Pasco Sheriff swaps license plate camera vendors along SR-54 corridor

Drivers along State Road 54 through Wesley Chapel will see new hardware on the poles above them, but not more of it.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office is replacing its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with Axon technology across the county, including along the State Road 54 corridor, Undersheriff Chase Daniels confirmed in a Tampa Bay 28 report published Monday, Aug. 10. The swap will not add cameras to the roughly 60 the Sheriff's Office already operates countywide.

The move saves about $50,000, Daniels said, because Axon already supplies the agency's body-worn cameras, Tasers and evidence management system.

"On top of being easier to integrate with our existing systems, they are also about $50,000 cheaper than the Flock cameras that we currently have," Daniels told Tampa Bay 28.

Public records show the Sheriff's Office has submitted permitting plans for the new cameras along State Road 54 from New Port Richey to Wesley Chapel. No installation timeline has been announced.

How the license plate cameras work

The ALPR cameras photograph vehicles and license plates, letting deputies search for cars tied to criminal investigations and missing persons cases. Sheriff's Office policy caps data retention at 30 days and restricts searches to specific case types, including missing people and felonies.

When private-property cameras in store parking lots and subdivisions are counted, Pasco County has roughly 170 plate readers total.

Resident's data-sharing concerns persist despite vendor change

Jeff Cannon, a Pasco County resident who has spent months researching ALPR contracts, said the vendor change doesn't resolve his core concern: contract language he says raises questions about Flock's ability to use collected data beyond the local agreement.

Cannon said people are starting to realize the cameras store information that can be used beyond the sheriff's office agreement, according to the Tampa Bay 28 report.

Daniels acknowledged the data-sharing language in the Flock contract but said Pasco's own policies govern how the information is used. Any outside agency accessing the data must follow Pasco's 30-day retention standard, he said.

Axon lacks Flock's national data-sharing network

The switch may address one piece of that concern. Unlike Flock, Axon does not operate a national lookup network linking cameras across jurisdictions, according to 404 Media. Axon agencies can still enter bilateral data-sharing agreements, but there is no centralized database tying hundreds of departments together the way Flock's system does.

The ACLU has noted that more than 55 localities ended Flock contracts in the past year and cautioned that Axon and Motorola Solutions "are pursuing similar business models."

No public hearing planned for the switch

No public hearing or comment period has been announced for the camera swap, which appears to be an administrative procurement decision rather than a commission vote. The full contract value has not been disclosed publicly.