Texas pauses Flock camera funding | What's Your Point?

Welcome to Texas, y'all, where we celebrate freedom from big government. So relax, there's only 10,000 flock cameras reading your plate, lobbying where you sleep and pray. No warrant needed in Greg Abbott's Texas. The freedom capital of America. Smile. Democrat for Governor Gina Hinojosa's ad looking to capitalize on the second major policy reversal of this campaign season by incumbent Greg Abbott. Last week, the governor froze all state funding for flock cameras after a thunderous outburst of protests by Texans concerned about privacy and potential abuse and preservation of their constitutional rights. While hailed by advocates as a critical crime-fighting tool, the Texas Tribune reports at least a half-dozen Texas law enforcement agencies actively investigating officers for abusing the tracking technology. Panel, when combined with this data center development freeze, this is Abbott's second 180 in a matter of two months, and Hinojosa is looking to exploit the flop. What do you think of this, Paul? Well, we do want our government to be responsive, and right now people are concerned about flock cameras. Pflugerville came out recently. They had 83 different agencies that they had authorized to use their flock camera systems. They had 450 who were actually tapping into it. I think there's a situation where this is about coming up with policies and oversight. Flock actually has an audit system now that they've installed that allows, they can give to free to anybody who is already using it to see, is somebody using it unnecessarily? Are they looking at things at home, tracking their ex-girlfriends, tracking homes and those kinds of things? This is a fixable problem through policy. Chris, jump in here. So, I think we figured out how to change policy in Texas, and that's run a poll and send it to the governor, and he'll change his policy if it doesn't fit what he's looking for. The problem with flock's audit system is it's after the fact, and that doesn't help stop the problem. It helps correct the problem after we've had it. We've got to figure out how to stop people from abusing flock cameras before they abuse it, not after they abuse it. And once we figure that out, and that's going to be an internal policy with each department, and once we figure that out, the flock cameras will be a good crime-fighting tool. All right. We have a three-term governor who's arguably the most powerful and popular Republican in Texas, and yet he's had two policy reversals, Bill. Look, there's nobody that polls like Abbott does. I think they do weekly polls is what I've been told. And, look, I'm okay with this. If your policies are not aligned with the majority of the people that you govern, then maybe you ought to think about changing them. Now, in these two cases, I just don't get the big objections to flock or to data centers. I agree with Chris and with Paul that there needs to be some better policies around flock. But when we're only solving 25% of the rape cases in the state of Texas, we need some more crime-fighting tools out there. And let me just tell you what. The data center issues, those things are going to be built someplace, they're going to pay a bunch of property taxes, and they are going to happen. And so if you don't want them in your community, fine, they're going to go someplace else. Tamara, I'm going to give this to April. Guardrails, are these flock cameras necessary for the future? If it was your family and your child got kidnapped, you would want the police to be able to find that vehicle. And, unfortunately, they're not going to be able to do that now because so many flock cameras are being cut down. I just want to say that Governor Greg Abbott, having a shift in his position, he reads the room and he wants what Texans want. And he's always going to represent Texans that way, and I applaud him for wanting to change his stance. However, we could easily fix this problem by having a warrant. All right, still ahead, the power of words from the not-so-distant past. Senate candidate James Tallarico, on the record, equating capitalism with white supremacy and climate change.