During a Tuesday night town hall, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar tried to quell public fears about his department’s use of the controversial Flock surveillance camera system.
Salazar told the crowd of Northsiders that deputies in the department’s Texas Anti-Gang (TAG) use Flock cameras to track down people responsible for gang-related activity. He added that the system can also be used to track down those responsible for burglaries and assaults.
“The thing about Flock cameras is they give us limited information,” Salazar said. “What they’ll do is they won’t necessarily give me a registration on a car that goes by. But if I run the license plate, it’ll give me a snapshot that will say, ‘That license plate that you’re looking for was right here about two hours ago.’ But, it won’t tell me who that car is registered to.”
The town hall, organized by District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears, comes amid a string of burglaries in the Stone Oak area and the gated Estates at Champions neighborhood. The burglaries have resulted in more than $5 million in stolen cash, jewelry and watches, TV station FoxSA reports.
Despite Salazar’s effort to downplay the Flock system’s surveillance capabilities, some online critics said they’re worried about the cameras’ effect on the public’s right to privacy.
“Get Flock cameras out of Bexar County, we don’t want them here,” Instagram user @mike.87tx commented on a clip of Salazar’s remarks. “It’s a violation of the 4th Amendment.”
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office began its contract with Flock Safety, the private security company that manufactures the cameras, in May 2025. Since then, more than 500 Flock cameras have popped up within the county, according to the Flock watchdog dashboard, Deflock.
“What it will also do is, for example, if I am looking for a white Mustang with a red racing stripe, I can put that in, and Flock will go ‘here’s a list of 10 cars that look just like that, and this one was here at this time.’ So, it’s got some limitations, but it’s a very powerful tool,” Salazar said during the town hall.
That power has civil rights groups concerned.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have criticized the technology for creating a passive, mass-surveillance grid that tracks non-criminals without authorities seeking warrants.
“Just think about how much someone could learn about your life if cameras tracked where you drove,” the ACLU wrote in a recent statement on the camera systems. “They could find out which doctors you visit , what house of faith you worship at, who you visit or drive around with — even which political meetings and protests you attend.”
Even so, Salazar did not explicitly address these concerns during the town hall, where he answered only pre-approved questions from the audience.
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