Public rules for public cameras
Automated license-plate cameras (usually from Flock Safety) already sit on roads in your county, and right now no local rule shapes how they are used. While this council does not directly control the sheriff's office, it controls the county's money, property, and roadsides. Here is the case for removing ALPRs, and a ready starting point.
The ask
Take up an ordinance that sets sensible, public rules for automated license-plate cameras in your county.
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 county should run on public rules.
The first step is a small one: direct county 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, and it gives counties broad authority over their own budgets, property, and roads (Section 4-9-25), so long as they don't conflict with state law. While the sheriff is elected by the county's voters, not hired by this council and you can't tell the sheriff how to run the office, what you DO control is the county's own money and property.
There is no state law regulating these cameras for a local ordinance to conflict with. The subject is open, and you have the opportunity to lead here.
Most of these cameras run on county resources: county dollars, county power and communications, county buildings, and the county-controlled rights-of-way where the cameras physically sit. Cut those off, and the network can no longer be operated.
You don't have to control the sheriff to decide how the county's money and land get used. That call is yours.
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 county can be next.
What a county ordinance could include
Oconee's ordinance is a clean template built for exactly your situation: a county legally operating around an independently elected sheriff. Its Protection from Mass Surveillance Ordinance (Article VII, Sections 2-500 through 2-516) does the work through the levers a county actually holds.
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 county funds, subscriptions, power, or communications may support a covered system, and none of it may sit on county property or road rights-of-way. For a county, this is the heart of the ordinance: the money and the roadsides are yours to withhold.
The county can condition its discretionary money to towns, its accommodations-tax funds, and its sponsored events on the same rule, and bar anyone from routing the system through a nonprofit or festival committee to dodge it.
For a system already in place, outside data-sharing and county-funded connections stop within 10 business days of notice, and equipment on county property 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.
Because this ordinance works through the county's own money and property, it never tells the sheriff how to do the job (§ 2-501(e) and (f) make that explicit), which keeps it squarely inside this council's authority. Your staff and county attorney can shape the language, and we're glad to share ours and what's worked in other counties.
Questions your colleagues will ask
Why regulate around the sheriff instead of just telling the sheriff to stop?
In South Carolina the sheriff is elected by the county's voters, not hired by this council, so this council's authority over the cameras runs through the county's own money and property rather than through orders to the sheriff. It can refuse to spend county dollars on the system, keep it out of county buildings and off the county-controlled roadsides where the cameras sit, and cut discretionary funding to any town that keeps running one. That is a spending and property decision, squarely this council's job, and it leaves the sheriff free to run the office. Oconee's ordinance says as much in plain text: applied to an elected officer, it reaches only county funds, county contracts, and county property, and it never dictates the officer's day-to-day operations.
Why can a city go further, and more directly?
A city's police department is part of city government, and the chief answers to the city, so a city council can regulate its own department's cameras head-on: require a documented reason for every search, limit what's kept and shared, mandate audits, or end the program and take the cameras down. A county council gets to the same place through the county's purse and property. Same destination, different road.
If we end a Flock contract, can't they just buy a different brand?
Not if the ordinance is written by capability instead of by brand. Oconee's covers any system that builds a searchable movement history, tracks across locations, runs facial or device recognition, or shares to an outside network, whatever the vendor's name (§ 2-502), and a plain plate check against a lawful hot list is carved out. End one contract and the rule still stands against the next one.
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.