Flock billed Harris County Precinct 4 nearly $175,000 last year. Its own constable now wants rules for the whole county.

The number nobody would give for Precinct 4’s Flock cameras is now public: nearly $175,000 billed in 2025. The precinct’s own constable is asking for rules the whole county would have to follow.

Why it matters

Covering a camera does not end a contract, and until Friday nobody had published what a single precinct pays. One precinct’s bill is about a fifth of the countywide figure, and three precincts are still running.

By the numbers

$175,000, nearly, billed to Precinct 4 in 2025 for its camera network and other fees, per documents obtained by ABC13’s 13 Investigates.
$868,975, the countywide extension approved May 28, running to June 5, 2027, 4-0 with County Judge Lina Hidalgo abstaining. The Houston Chronicle puts it at roughly $860,000.
About 20 percent, Precinct 4’s 2025 billing as a share of that countywide figure. This desk’s arithmetic, across two different periods.
61 devices covered in Precinct 4 on Thursday: 48 security cameras and 13 license plate readers, across 9 parks and facilities.
January 15, 2027, when the Texas legislative session opens that Constable Mark Herman has asked state officials to put Flock regulation on.
August 27, 2026, when Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to stop funding Flock cameras.
3,200 Flock cameras installed by Texas agencies since 2023, almost 1,200 more going in at the Department of Public Safety, on at least $30 million in state money, per the Texas Tribune.

What the coverage buried

On Thursday this desk wrote that nobody had said what Precinct 4 pays each year, and credited KPRC 2 for asking. ABC13 answered it Friday with billing records, and ran the figure below the shutdown narrative. It is the only per-precinct price anyone has published.

FOX 26 alone reported that Precinct 4’s constable is working with the commissioners and law enforcement partners on a policy every agency in the county would follow, and has asked the state to legislate. ABC13 and the Chronicle carried the shutdown without it, and it is the only part of this that outlives November.

Third, the Chronicle says Abbott’s freeze took more than 200 cameras in the Houston region offline. Click2Houston reported on September 15 that the Houston Police Department’s 200 grant-funded cameras were operational and the department had not decided how to redirect the money. One account is out of date and neither says which.

The other side

Steve Radack, Briones’s opponent in November, says shutting the cameras down “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at all.” He has a point about sequence. The policy Herman describes is the better first move, and it is being built after the equipment went under covers.

The strongest fact for the program is Briones’s own. She said in May that Flock cameras helped arrest the people who shot two members of her team near a park. Her office also says residents raised serious questions about who can reach the data. Both are true at once, and the constable’s office says it is too soon to know whether losing access hurts clearance, which is the honest answer.

Notice where the objections come from. A Republican governor froze the state money, a Republican constable wants a statute, a Democratic commissioner pulled the plug. The misuse driving it is a Fort Bend sheriff’s lieutenant who admitted nearly 190 improper searches, a Pasadena sergeant who resigned after using the system to stalk a female officer, three Harris County deputies who lost access, and a Lufkin officer facing 100 counts. None of that is a party story.

What to watch

October 15, 9 a.m., 1001 Preston. ABC13 and the Chronicle report the court takes up Flock privacy. This desk read the agenda through item 305 and did not locate a Flock item; the court can add one.
Whether the countywide policy exists in writing before the contract expires June 5, 2027.
Whether the county publishes billing precinct by precinct, now that one precinct’s number is out.
Whether Precincts 1, 2 and 3 follow Precinct 4.

Bottom line

Yesterday’s open question has an answer, and it came from a reporter with billing records rather than from the county. Nearly $175,000 for one precinct in one year is the first real price on this program, and three precincts are still unpublished. The constable asking for enforceable rules is doing more than the covers over the cameras.

Sources

Editorial