Highland Village Police Briefed Council on Its Flock Camera Program — Here's What the Policy Covers

If you drive through Highland Village — on your way to the lake, cutting through to Flower Mound, or just running errands on FM 407 — a camera may already be photographing your license plate. That's not new. What is new is that the Highland Village City Council recently received a full public briefing on how the department uses that system and what safeguards apply.

Police Chief Doug Reim presented on the department's use of Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology. The presentation walked through the system's mechanics, the data it captures, the rules governing searches and sharing, and the privacy protections built into department policy. It also covered how the technology has helped officers in investigations, arrests, and locating missing or at-risk individuals — while making clear that ALPR alerts are investigative leads that must be independently verified before any enforcement action is taken.

So what does the system actually do? The cameras use artificial intelligence to scan every passing vehicle, uploading the plate number, model, color, and bumper stickers to a searchable database. Unlike the plate readers mounted on police cruisers, Flock cameras also give distant law enforcement agencies access to that data. That last part is where questions tend to pile up.

Texas has no statewide statute governing ALPR data retention or sharing. Each city sets its own rules. That's exactly why Chief Reim's public presentation matters — what the department's written policy says about who can run a search, how long images are stored, and whether Highland Village opts into Flock's broader inter-agency network are the details that determine how narrow or how wide this system's reach actually is.

The national picture is worth knowing. Austin's City Council piloted a Flock program, then ended the contract in June 2025 after residents raised concerns about ICE data-sharing and wrongful-arrest risks. In February 2026, an investigation found the Austin Police Department was still accessing Flock data through at least two neighboring agencies — Round Rock and Sunset Valley — by requesting searches of their cameras. Misuse of surveillance cameras has also surfaced in North Carolina and Georgia.

Highland Village is not Austin. The structural questions, though, are the same wherever Flock operates. Flock requires users to enter a reason for each search. A department's internal policy — and how consistently it's enforced — is what closes the gap between that requirement and meaningful accountability.

The council briefing was public. The meeting is available on demand on the city's YouTube channel.

What to do with this. Watch or read the briefing to get the specifics Chief Reim laid out. If you still have questions the presentation didn't answer — the exact retention period for stored images, whether Highland Village participates in any inter-agency or national lookup programs, what triggers a valid search — file a Public Information Act request with the police department for its Flock contract, camera locations, retention policy, and search audit logs. Residents who want to speak directly to the council can complete a Speaker's Request Form and present it to the City Secretary before the start of a regular meeting, for Visitor's Comments or any agenda item. Meeting schedules are posted at highlandvillage.org.