In 2023, the Texas Legislature unanimously passed a law raising auto insurance costs for Texans by $1 to combat rampant catalytic converter theft.
Three years later, a little-known state agency has devoted at least $30 million of that fee toward supercharging the state’s Flock surveillance network, placing cameras along highways and streets from El Paso to the Louisiana border, an analysis by The Texas Tribune found.
The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, led by a board mostly appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, has turned the $1 fee hike into at least 3,200 Flock cameras.
The agency has awarded no fewer than 95 grants to help law enforcement agencies purchase and maintain about 2,000 Flock cameras. Another $15.9 million is helping the Texas Department of Public Safety add almost 1,200 more.
The effort is far from over. In early August, the agency approved another $3 million to help DPS install 583 more cameras along Texas tollways over the next year.
Miguel Rodriguez, chair of the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, said during an August 2023 meeting that he hoped to use proceeds from the fee increase to “cover the entire state” with cameras.
Rodriguez, who is also the Laredo Police Chief, sees the cameras as a powerful law enforcement tool, particularly to combat criminal organizations.
“That kind of capability directly disrupts the operational advantage these transnational criminal organizations rely on, and it strengthens our ability to protect both Texas communities and the broader region,” he said in an email.
But on Friday evening, after multiple requests for comment from the Tribune about its findings, Abbott’s office said the governor was pausing all state funding for local grants to be used for Flock cameras.
“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government. To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement shared first with the Tribune.
[…]
The state agency does not detail how much of its grant money went to Flock cameras. Instead, the Tribune tracked the grants by reviewing the vehicle authority’s meeting records, as well as documents, agendas and discussions from 101 city councils and county commissions that approved or discussed Flock-related grants.
It is likely the authority has paid for more Flock cameras than the Tribune analysis found because 124 grants lack clear public documentation about what was purchased.
The statewide effort to proliferate Flock cameras comes as backlash is mounting over the surveillance, including from some members of the Legislature, where the $1 fee was approved without opposition.
“The sheer volume of information captured is not something that is entertained, in my view, by the Fourth Amendment,” said Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville.
State Sen. Carol Alvarado and Rep. Jeff Leach, the bill’s author and House sponsor, said surveillance cameras were never discussed when the bill was considered. Alvarado said she was surprised to learn from the Tribune that the insurance fee was funding AI-supported license plate readers.
“I did not have that in mind when we passed the bill,” said Alvarado, D-Houston. “When I think of combating crime, I’m thinking … more boots on the ground, hiring more officers to tackle the crime or some type of undercover work.”
Alvarado said there is a “fine line” between protecting the public from crime and protecting people’s privacy, but said she did not plan to file legislation to shift the grant requirements.
One could argue that the bill’s sponsors should have been more clear about what the funds were and were not to be used for. I didn’t read through the bill’s text, but many bills have unclear wording or don’t cover various scenarios – there’s a reason it’s a good living being a lawyer in this state. That said, I sure didn’t know about Flock in the spring of 2023, the bill’s caption was clear about its focus on catalytic converters, and it’s hard to understand how installing cameras on highways and toll roads would discourage or help solve catalytic converter theft. It’s clear that this Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, whoever they are, took a bunch of the money and did their own thing with it. And as the members of that group were Abbott appointees, well, the buck stops with him. So once again he scrambles to try to fix something that he himself broke. Sure is funny how often that seems to be happening lately. Maybe we ought to try something different going forward.