Texas Man Seeks to Have Armed Robbery Conviction Tossed Due to Flock Cameras

The Texas Tribune

DALLAS, TX — A Texas man has asked a federal appeals court to toss out his armed robbery conviction and 60-year prison sentence, arguing that Flock cameras give law enforcement more surveillance power than the Constitution allows.

Police used Flock cameras to link Charles Brownlee to five armed robberies across several Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs in 2024 by compiling a “pattern of life” that traced his travels along North Texas roads monitored by Flock’s vehicle-scanning devices.

Brownlee’s lawyers argue the data gathered is so extensive and invasive that police should be required to obtain a search warrant, approved by a judge, before rifling through Flock data.

The Fourth Amendment protects against unlawful search and seizure, often by requiring law enforcement to have some level of probable cause that a crime has been or will be committed, as well as a search warrant approved by a judge. Data from the Flock system can be accessed with the push of a few buttons, and currently there is no legal requirement to first obtain a search warrant.

Police perform a search, triggering Fourth Amendment protections, when they violate a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, Brownlee’s lawyers argued.

The 5th Circuit Court earlier this year ruled that some use of automated license plate readers is not a Fourth Amendment violation. 

In that case, a Mississippi man was stopped after passing a Flock camera that alerted a nearby officer, who pulled him over and saw an illegally modified handgun in the vehicle. The appeals court ruled in March that the search was acceptable because it involved a single camera that was incapable of tracking the “whole of an individual’s physical movements, much less for a very long period.”

The ruling, however, acknowledged that roadside camera systems give “the government to access an historical record for some time, and that type of retrospective data can allow police to travel back in time to retrace a person’s whereabouts without needing to know in advance whether they want to follow a particular individual, or when.”

Brownlee’s lawyer argued that the search used in Texas went much farther. 

“What you have here [is] in the space of two and a half hours, they’re able to find literally a needle in a haystack, but they didn’t even know the needle they were looking for when they started looking,” Wright said.

In addition, living in Texas — especially in the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth area — frequently requires a vehicle, making Flock cameras “more inescapable than cell phone location tracking,” a type of search the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed is protected by the Fourth Amendment, Brownlee’s lawyers told the appeals court in a legal brief.

“While individuals can, theoretically, choose not to carry a cell phone, driving is effectively mandatory for most Americans to participate in modern life,” the brief said.

Justice Department attorney Michael Weisbuch argued that the March ruling justified the search for Brownlee’s vehicle because Flock’s data is “episodic,” or based on photos taken from individual cameras. That means Flock photos and data are not actively tracking vehicles but are instead providing pieces of evidence gathered along public roads, where motorists have no legal expectation of privacy, he said.

Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod asked Weisbuch how many Flock cameras would be needed to elevate episodic captures into a more constant mode of surveillance — especially, as she said, the cameras are “soon to be” on every street corner.

“We’re trying to figure out whether or not we’re there [in the Brownlee case], and when is the tipping point,” Elrod said. 

Weisbuch responded that Flock cameras are at the center of a “major policy debate” nationwide, and defining how many cameras constitutes constant surveillance is a question better suited for legislators.

“The political process is a serious check on that [hypothetical] ever coming to fruition, and I think a better check than an erroneous extension of Fourth Amendment,” he said.

Several Texas lawmakers, raising Fourth Amendment concerns, say they intend to file bills restricting or banning the use of Flock cameras and similar automated license plate readers in the 2027 legislative session.