
Release every Cooke County search, including the username, date, time, search reason, case number, searched plate or vehicle description, and agency requesting the search, with legally required personal information redacted.
Release the location, type, installation date, operating status, and funding source for every camera and mobile unit.
Release the current and historical retention, federal sharing, and nationwide search settings.
Release all written policies governing Flock cameras, drones, mobile trailers, watchlists, camera networks, and other surveillance systems.
Release all complaints, internal investigations, false alert reports, disciplinary actions, and audits involving surveillance technology.
Produce the required forfeiture audits and Attorney General reports covering surveillance purchases, along with the detailed expenditure budgets required to be submitted to Commissioners Court before those funds were spent.
Explain the "Homeland camera," including its purpose, location, capabilities, funding, access, retention, and approving authority.
Adopt a countywide moratorium prohibiting any new automated surveillance system without a separate agenda item, public presentation, written privacy impact report, public hearing, and recorded vote.
Require voter approval before Cooke County creates another network capable of systematically tracking the movements of residents who are not suspected of crimes.
Part IX: The short list
If residents ask for only five things, ask for these. Each is a document, not an opinion.
The executed Flock contract, plus the vendor's online terms as they read on the signing date and as they read today.
The list of every agency that can search Cooke County's data, and the audit showing which ones actually have.
The current setting of the federal sharing switch, and every change ever made to it.
The written license plate reader policy, or a statement in writing that none exists.
The annual forfeiture audits and Attorney General reports for the last ten years.
And when officials answer, ask them to do what any competent auditor would require: identify the specific contract clause, written policy, technical setting, invoice, grant condition, audit log entry, and named official supporting the answer, with the date of the decision and the Commissioners Court agenda item and vote where one exists. If no such record exists, say so in writing.
A verbal assurance is not a record. In February 2025, a countywide surveillance system passed in the same breath as a skid steer warranty because nobody in the room asked for one.
Public safety does not require secret surveillance
We support lawful investigations and responsible tools that help officers recover stolen vehicles and protect victims. Public safety and constitutional liberty are not opposing values. Cooke County can investigate crimes without automatically recording and sharing the movements of every person who drives past a government camera.
A system capable of tracking innocent residents should never be adopted as a routine administrative purchase.
It should not operate without publicly adopted rules.
It should not expand without public debate.
It should not be funded through grants or forfeiture accounts that make the long-term taxpayer obligation difficult to see.
It should not share information with unknown agencies.
It should not remain in Cooke County simply because surveillance has become technologically convenient.
Sign this petition
Sign to demand that Cooke County remove Flock cameras, terminate its participation in the Flock network, release the complete surveillance record, and require meaningful public approval before any similar system can return.
Our roads should not become checkpoints.
Our daily movements should not become government records.
Cooke County residents deserve safety, privacy, transparency, and accountable government.
Remove Flock from Cooke County, Texas.
Source note
This petition is based on Cooke County Commissioners Court agendas, Cooke County check registers, Cooke County annual financial reports, publicly available state grant materials and transcripts, published Texas statutes, and reported public record findings by outside organizations as cited in the text. It identifies unanswered questions and potential risks. It does not allege that every possible misuse described above has occurred in Cooke County.
Where to send this
Sheriff Ray Sappington, Cooke County Sheriff's Office 300 County Road 451, Gainesville, TX 76240 | (940) 665-3471
No direct email for the Sheriff is published. Send records requests by certified mail and copy the County Judge. Do not use the tips address (tips@co.cooke.tx.us) for a public information request; it will not create a clean paper trail.
County Judge John O. Roane 101 S. Dixon St., Suite 132, Gainesville, TX 76240 john.roane@co.cooke.tx.us | (940) 668-5435 | Fax (940) 668-5440 Administrative Assistant: Chelsea Terry, chelsea.terry@co.cooke.tx.us
Commissioners Court, 101 South Dixon Street, Gainesville, TX 76240
Precinct
Commissioner
Phone
1
Gary Hollowell
(940) 668-5481
2
Jason Snuggs
(940) 726-3390 or (940) 668-5482
3
Adam Arendt
(940) 668-5483
4
Matt Sicking
(940) 668-5484
Commissioner email addresses are masked behind links on the county's Commissioners Court page. Copy them from the page directly or call (940) 668-5500.
Also worth copying: County Attorney Edmund J. Zielinski, (940) 668-5459, who advises the county on public information requests; and County Clerk Pam Harrison, (940) 668-5420, custodian of Commissioners Court records including the February 10, 2025 minutes.
To speak at Commissioners Court, submit the Public Participation Form to the County Judge's Office at least 15 minutes before the meeting, or call (940) 668-5435 at least one hour ahead. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and 30 minutes total.
42
The Issue
Remove Flock License Plate Surveillance Cameras from Cooke County, Texas
We, the residents, taxpayers, property owners, workers, and visitors of Cooke County, Texas, call upon Cooke County officials to terminate the county's contracts and participation agreements with Flock Safety and to remove all Flock automated license plate reader cameras and mobile Flock equipment from Cooke County.
We further demand an immediate halt to the purchase, installation, expansion, or use of any additional automated license plate readers until the public receives a complete accounting of the system and an opportunity to participate in an open public hearing.
What follows is not speculation. It is a chronology assembled entirely from Cooke County's own agendas, check registers, and financial reports, and from a state grant board transcript. Every date, dollar figure, account number, and quotation below comes from a public record.
Part I: How it happened
February 10, 2025: a surveillance network passes between a skid steer and two cremations
At 10 a.m. on February 10, 2025, the Cooke County Commissioners Court convened in the courthouse on South Dixon Street and worked through a consent agenda.
Consent agendas exist to move routine business quickly. The county's own document says so. These are "non-controversial and routine items that the Court may act on with one single vote."
Item I was an extended warranty for a Kubota skid steer. Item J accepted a $723.01 insurance settlement for a damaged 2017 Honda Civic. Item M approved cybersecurity training. Items P and Q authorized two indigent cremations.
Item L authorized the County Judge to sign a contract with Flock Safety "to provide high speed vehicle license plate recognition cameras and equipment to the Cooke County Sheriff's Department for use in crime detection and prevention."
That single line, bundled into one vote with the skid steer warranty and the cremations, is how Cooke County acquired a system that photographs vehicles, records where and when they passed, and makes those records searchable by law enforcement agencies across Texas and potentially the country.
Nothing was withheld from the agenda. The item was posted, as the law requires. But no presentation was made, no discussion was held, and no separate vote was taken. Residents were never told, before the authorization:
How many cameras would be installed
Where cameras would be placed
What information would be collected
How long records would be retained
Which agencies could search the information
Whether federal and nationwide sharing would be enabled
What the system would cost after grant funding ended
What protections would prevent misuse
For the Commissioners Court: why was a countywide vehicle surveillance system classified as non-controversial and routine, rather than given its own posted agenda item, its own public presentation, and its own recorded vote?
June 23, 2025: the county pays for cameras with property it seized
This is the part of the record most residents would not guess.
The county check register for June 23, 2025 shows a $4,250 payment to Flock Group Inc for "FLOCK SAFETY LPR FLEX." Of that, $376 came from the Sheriff's general fund equipment line. The other $3,874 came from account 058-560-457.
Fund 058 is the Sheriff Forfeiture fund. Its revenue lines read "SHERIFF FORFEITURE FUNDS," "FEDERAL FORFEITURE FUNDS," "SALE OF ASSETS," and "INSURANCE RECOVERY."
That is money and property taken from people through forfeiture, used to buy cameras that watch everyone.
The same fund bought the drones. On February 28, 2022, the county paid W S Darley & Co $13,241.10 for "DRONES," charged to account 058-560-570, purchase order 033554, check 149916 or 149917.
Neither purchase appears to have been debated in a public budget hearing, because forfeiture money does not pass through the tax rate conversation.
July 2025: the expansion is presented in Austin, not in Gainesville
Five months after the consent agenda vote, a Cooke County Sheriff's Office investigator appeared before a state grant board and described the program in more detail than county residents have ever received at a Commissioners Court meeting.
The county sits "at the crossroads of 35 and 82," he explained, one mile south of WinStar Casino, covering 900 square miles.
Five cameras had already been funded. "Four of those are in the final phase with TxDOT right now, to be applied. So one camera is up."
He asked for six more: "four of those are long range. Two are regular." Plus "two of the speed trailers." Thirteen cameras and two mobile units in total.
He was candid about the appeal of the trailers: "the speed trailers are going to be mobile. That can not only be TxDOT friendly, so that way, we don't have to go through the permitting process." He named the destinations: west Cooke County, near Muenster, for GermanFest and OktoberFest.
The state awarded $66,292 under a grant listed as the "Flock Safety Development Program."
He also described what the grant money actually bought, which is larger than cameras: "the ability to access the Flock system in general. That is what the money has brought to our agency, to be able to leverage with other local agencies, Collinsville being one of those."
Questions: when was the expansion from five cameras to thirteen plus two trailers presented to Commissioners Court, rather than to a state grant board? Who authorized it, and under what authority? Where are the cameras? What do the mobile trailers record besides a speed readout?
January and March 2026: the county learns it is renting
Two later payments show what kind of arrangement this is.
On January 12, 2026 the county paid Flock $24,100, of which $20,700 was coded to line 001-560-460, RENT. On March 23, 2026 it paid another $24,000, also rent.
Cooke County owns no cameras, no software, and no data infrastructure. Grant money paid to get in. Local property taxes will pay to stay in.
That same budget year, Commissioners Court raised the tax rate from $0.3155 to $0.3355 and adopted the budget on a 4 to 1 vote, with County Judge John Roane, the official statutorily responsible for preparing it, voting against.
Questions: what is the county's annual obligation after the grants end? Will the cameras be removed, or paid for entirely with local taxes? And what does the county have if it stops paying?
January 2026: one line nobody has explained
The same January 2026 check register contains a $400 payment to Nortex Communications on the county information technology account. The description reads: "VLAN FOR HOMELAND CAMERA" and "CHANGED OUT SWITCHES."
A VLAN is a walled-off segment of a computer network, the kind you build when a system needs to be isolated from ordinary traffic.
No vendor product name. No location. No camera count. No retention period. No approving vote. Nothing else in any public record explains what the Homeland camera is or who watches it.
Questions: what is the Homeland camera system, where are its cameras, who operates it, how long is footage kept, and who approved it?
Part II: What these systems collect
Flock cameras do more than photograph vehicles suspected of crimes. They automatically capture vehicles traveling on public roads, including vehicles belonging to people who have done nothing wrong.
The system may collect or generate:
License plate numbers and issuing states
Images of vehicles
Vehicle make, model, color, and body type
Date and exact time of each sighting
Camera location
Direction of travel
Temporary, partial, obscured, or missing plate information
Visible features such as trailers, racks, decals, damage, or modifications
Records showing where a vehicle has appeared over time
Possible associations between vehicles traveling together
When multiple cameras and multiple agencies are connected, separate vehicle sightings can be assembled into a history of a person's travel and routines.
That history may reveal when someone leaves home, where that person works, which family members they visit, which churches they attend, which medical facilities they use, which political meetings they attend, and which attorneys, businesses, hotels, or organizations they visit.
Cooke County residents should not have their movements placed into a searchable surveillance network merely because they drove on a public road.
Part III: Nobody has written any rules
Search the record for a Cooke County policy governing any of this and you find nothing.
No license plate reader policy. No drone policy. No retention schedule adopted by the Court. No requirement that a deputy visually confirm a plate before pulling someone over on an automated alert. No misuse complaint procedure. No audit of who has been searching the system and why.
The records reviewed have not established that Cooke County adopted a complete public policy covering any of the following:
Authorized and prohibited uses
Search requirements
Case number requirements
Supervisor approval
Custom hotlists
Sensitive investigations
Data retention
Agency sharing
Federal access
Nationwide searches
Visual confirmation before vehicle stops
False alerts
Public complaints
Misuse investigations
Employee discipline
Routine audits
Public reporting
State law does not fill the gap. House Bill 961, which would have regulated license plate readers in Texas, was filed in November 2024, referred to committee on March 6, 2025, and died there without a hearing.
Courts have not filled it either. In March 2026 the Fifth Circuit held that police do not need a warrant to search license plate reader data, reasoning that such a system "does not 'faithfully follow[]' individuals 'beyond public thoroughfares.'"
So the rules that govern how long Cooke County keeps records of your vehicle, who can search them, and what justification a search requires are currently set by the vendor's default configuration.
The vendor's public statements have not always held up. In April 2026 the Oshkosh, Wisconsin city council approved a Flock contract after the company's chief information security officer told members the system did not "create a pattern or heat map of an individual's movement." The council learned the next morning that was untrue, reconvened, and revoked the contract the same day. Flock later acknowledged the system does produce a heat map covering up to a month of a vehicle's sightings, and called its own false statement "one small misconception."
Technology should not be trusted merely because a company says searches are logged. Audit logs protect the public only when independent officials regularly examine them and act on evidence of misuse.
Questions: is there a written policy? If not, who chose the current settings, and when? Must a deputy see the plate with his own eyes before making a stop?
Part IV: Who can see Cooke County's data
The county has not answered this, and it could answer it with a single screenshot.
The only sharing partner named in any public record is Collinsville, a small city in Grayson County, identified in the Sheriff's investigator's grant testimony.
Beyond that, the roster is unknown to the public. Roughly three quarters of Flock's law enforcement customers enroll in nationwide search, and independent audits in other states have found hundreds of agencies querying data they were never authorized to reach.
The Texas Department of Public Safety holds its own agreement with Flock running through March 2028 with a maximum value of $26,914,417.
This is not an abstract concern. About 90 minutes south, in Johnson County, the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained the sheriff's own incident report and the lead detective's sworn affidavit showing that a nationwide license plate search logged with the reason "had an abortion, search for female" arose from a death investigation into a reported abortion, not the missing person welfare check that the sheriff and Flock had publicly described. The district attorney's office told deputies the state could not charge the woman. Johnson County holds a $208,333 state license plate grant.
Nationally, the accountability mechanism is a required "search reason" field. The ACLU examined 11.4 million searches over six months and found that more than 14 percent gave only the word "investigation."
Questions: can Johnson County search Cooke County's records? Is nationwide sharing on? Is federal sharing on, and what is the complete history of that setting? Which federal watch lists are enabled? And of the searches Cooke County deputies have run, how many gave a real reason?
Part V: Texas law does not leave forfeiture spending unsupervised
Cooke County bought part of this system, and all of its drones, with seized property. State law attaches conditions to that money, and the public record does not show them being met.
Before the money is spent, Article 59.06(d) of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires that a budget for the expenditure be submitted to the commissioners court, and that budget "must be detailed and clearly list and define the categories of expenditures."2
After it is spent, Article 59.06(g)(1) requires an annual audit accounting for "the seizure, forfeiture, receipt, and specific expenditure of all the proceeds and property." The audit must be completed on a form provided by the Attorney General and "must include a detailed report and explanation of all expenditures." Certified copies must reach the Attorney General no later than the 60th day after the annual period ends.1 If the county misses that deadline and cannot show good cause, the Comptroller performs the audit instead and the agency is liable for the Comptroller's costs.1 An agency that received no forfeiture proceeds in a given year must still file a report saying so within 30 days.1
Enforcement exists. The State Auditor may audit or investigate forfeiture receipts and expenditures at any time, with access to any book, account, voucher, or record.3 If an audit indicates a knowing violation, the Attorney General may sue in district court for injunctive relief, a civil penalty, or both.3
No forfeiture audit for Cooke County appears anywhere in the public record. Neither does any detailed expenditure budget submitted to Commissioners Court before the camera or drone purchases.
Money and property obtained through forfeiture should not quietly finance an expanding surveillance network without detailed public review, audits, policies, and accountability. Cooke County residents deserve to see every required forfeiture audit, every surveillance-related expenditure, and every agreement governing the use of those funds.
For the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and the Commissioners Court: where are the annual forfeiture audits and the Attorney General reports for the last ten years? Where are the detailed expenditure budgets required before the money was spent? What is the written agreement between the Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney governing forfeited money? And why was surveillance equipment purchased with seized property rather than with budgeted funds the public could see and debate?
Part VI: The danger of abuse is real
Automated license plate reader technology can be abused to:
Track former spouses, romantic partners, neighbors, or personal enemies
Monitor people who criticize law enforcement
Identify people attending protests or political meetings
Track visitors to churches or religious gatherings
Identify visits to medical or mental health facilities
Create secret local watchlists
Conduct searches without a case number
Use vague search reasons such as "investigation"
Share information with outside agencies without local oversight
Perform broad fishing expeditions involving innocent drivers
Make stops based on incorrect or outdated alerts
Retain, download, screenshot, or export information beyond the stated retention period
Target particular neighborhoods or groups
Use another agency to bypass local restrictions
Conceal how a person or vehicle was originally located
These are possible forms of misuse. This petition does not claim that every listed abuse has occurred in Cooke County.
The problem is that the public has not received the records needed to determine whether misuse has occurred.
Part VII: What is fair to say, and what is not
Nothing in this record establishes that anyone in Cooke County broke a law. It is worth stating clearly what the county does well.
Cooke County obtains an independent financial audit every year from an outside firm and received clean opinions for both 2024 and 2025. Texas law appears not to require an annual independent audit of a county this size that has a county auditor. Cooke County obtains one anyway. Its county auditor is appointed by the district judges rather than by the Commissioners Court, which is the independence the Legislature intended. And it publishes budgets and biweekly check registers online going back to 2009.
That is better transparency infrastructure than many Texas counties maintain, and every number in this petition came from it.
One housekeeping note in the same spirit: dozens of dates on the county's check register index appear as plain text with no working link, including the entire 2021 to 2022 fiscal year and, as it happens, February 28, 2022, the register containing the drone purchase. The file sits on the county's server and opens if you type the address by hand. That is a broken link, not a cover-up, and it should simply be fixed.
The problem here is narrower than a scandal and more consequential than a paperwork error. A powerful surveillance system was adopted without public debate, funded in part with seized property, expanded through a state grant board rather than the Commissioners Court, and is running today with no local rules at all.
Part VIII: What we demand
We call upon Cooke County officials to:
Terminate all Cooke County contracts and subscriptions with Flock Safety.
Remove all fixed, mobile, trailer-mounted, or otherwise deployed Flock equipment from Cooke County.
Disable Cooke County access to the Flock national network.
Prohibit Cooke County agencies from asking another department to perform Flock searches on their behalf.
Preserve all contracts, invoices, emails, text messages, audit logs, searches, hotlists, alerts, sharing records, deployment records, and setting change histories before the system is disconnected.
Release the full agency sharing roster, including local, state, federal, tribal, and out of state access.
Release every Cooke County search, including the username, date, time, search reason, case number, searched plate or vehicle description, and agency requesting the search, with legally required personal information redacted.
Release the location, type, installation date, operating status, and funding source for every camera and mobile unit.
Release the current and historical retention, federal sharing, and nationwide search settings.
Release all written policies governing Flock cameras, drones, mobile trailers, watchlists, camera networks, and other surveillance systems.
Release all complaints, internal investigations, false alert reports, disciplinary actions, and audits involving surveillance technology.
Produce the required forfeiture audits and Attorney General reports covering surveillance purchases, along with the detailed expenditure budgets required to be submitted to Commissioners Court before those funds were spent.
Explain the "Homeland camera," including its purpose, location, capabilities, funding, access, retention, and approving authority.
Adopt a countywide moratorium prohibiting any new automated surveillance system without a separate agenda item, public presentation, written privacy impact report, public hearing, and recorded vote.
Require voter approval before Cooke County creates another network capable of systematically tracking the movements of residents who are not suspected of crimes.
Part IX: The short list
If residents ask for only five things, ask for these. Each is a document, not an opinion.
The executed Flock contract, plus the vendor's online terms as they read on the signing date and as they read today.
The list of every agency that can search Cooke County's data, and the audit showing which ones actually have.
The current setting of the federal sharing switch, and every change ever made to it.
The written license plate reader policy, or a statement in writing that none exists.
The annual forfeiture audits and Attorney General reports for the last ten years.
And when officials answer, ask them to do what any competent auditor would require: identify the specific contract clause, written policy, technical setting, invoice, grant condition, audit log entry, and named official supporting the answer, with the date of the decision and the Commissioners Court agenda item and vote where one exists. If no such record exists, say so in writing.
A verbal assurance is not a record. In February 2025, a countywide surveillance system passed in the same breath as a skid steer warranty because nobody in the room asked for one.
Public safety does not require secret surveillance
We support lawful investigations and responsible tools that help officers recover stolen vehicles and protect victims. Public safety and constitutional liberty are not opposing values. Cooke County can investigate crimes without automatically recording and sharing the movements of every person who drives past a government camera.
A system capable of tracking innocent residents should never be adopted as a routine administrative purchase.
It should not operate without publicly adopted rules.
It should not expand without public debate.
It should not be funded through grants or forfeiture accounts that make the long-term taxpayer obligation difficult to see.
It should not share information with unknown agencies.
It should not remain in Cooke County simply because surveillance has become technologically convenient.
Sign this petition
Sign to demand that Cooke County remove Flock cameras, terminate its participation in the Flock network, release the complete surveillance record, and require meaningful public approval before any similar system can return.
Our roads should not become checkpoints.
Our daily movements should not become government records.
Cooke County residents deserve safety, privacy, transparency, and accountable government.
Remove Flock from Cooke County, Texas.
Source note
This petition is based on Cooke County Commissioners Court agendas, Cooke County check registers, Cooke County annual financial reports, publicly available state grant materials and transcripts, published Texas statutes, and reported public record findings by outside organizations as cited in the text. It identifies unanswered questions and potential risks. It does not allege that every possible misuse described above has occurred in Cooke County.
Where to send this
Sheriff Ray Sappington, Cooke County Sheriff's Office 300 County Road 451, Gainesville, TX 76240 | (940) 665-3471
No direct email for the Sheriff is published. Send records requests by certified mail and copy the County Judge. Do not use the tips address (tips@co.cooke.tx.us) for a public information request; it will not create a clean paper trail.
County Judge John O. Roane 101 S. Dixon St., Suite 132, Gainesville, TX 76240 john.roane@co.cooke.tx.us | (940) 668-5435 | Fax (940) 668-5440 Administrative Assistant: Chelsea Terry, chelsea.terry@co.cooke.tx.us
Commissioners Court, 101 South Dixon Street, Gainesville, TX 76240
Precinct
Commissioner
Phone
1
Gary Hollowell
(940) 668-5481
2
Jason Snuggs
(940) 726-3390 or (940) 668-5482
3
Adam Arendt
(940) 668-5483
4
Matt Sicking
(940) 668-5484
Commissioner email addresses are masked behind links on the county's Commissioners Court page. Copy them from the page directly or call (940) 668-5500.
Also worth copying: County Attorney Edmund J. Zielinski, (940) 668-5459, who advises the county on public information requests; and County Clerk Pam Harrison, (940) 668-5420, custodian of Commissioners Court records including the February 10, 2025 minutes.
To speak at Commissioners Court, submit the Public Participation Form to the County Judge's Office at least 15 minutes before the meeting, or call (940) 668-5435 at least one hour ahead. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and 30 minutes total.
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Petition created on July 26, 2026