[DATE]
TO: County Chairmen, Republican Party of Texas
FROM: [NAME], Chairman, Republican Party of [COUNTY]
County
RE: Resolution opposing warrantless mass vehicle
surveillance — an invitation to adopt
Chairman:
On [DATE], our county party adopted the enclosed Resolution by a vote of [___] to [___]. Section 19 directs me to send it to you with an invitation to adopt it in substantially similar form. I am writing to ask you to do that.
The short version
There are Flock Safety cameras in your county. There probably are in your county seat, and there may be some in the state right-of-way on the highways running through it. They photograph and record every vehicle that passes — the make, the model, the color, the plate, the time, the location — and upload it to a national database that law enforcement can search in seconds without a warrant.
Here is the part worth your attention: in most Texas counties, nobody can produce the vote that authorized it.
The Texas Legislature has never passed a law creating or governing a statewide vehicle surveillance network. In many counties the sheriff signed a subscription contract. In some, the commissioners court approved something narrow — a right-of-way agreement — years after the cameras were already running. In a number of places there was no competitive bid, no fiscal note, and no agenda item a resident reading it would have understood.
We did not find this out by guessing. We found it by asking, in writing, and comparing the answers.
Why this resolution and not a different one
It does not say “ban the cameras.” That vote is hard, and it invites a sheriff to stand up and describe a recovered child.
It says something a Republican cannot comfortably vote against: the Legislature has to authorize it, a judge has to approve the search, the data gets deleted, and your own commissioners court has to take a public vote before signing your county up. Anything that does not meet those conditions comes down.
Same outcome. Very different vote.
What I am asking
- Adopt it. It passes at a County Executive Committee meeting. Document 00 in the enclosed packet walks through how, including the three objections you will get and how to answer them.
- Send it to your SREC members with the enclosed transmittal, and ask them by name to sponsor it at the next quarterly meeting.
- Send the accountability letter to the Republican legislators representing your county, and publish what comes back.
- Find out what is happening in your own county. The enclosed starter records request (Document 06) is one page and costs nothing to send. Most chairmen who send it are surprised by what comes back.
One honest caveat
A party resolution removes no cameras. These are subscription contracts with renewal dates, and only a commissioners court or a city council can decline to renew.
So do both. Adopt the resolution — and find out when your county’s contract comes up. That date already exists on a calendar somewhere. When it comes up, fill the room.
A Legislature that hears from two hundred and fifty-four counties will hear it plainly. It will not hear from one.
I am glad to talk through any of this. Call me.
Respectfully,
[NAME], County Chairman
Republican Party of [COUNTY] County, Texas
[Phone] · [Email]
Enclosed: Resolution · Adoption instructions · SREC transmittal · Floor talking points · Legislator accountability letter · Starter records request