“I believe the decision made at the county commission meeting encroaches on my ability to keep our community safe,” Sheriff Robert Hardwick said in a statement following Tuesday’s 3 to 2 vote, which the St. Johns Citizen published on Wednesday morning. The same piece reports that the Sheriff’s Office puts at 89 the number of license plate readers the board’s decision requires be taken down.
Jacksonville Today, reporting the vote on Tuesday afternoon, put the number at some 45 cameras along the county-maintained roads covered by the permits. Both of those figures belong to an outlet, neither of them belongs to the county, and the county publishes no count of cameras standing in its own rights of way.
The one document on the agency’s own plate reader page whose filename names right of way turns out to be a map with nothing counted on it. It is titled SJSO FLOCK LPR Locations and it is dated 10/13/2026. It carries a scale bar, four neighboring county names and no number of cameras in any category.
What the Sheriff’s statement says
The statement runs to two sentences in the Citizen’s account, the first being the one quoted above about the commission encroaching on his ability to keep the community safe. The second says the Sheriff’s Office supports legislation establishing clear standards for the technology.
“LPR technology is effective and we will continue working to bring it back to St. Johns County,” Hardwick said in that account, which is the only published indication of what the agency intends to do next.
The agency’s public page on the program still carries the same nine documents it carried a week ago, in the same order, under the same heading. Nothing on it refers to Tuesday’s vote, to the 89 figure or to a schedule for removal, and the Citizen reports that no timetable for removal was given at the meeting either.
The roll, and what each member said
The Citizen records the motion as made by Commissioner Christian Whitehurst, seconded by Commissioner Sarah Arnold and supported by Commissioner Ann Taylor, with Commissioners Krista Joseph and Clay Murphy opposed. That is the same 3 to 2 that both outlets reported on Tuesday afternoon, with the sequence of who moved and who seconded added to it.
Whitehurst is quoted as saying the question was not whether deputies could be trusted but whether the safeguards were sufficient. He favored revoking the permits, even temporarily, until state lawmakers set clearer guardrails. “We’re talking about how the people choose to be governed,” he said.
Arnold said she would stand with the governor, whose order took the readers off state roads in September. Murphy said he could not support suspending the readers but would back a 30 to 60 day timeline to resolve the data concerns. Joseph called the technology essential and said she was not going to jeopardize one child or person in this county.
The three safeguards, and the one case of misuse
Sheriff’s Office Director Howard Cole spoke for the agency and described three changes to the way the system is run. Data retention goes from one year to 30 days, a search requires supervisory approval, and automatic data sharing with outside agencies ends. He also said that the readers provide leads and do not on their own justify a stop, a search or an arrest.
Cole said an internal review found one case of misuse. The Citizen describes it as a detective who used the system to track a vehicle he was buying because he suspected a scam. Jacksonville Today’s report on Tuesday gave the same account of that review, and the two agree on it.
The agency’s own page says it conducts a quarterly audit of the system to ensure proper usage and accountability. It names no authority requiring that audit, no auditor and no report, and it said exactly the same thing a week ago.
What the county has published
The Clerk of Court’s board meeting index carries 22 meeting rows and 21 of them have a recording against them. The row without one is 10/20/26, which is the meeting at which the permits were revoked. The county’s own news release feed carries nothing on the vote. Its fifteen newest items run from Oct. 7 to Oct. 21, and the three posted the day after the meeting are a library recognition and two month-long designations.
Two speakers are quoted in the Citizen’s account of the public comment. One told the board that constituents had been very clear that they wanted all plate readers removed from county rights of way. Another speaker was a father who said he first learned about the technology while his daughter was missing. He told the board that Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts give people hope that their loved ones will come home.
The Tattler sent four written questions to the Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 15. Two of them asked for a camera count broken out by right of way and for the authority that requires the quarterly audit. The stated deadline was 5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19. None of the four has been answered, and six questions sent to the same office on Sept. 11 remain unanswered as well. Any answer the agency gives will run at the top of this story on the day it arrives.
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