Leon County Cut Flock Grants, Then Ordered Cameras Down

Leon County ordered Flock cameras off county land on Sept. 15, 2026, and gave vendors 30 days to pull them.

The same board had already rejected $440,000 on July 14, 2026, that would have expanded the network into four neighboring counties, while Leon’s own readers kept running.

Leon Left Its Own Flock Readers Running

On July 14 the Leon County Commission spent about two hours on public comment, then stripped Flock Safety money out of a larger homeland security grant and left the rest of the package intact. The cameras already on Leon roads were not part of that motion.

Residents packed the chambers over government tracking, data shared beyond local cases, and the chance that outside agencies, including federal immigration officers, could search the feed. Devin Nobles, a computer engineer, told commissioners that logging thousands of people on the way to work, school, or a store was an overreach. Azariah Richardson asked what happens if a system sold as protection has holes that the wrong people can find.

I support our law enforcement. However, I hate those damn cameras, and I think they are an invasion of privacy. I don’t like seeing them driving in neighborhoods.

Christian Caban, Leon County Commission chairman, July 14, 2026 meeting

Commissioners asked for retention rules, access lists, and misuse limits before they would help grow the network. They also told staff to come back in September on whether the county could bar or remove readers on its own land. That second item was the tell: the July night was a grant fight, not a takedown.

Flock Safety, which says it works with more than 6,000 communities, does not partner with ICE and keeps federal sharing off unless a local customer turns it on. Company posts also describe a 30-day default hold on plate data and a 2026 toggle that lets an agency shut off all federal sharing. Speakers in Tallahassee said they did not trust a vendor setting those switches.

The $440,000 Was Meant for Four Other Counties

Commissioner Nick Maddox told the room the dollars were pass-through money because Leon County is a regional law-enforcement hub, and that none of that grant would buy Flock gear inside Leon. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office would have administered funds for Wakulla, Jefferson, Liberty, and Taylor.

Those four boards were not at the dais. Rural offices with thin night shifts had treated plate readers as extra eyes on long roads. Wakulla Capt. Brett Surace had earlier called the gear a force multiplier across a 736-mile county and said it was for stolen cars, missing-person alerts, and wanted plates, not traffic tickets.

THE FOUR COUNTIES ON THE GRANT

Miller later wrote that public trust mattered more than any one tool, and that his office would not defend a system just because it had agreed to test it. Mac McNeil, no relation to Leon’s sheriff, said the gear had helped a rural office and still did not outweigh private rights. Arnold said government should lean toward those rights when the line is fuzzy.

By late summer the four-county grant was a footnote. Several of those offices already had readers, including Wakulla’s 25, so Leon’s “no” stopped new money more than it cleared poles. Taylor commissioners, facing a standing-room crowd on Aug. 4, 2026, said they had no plan to spend local tax dollars on Flock at all.

FDOT’s Memo Set a Sept. 30 Highway Deadline

The floor under the local debate dropped in late August, when the state used a highway-permit rule that had always allowed a fast off switch. On Aug. 27, Gov. Ron DeSantis called license-plate reader rollouts “out of control.” Four days later the Florida Department of Transportation issued Engineering and Operations Memorandum 26-01.

Will Watts, FDOT’s chief operating officer and assistant secretary of transportation, wrote that deployments had jumped, and that reports of misuse, data-privacy problems, and surveillance schemes justified immediate action. The memo revoked existing approvals for automated readers in state-highway rights of way, stopped new permits, and told agencies to pull the gear in 30 days or FDOT would.

Florida law already said a reader placed on the State Highway System at a police agency’s request must be removed within 30 days once FDOT gives notice. The department’s own page on permits for readers on state highways repeats that clock and puts install and removal costs on the requesting agency. The order covers every brand on state right of way, not only Flock. It does not, by itself, reach county roads, city streets, or private lots.

THE ROAD FROM THE GRANT FIGHT TO THE HIGHWAY ORDER

1. July 14, 2026: Leon strips the $440,000 Flock slice from the regional grant and starts an 18-month data-center pause, with cameras on Leon roads left in place.
2. August 27, 2026: DeSantis says plate-reader use is out of control.
3. August 31, 2026: FDOT memo 26-01 voids highway permits and starts a 30-day removal clock.
4. September 1, 2026: Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil suspends Flock use and asks accreditation bodies for audit rules and public reports.
5. September 9, 2026: The Tallahassee City Commission, which had voted 3-2 on Aug. 26 to keep Flock and Vigilant, votes unanimously to suspend the city program.
6. September 15, 2026: County commissioners bar automated readers on county property and rights of way and give Flock and Vigilant 30 days to take them down.
7. September 30, 2026: FDOT’s highway deadline lands; agencies that missed it faced department crews pulling leftover units.
8. October 13, 2026: The commission’s second and final public hearing on the data-center pause is set for 6 p.m.

Secure Justice, an Oakland advocacy group that logs cancellations, counted 214 cities and counties that have dropped Flock since 2021, 93 of them in August 2026 alone. Flock spokesperson Courtney Terlecki said new city partnerships in 2026 still outpaced nonrenewals by about 10 to 1. Those two figures describe different ledgers, new deals versus exits, and both can be true in the same year.

A Unanimous Ban on County Rights of Way

Walt McNeil announced the sheriff’s pause on Sept. 1, the Monday after the FDOT memo, and said public safety and public trust have to travel together. County Attorney comments later put the sheriff’s cameras offline about two weeks before the Sept. 15 board meeting. Commissioners still had county right-of-way permits to deal with, plus a school-zone speed program that had been in the works for more than a year.

They voted unanimously to stop automated license plate readers on county property and rights of way and to start removal. Caban asked for a motion that would put every ALPR on notice: 30 days to come down, or the county would take them down. Commissioner Bill Proctor made the motion. Flock and Vigilant both sit under that order. Caban said he believed Leon had just taken one of the most aggressive local stances against Flock in Florida, and that he expected a 30-day notice letter to go out the next day.

The same night the board voted 7-0 to kill the school-zone speed-camera program for the eight district schools outside Tallahassee city limits. Caban said those AI speed cameras treat drivers as guilty until they prove they are not. Commissioner Brian Welch said he could not get constituents to understand how the tickets worked. Inside the city, Tallahassee police kept sending school-zone citations.

Commissioner David O’Keefe put the distrust on the vendors rather than on deputies.

We have to defend the public trust, and who I don’t trust here in this process is the private data vendors and the mass collection of data.

David O’Keefe, Leon County commissioner, September 15, 2026 meeting

The ACLU of Florida called the county-land vote a win and said the cameras had 30 days to come down.

WIN: The Leon County Commission voted unanimously to remove Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers from county property. These creepy cameras must be removed in the next 30 days.

— ACLU of Florida (@ACLUFL) September 16, 2026

July’s packed room had been treated, online and in the chamber, as if the poles were already coming down. They were not. The grant cut stopped money for someone else’s roads. The Sept. 15 order is the first county move that aims at hardware on Leon’s own right of way, and it arrived after the governor and FDOT had already yanked the state-road floor out.

County Permits May Not Force the Cameras Down

The 30-day county window runs into mid-October. Caban said if the units are still up after the letter’s deadline, the county will take them down itself. The county attorney warned that the board issued placement permits, has no contract with the vendors, and may have no legal right to yank the cameras if Flock or Vigilant refuse.

That gap matters because the July speakers were not only arguing about Leon deputies. They were arguing about a private network that can keep collecting even after a sheriff “suspends use.” Commissioners said vendors that own the poles can still record after a local agency logs off. FDOT’s Sept. 30 deadline also left a map of county roads, city streets, and private property where a reader can sit without a state permit.

WHAT WE KNOW

• County-land order: On Sept. 15 the commission unanimously barred automated readers, including Flock, on county property and rights of way and gave vendors 30 days.
• Sheriff already offline: Walt McNeil suspended LCSO Flock use on Sept. 1 and asked state and national accreditation groups to require audits and public reports.
• State roads only: FDOT’s memo voided highway permits and set a Sept. 30 removal deadline; it did not ban readers on local or private land.
• City flip: Tallahassee’s commission voted 3-2 on Aug. 26 to keep Flock and Vigilant, then voted unanimously on Sept. 9 to suspend after the state order.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Vendor compliance: Whether Flock and Vigilant pull every county-road unit by mid-October, or test the attorney’s warning that the county cannot seize the gear.
• Leftover feeds: Whether any private-property or remaining city readers still feed searches that Leon residents drive through every day.
• Data already stored: What happens to plate images collected before the sheriff’s pause and the county order, beyond Flock’s stated 30-day default hold.

Flock’s own timeline lists concluded federal pilots, including Homeland Security Investigations from March 3 to May 1, 2025, and Customs and Border Protection from May 9 to Aug. 24, 2025. The company says it stopped new federal pilots in August 2025, has no ICE contract, and cannot override a local agency that refuses to share. The design still leaves the live question the July crowd raised: a sheriff, a city, or another Florida agency can open a door Leon County just tried to close.

Water, Power and the October Hearing

The other July 14 technology vote is still open. Commissioners unanimously started an 18-month pause on large-load customer sites, including large data centers, after Chair Caban had first asked for a one-year hold and Proctor pushed the extra months so the study would run through 2027. The pause is not a permanent ban, and it applies only to unincorporated Leon County, not to the city of Tallahassee.

County staff told the board there were no approved or pending applications for large data centers in the unincorporated area, and that neither the land-development code nor the 2050 Comprehensive Plan has rules for them. Staff was directed to spend about 12 months drafting regulations and to come back in 2027. A separate state-required study is due by July 1, 2027.

THE PAUSE WOULD BUY TIME TO ASK

• Water: Commissioners, including Bill Proctor, tied the hold to Leon sitting on the Florida aquifer and to unanswered demand figures.
• Power and bills: Carolyn Cummings asked whether a large-load site would raise residents’ electric rates, and said she has heard both revenue claims and cost warnings from other towns.
• Place and noise: Maddox said he is not ready to approve a center next to neighborhoods without a siting plan he can defend.
• Code gap: Staff said the pause exists because the county has no data-center chapter to apply if an application lands tomorrow.

Maddox said he does not know enough to swear the county should never host a center, only that he would not approve one now. Welch backed the pause and still called data centers the political class’s “boogeyman,” saying he would reopen the question for a proposal with verified local benefit. The first of two required public hearings was Sept. 15. The second is Oct. 13, 2026, at 6 p.m.

If that ordinance passes, Leon will have frozen a class of buildings it has not yet been asked to permit, while it tries to finish a camera fight whose July chapter left the poles up. Vendors still have a mid-October clock on county land, and the highway purge that actually cleared state roads came from Tallahassee’s transportation department, not from the July grant vote.