Lubbock's Flock camera petition: what it would do, what police say, and the Oct. 30 deadline

A resident petition asking Lubbock to ban Flock license plate cameras needs 2,410 signatures from registered city voters by Oct. 30 to reach the City Council.

The petition is organized by Save Lubbock, the same resident group behind this summer's data center petition. Its proposed ordinance would "prohibit the acquisition, installation, operation, and use of Flock Safety cameras and all Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) and optical vehicle-tracking systems in the City of Lubbock," according to the group's website. The group lists four goals: end the city's contracts, remove the cameras, purge stored data and make the ban permanent. The full legal wording is attached to the printed petition, which the city charter requires.

Signatures must be signed in person on paper. The organizers say online signatures do not count, and they list their signing locations at savelubbock.com. Voters who want to sign also need to be registered in the city limits.

What happens next is set by the Lubbock City Charter. Once the petition is filed, the City Secretary verifies the signatures and brings it to the council at its next regular meeting. After a public hearing, the council has 30 days to adopt or reject the ordinance. If the council rejects or changes it, the petition's organizers can require that it go to a public vote.

What the police department's own data shows. Lubbock Police publish a Flock transparency page. As of Sept. 25 it listed 103 cameras in total, 17 of them license plate readers, along with 1,358 searches in the previous 30 days and a 30-day data retention period. The page lists immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment and personal use as prohibited uses, and says the data is never sold.

The city is paying $86,000 for a two-year Flock subscription, KCBD reported in June. At a Sept. 8 council work session, Police Chief Seth Herman said photos will soon be kept for seven days instead of 30, KCBD reported, and that investigators have searched the system more than 37,000 times this year, many of them repeat searches for the same case.

"We have yet to encounter an event where an officer used this system nefariously or outside of the boundaries of our policies and procedures or state law," Herman said, according to KCBD. He said any misuse would lead to both an internal and a criminal investigation.

Critics see it differently. "This isn't police work. This is a 24-hour surveillance system, a dragnet that has been placed over the city of Lubbock," Lubbock defense attorney Michael King told KCBD in June.

The debate is statewide now. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras in late August, the Texas Tribune reported, and the Texas Department of Transportation has stopped issuing new permits for license plate readers on state roads. Existing cameras stay in use. In Amarillo, a former police officer was arrested Sept. 1, accused of running a romantic rival's license plate through Flock 76 times, the Amarillo Globe-News reported.

The petition is not on a council agenda yet. It cannot be until the signatures are filed and verified after the Oct. 30 deadline. Council meetings are open to the public, and neighbors on either side can speak during public comment.