The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office has published a license plate reader page on its own website. It carries nine documents about the Flock Safety system the office runs, including the contract, the policy and a camera map dated Oct. 13. The newest document on the page carries the date Oct. 13, and the Board of County Commissioners takes the same cameras up on Tuesday. The first item on its regular agenda is headed “Discussion on License Plate Readers in County Rights of Way.”
The agenda was posted by the Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller, the office that publishes the board’s records. It sets the meeting for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20 in the County Auditorium at 500 San Sebastian View. County Attorney Rich Komando is listed as the presenter on the item, which states its own origin in one sentence. It reads: “At its October 6, 2026 meeting, the Board gave direction to bring back an agenda item for the Board to discuss automated license plate readers.”
The overview on the agency page says the office uses the technology for retroactive searches to solve crimes after they happen. It also says the office uses real time hotlist alerts on vehicles linked to criminal activity, missing or endangered people, Amber and Silver alerts and wanted individuals. The same paragraph says the office “has guardrails in place, provides the related policies, and conducts a quarterly audit to ensure proper usage and accountability.”
That sentence is the first published account of the audit this newsroom has obtained from the agency’s own website. The Tattler reported on Oct. 6 that the approved minutes of the Sept. 3 budget hearing list a required audit among the subjects the sheriff discussed with the board. The phrase appeared in no other document this newsroom had retrieved at that point. The page now says the office conducts an audit every quarter, which is further than any county record has gone. It does not say what requires the audit, who performs it, what it examines, or whether a finished one is public.
The map bears most directly on the question Tuesday’s item asks, and it is the document in the set that answers least. It is a single page headed “SJSO FLOCK LPR Locations,” carrying the date 10/13/2026 and a scale bar in miles. It sits on the agency server under the file name FLOCK-LPR-by-RoW-10-13-26.pdf, which is the same phrase the agenda uses. Every camera on it is drawn as the same green map pin, and nothing on the page sorts one pin from another. There is no legend, no table and no number on it except the scale. Nothing distinguishes a camera in a county right of way from one in a state right of way, a city street or private ground.
The line between a county right of way and a state one was drawn by the state this summer, and not by the county. Engineering and Operations Memorandum No. 26-01 was issued on Aug. 31 by Will Watts, the chief operating officer of the Florida Department of Transportation. Addressed to local agency permitholders, it revoked every departmental approval for a plate reader standing in a state right of way. It required the permittee to remove those devices within 30 days, and it says the department will remove whatever is left. It closes by saying the department will “cease the issuance of all future requests for LPR systems within its jurisdictional authority.” The memorandum rests on section 316.0777, Florida Statutes, which reaches the state highway system and reaches nothing the county owns.
The contract file runs to 124 pages, and all but six of them are page images with no text behind them. The order forms and amendments name Flock Group, Inc. and a customer recorded throughout as “FL - St. Johns County SO.” One customer signature block carries the date Jun 6, 2024, and three later blocks carry dates in September of this year. An amendment supersedes an agreement the document dates 1/16/2026, and Shari Shuman executed it on Sept. 10 over the title CFO. Flock Chief Legal Officer Dan Haley signed for the company the following day, under a block dated 9/11/2026. The amendment strikes extended data retention from two line items, at quantities the table prints as -5 and -3. One dollar figure appears at the foot of those tables, and it reads “Annual Recurring Reduction: -$2,400.00.”
The brief published under Sheriff Robert A. Hardwick’s name sets out what the office says has changed in its own rules. It says the office has shortened its retention periods “to ensure information unrelated to criminal investigations is not stored unnecessarily.” It sets four conditions on sharing the data with another agency, under a heading that reads no data sharing unless. The other agency must make contact directly, must tie the request to an active criminal case or missing person investigation, and must give a verifiable case number. It must also follow policies consistent with the ones this office keeps, which the brief does not describe any further. The document states a “strict prohibition on broad, speculative, or unconstitutional surveillance” and requires supervisory review of every investigative query.
The same brief takes up a federal case by name and says where the office stands on it. The brief says that “U.S. v. Kyle is fact specific and does not currently apply to St. Johns County or Florida,” and it leaves the matter there. It adds that the office has put safeguards in place addressing the concerns raised in that case regardless of its reach. Under a heading on community concerns the brief names the group Deflock and says the sheriff has met with it several times. It says he made policy adjustments where the office judged the concerns valid, and it does not say which adjustments those were.
One of the nine documents was not written by the agency at all, and it is the only sworn statement among them. Dan Haley executed a declaration on Sept. 16 under penalty of perjury and under 28 U.S.C. 1746, as Flock’s chief legal officer. It certifies that “Flock does not and has not sold Customer Data” and that the company’s own standard terms give it no right to do so. The agency’s policy, numbered 41.35 and titled License Plate Reader, is the one item that does not sit on the agency server. It is served instead through an outside document portal, which draws the body of the policy after the page loads rather than sending it with the page, and the portal is a commercial service that the agency does not host.
The Tattler put six questions to the Sheriff’s Office on Sept. 11 and asked for an answer by 5 p.m. on Sept. 14. That deadline passed without one, and four of the six went to the judgment behind the program rather than to its mechanics. They asked what the office’s assessment of community trust rests on and whether it has measured local opinion on the readers. They asked how the office weighs that opinion against its own operational judgment, and whose decision the scope of the program is. The material published this month describes the system and the rules that govern it rather than taking up those four. The offer in the September story stands, which is that any answer the office sends runs at the top of it, dated.
The board takes the item up at 9 a.m. on Tuesday in the County Auditorium. General public comment comes before it on the agenda, ahead of the first presenter of the morning.
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