Officials in St. Lucie County, Florida, discovered that 14 Flock cameras were not permitted by the county. The revelation came after the Florida Department of Transportation mandated that all such cameras be taken down.
Page A4From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 October 2026
County cannot identify the owners of eleven license plate readers; the three it can identify are the sheriff's
As it ran on the front
Fourteen cameras came down in St. Lucie County, and you will want to know whose they were. So would the sheriff's office. Three of the fourteen it identified as its own. Eleven it did not. The provenance of those eleven the office could not conclude at all, and the Florida Department of Transportation has mandated that all such cameras come down regardless. Unpermitted by the county, do note — a defect in the filing, not in the lens.
You are thinking that a camera is a thing one buys. Read the bill Massie unveiled on 3 September, which would block federal money to purchase, install, maintain, operate or upgrade these readers. Five verbs. Five, and four of them fall due after the purchase. The hardware is the cheap part ... and the cheap part is the line a county votes on.…
…(cont) In Texas, on 18 September, the transportation department stopped issuing permits for new readers on state highways at the governor's direction. Around nine hundred Flock cameras stay where they are. The freeze reaches the permits.
Asked aboard Air Force One on 14 September whether he would back them, the president said: "I like them." The purchase is one verb. Four come after.
Every night, a borrowed horse eats. The man who lends the horse sleeps well.
“Fourteen plate readers watching a county in Florida, and the county's own sheriff could only claim three of them — the other eleven, the sheriff's office could not identify at all. Here's the con: buying the camera is one line in a budget, but maintaining it, operating it, upgrading it — that's the bill that keeps coming, and that's your money, every year, forever. Texas froze the new permits and left nine hundred cameras standing, the president says he likes them, and somebody you cannot name is reading your plate on a road you pay for.”
“This is the system working — the state said take them down, they're coming down, I don't know what the complaint is. The eleven are a permitting question, a paperwork question, I never said the county approved them, did I say that? That doesn't sound like me. Law enforcement says these cameras help, Texas kept nine hundred of them up, the president has been clear he likes them, so the debate is pretty much settled.”
The receipts
· Massie unveils Flock-Off Act aimed at restricting surveillance cameras from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Greg Abbott freezes new Flock cameras on Texas roads but allows existing ones to remain from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· Trump weighs in on Flock debate: 'I like them' from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.