The camera sees your car
A reader can capture the plate, vehicle image and characteristics, date, time, and location.
Live snapshot Verified August 2, 2026
A Celina campaign to end automated plate tracking
Celina should remove all 47 license plate readers.
The City records the plate, time, place, and vehicle details of drivers who pass its cameras. Most of those drivers are not suspected of a crime. Celina has not published enough local results to justify keeping the network.
Independent public-interest project. Not affiliated with the City, Police Department, Flock Safety, or DeFlock.
The local scale
What the public record shows
47readersreported by the public portal400,023plate readsin the prior 30 days30 daysordinary retentionsearchable travel records1,078sharing entriesaccess granted, not proven use
Plate reads and sharing entries describe activity and access. They are not arrests, crimes, or confirmed matches. See the live dashboard
What Celina records
A routine drive can become a searchable record.
The system collects first. A plate does not have to be connected to an investigation before it enters the database.
The record stays searchable
Ordinary records are kept for 30 days. Celina's policy says a user does not need reasonable suspicion or probable cause to run a query.
Access can extend beyond Celina
The policy says reads go to Texas DPS every 24 hours. The public portal lists more than 1,000 sharing entries.
What this means for a resident
The camera cannot tell why you are on the road.
You may be commuting, taking a child to school, going to worship, or visiting a doctor. The system creates the same plate, time, and location record.
That is the concern. The record begins with an ordinary trip, not an investigation.
Why remove it
The City has not made a public case for keeping this network.
License plate readers may help police find a vehicle. Celina still has to show that the local benefit is worth recording ordinary drivers at this scale.
Everyone is recorded first
The system creates a record before it knows whether a vehicle matters to an investigation.
Local results are missing
The public dashboard does not report confirmed matches, false positives, arrests, recoveries, or crimes prevented.
Rules do not stop the collection
Written safeguards may reduce misuse, but they leave the searchable record of ordinary travel in place.
This is a judgment about one tool, not an allegation that every search is improper. Celina has not shown that this level of collection is necessary or justified by the local results it has published.
The local network
Six locations are verified. Forty-one are still not identified in the City records reviewed here.
The map shows only the six sites listed in the Police Department's 2024 planning document. We do not guess at the other locations or present crowdsourced markers as official.
6locations verified
41locations not disclosed in the reviewed packet
What Celina has not shown
Activity totals do not tell residents whether the program works.
The public needs local outcomes before the City asks drivers to accept continued tracking.
- How many alerts were verified or wrong?
- How many vehicles were recovered or people located?
- How often did outside agencies search Celina data?
- Where are the other 41 readers?
- What is the complete current cost?
Start the public conversation
Ask the mayor and Council to review the program in public.
Celina should publish the missing local results, answer residents' questions, and explain why routine collection should continue. This campaign supports ending the program and removing all 47 readers.
Check our work
The records behind the case are collected in one place.
Read the contracts, City policy, evidence review, and full source list without losing the main public message.