Public rules for public cameras
Your city already runs automated license-plate cameras on its streets. This council has the authority to decide how they are used. Here is the case, and a ready starting point.
The ask
Take up an ordinance that sets sensible, public rules for automated license-plate cameras in your city.
These cameras photograph and log the movements of nearly every car that passes them, from the school run to the church parking lot, and right now no local ordinance shapes how that data is collected, kept, or shared. A public system that watches the whole city should run on public rules.
The first step is a small one: direct city staff to draft that ordinance, so the public has a seat at the table as it takes shape.
Why this is your council's call
South Carolina's Home Rule Act of 1975, built on Article VIII of the state constitution, moved decisions like this one down to local governments. Section 5-7-30 gives every municipality broad authority to pass ordinances for the health, safety, and good government of the community, including law enforcement, so long as they don't conflict with state law.
There is no state law regulating these cameras for a local ordinance to conflict with. The subject is open, and the choice sits with you.
Your city's cameras are run by the city's own police department, which answers to this council. You can set policy on them directly, without waiting on the state legislature or the county.
The rulebook for these cameras is your city's to write.
You wouldn't be first, or alone
Just up the road, Oconee County Council voted 4 to 1 on August 18 to advance an ordinance it calls Protection from Mass Surveillance, using this same home-rule authority. A public hearing and final reading are set for September 15.
We have the Constitution to limit government for a reason. The effectiveness of the tool doesn't outweigh the citizens' right to privacy.
Right next door, the City of Greer paused its own Flock camera program for 90 days on August 21 to study it before deciding what comes next. And across the country in 2026, communities of every size have let these contracts lapse, switched the cameras off, or taken them down. Oconee and Greer have already moved, and your city can be next.
What a city ordinance could include
Oconee's ordinance is a clean template. Its Protection from Mass Surveillance Ordinance (Article VII, Sections 2-500 through 2-516) works in a few moves your city could mirror, with one worth adding on top:
It never names Flock. A system is covered when it logs people or vehicles in public and can build a searchable location history, track across places, run facial recognition, or share data to an outside network. A basic hot-list plate check is carved out.
No public funds, subscriptions, power, or communications may support a covered system, and none of it may sit on public property or road rights-of-way. Your city runs its own cameras, so it can apply this directly.
For a system already in place, outside data-sharing and funded connections stop within 10 business days of notice, and the equipment comes down within 30. It turns a pause into a removal on a fixed schedule.
The policy is administered, reported in public once a year, and backed by defined remedies when the rules are broken, so it stays accountable to the people it covers.
Post a plain public record of every search on a regular schedule: who ran it, when, and the reason they gave. Audits are what catch misuse, so putting them in the open keeps the system honest without waiting for someone to file a complaint. Because your city runs its own cameras, it can go a step further than Oconee here.
Because your city's cameras answer to this council, an ordinance here can be simpler than Oconee's, which had to route around an independently elected sheriff. Your staff and city attorney can shape the language, and we're glad to share ours and what's worked in other cities.
See it for yourself
We've gathered the primary sources so you can verify every claim here.
Let's talk.
I'd welcome the chance to sit down with any of you, walk through what other communities have done, and be a resource however I can. Contact: DeflockSC@proton.me
Print this brief and hand a copy to each council member.