Putnam County Sheriff H.D. “Gator” DeLoach has ordered all 18 automated license plate reader cameras in his Florida county disconnected immediately and removed within 30 days, following weeks of concerns from residents about privacy and data sharing.
“Over the past several weeks, legitimate questions have continued to emerge regarding privacy, data sharing, governmental oversight, and the future regulation of this technology,” DeLoach said in a statement posted to the sheriff’s office Facebook page. “I believe the responsible course is to discontinue our program and cancel our contract at this time.”
DeLoach said the decision was “not a decision I made lightly.” He called the cameras a “valuable law-enforcement tool” that has helped locate dangerous offenders, recover stolen vehicles, find kidnapping victims and solve serious crimes. But he said the technology is outpacing the laws meant to govern it.
“Until that framework catches up and provides clearer, more consistent safeguards for both public safety and individual privacy, I believe discontinuing the program is the most responsible course for our agency and the community we serve,” DeLoach said.
The sheriff’s office said extensive protocols had governed use of the cameras locally, including a case number tied to each search and quarterly audits of who accessed the data. But it noted that camera use by other agencies and private residents nationwide has led to misuse.
DeLoach said the decision reflects no doubt about his own deputies’ conduct. “I remain confident that our deputies used this technology lawfully, responsibly, and in accordance with some of the strongest safeguards we could put in place. This decision is not an indictment of their work, nor does it mean the technology has no legitimate law-enforcement value,” he said. “It simply means that when the rules, public expectations, and regulatory environment surrounding a technology are changing this rapidly, we should be willing to reevaluate whether continuing to use it is in the best interest of our community.”
“Public safety matters. So does individual liberty. Neither should be treated casually,” he said.
A different approach next door
The move puts Putnam County at odds with neighboring St. Johns County, where Sheriff Robert Hardwick has kept the county’s Flock surveillance cameras in place and dismissed criticism of them. Hardwick compared calls to remove the cameras, sometimes called “deFlocking,” to efforts to defund police departments.
“If you look at the cities that are removing Flock, those are the same exact cities, in the same exact states that defund the police department, turn our backs on us when one incident occurs,” Hardwick told The 904 Now. “A little bit of it is ignorance and misinformation of what it truly is.”
Hardwick said the camera data his office collects belongs to his agency. “It’s mine. I own it. I choose to do what I want to do with the information… We only share it with surrounding counties,” he said, though he acknowledged the data is also shared with the FBI, which he said operates under “very tight parameters.”
Statewide scrutiny
License plate reader cameras, including those made by the company Flock, have spread rapidly across Florida and the country. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said residents are right to be “concerned” about the technology, calling its expansion “out of control.”
“I think that’s important that we do that, and no one’s been stronger on law enforcement than me. But I don’t want to have this become a surveillance state. I don’t want there to be a situation — and that’s why we wanted an AI bill of rights,” DeSantis told reporters, pointing to past cases such as a police officer using the cameras to track an ex-girlfriend.
Abuse of the systems has been documented elsewhere. Four former Savannah Police Department employees, including three officers, were arrested in Georgia after a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe into misuse of that department’s Flock camera system. In South Carolina, a police department fired an officer accused of using the Flock system to run a former romantic partner’s license plate 166 times.
