Harris County has spent nearly $1.3 million on Flock Safety license plate readers since 2023, and $77,200 of that was billed to Precinct 3, which covers Spring.

The spending breakdown comes from county auditor invoices obtained by ABC13, which reported Thursday, Sept. 10, that the program's costs nearly doubled its original price tag in the first year alone. County Judge Lina Hidalgo is calling for a special Commissioners Court session to address what she described as unanswered questions about the cameras' locations, data access and oversight.

The original Flock contract, approved June 6, 2023, was a $160,500 pilot program for Precinct 2. Commissioner Adrian Garcia called it "a new crime-fighting tool" at that June 6, 2023, meeting, saying the pilot would place 30 plate readers and a gun detection system across three square miles.

The court discussed the contract for about three minutes before approving it.

But invoices show the county paid Flock $302,650 during that first year. The total included the $160,500 Precinct 2 contract, $62,500 billed to the Harris County Sheriff's Office and the $77,200 charged to Precinct 3, led by Commissioner Tom Ramsey. No public statement from Ramsey's office about the Precinct 3 billing was available as of publication.

On May 28, commissioners voted 4-0 to extend the Flock contract through 2027 at a cost of $868,975. Hidalgo abstained. She said the court agreed to add privacy oversight clauses after the vote, as ABC13 reported. Those amendments have not been made.

"We have not had a conversation about how to implement some sort of oversight on Flock cameras … there's questions that I have that I haven't been able to get answered," Hidalgo told ABC13 on Sept. 10.

Hidalgo said she regrets not scrutinizing the original 2023 approval more closely. In a Sept. 6 Substack post, she wrote that the court approved the May extension with little public discussion and called for a forum where residents, law enforcement and elected leaders could weigh in together, ABC13 reported.

The cameras capture and store license plate data from passing vehicles. Law enforcement officers do not need warrants to access data from cameras owned by homeowners associations and utility districts, Hidalgo said. The Harris County Sheriff's Office manages 20 Flock networks totaling 480 cameras, according to ABC13's earlier reporting. Those networks are owned primarily by municipal utility districts and neighborhood associations.

Three HCSO deputies were suspended from the Flock system in August after questions arose about potentially improper use, ABC13 reported.

The special Commissioners Court session on Flock had not been scheduled as of Monday, Sept. 7, according to KHOU. Hidalgo has said the session should include a public comment period.