New records from UNC Charlotte show that Houston Police searched the university’s Flock license plate camera network more than 183,000 times between March and May 2026. That’s roughly 2,000 searches a day from a department nearly a thousand miles away, while Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police ranked just 30th on the same network.
Flock cameras read license plates and feed them into a nationwide database that law enforcement agencies across the country can query. UNC Charlotte says the technology has helped solve a larceny case involving over $100,000 in stolen equipment, and that it doesn’t share access with non-law enforcement. Even so, Appalachian State and UNC Chapel Hill have already disabled national sharing on their own networks, and a Wilmington attorney opposed to the cameras calls the system a mass surveillance network built across North Carolina. Houston Police now say they’re reviewing their usage.
The story raises a question that reaches well beyond college campuses, including right here on the Suncoast, where license plate readers are part of daily life on our roads and at beach checkpoints. How far should that data travel, and should the public know when it does?
Would you want your local police sharing license plate data with departments in other states? Tell us what you think.
