The Colony Police Department's 21 license plate reader cameras recorded 702,057 different vehicles over the past 30 days, according to the department's public transparency page, hosted by camera maker Flock Safety and showing data as of Monday, Oct. 5.
Over the same 30 days, the page says, officers ran 148 searches of the system and the cameras produced 5,881 hits against national hotlists. It breaks out 559 alerts by category: protection orders (222), registered sex offenders (161), people flagged as violent (81), stolen plates (56), stolen vehicles (13), warrants (11), gang or terrorism flags (11) and missing persons (4).
The department keeps camera data for 30 days.
Weapons offenses and shots fired led the reasons officers gave for searches, followed by vehicle thefts, hit-and-run crashes, missing or endangered people and wanted fugitives.
Who has access
The page lists more than 450 outside organizations that can see the department's camera data. Most are Texas police departments and sheriff's offices, among them Little Elm, Frisco, Lewisville, Denton and Dallas, plus the Texas Department of Public Safety. The FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and agencies in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Mississippi also appear.
According to the posted policy, the data is for law enforcement only and is never sold, each search is logged and users are audited monthly. Immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment and personal use are listed as prohibited, and officers must confirm a hotlist hit before acting on it. The page says the cameras capture vehicles and plates, not faces, audio or the people inside.
Records harder to get elsewhere
The numbers are public at a time when similar information is getting harder to pry loose in other cities. The Texas Tribune reported Monday that North Richland Hills billed a privacy group $2.3 million for Flock-related records, while other agencies handed over comparable files at no cost.
