More than two years after St. Petersburg quietly doubled its network of license-plate-reading cameras, the City Council took up the matter in public for the first time Thursday, prompted by a growing coalition of residents who say the program was built without their knowledge or consent.

Council Vice Chair Richie Floyd placed the item on Thursday’s agenda, asking colleagues to refer the city’s contract with Flock Safety — and the roughly 50 automated license plate readers it operates around St. Petersburg — to the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee for review. Floyd said the request was intentionally narrow: a first step toward examining how police use the cameras, what becomes of the data they collect, and whether residents are getting anything in return for the tradeoff.

The fact that the discussion is happening at all marks a shift. The city’s Police Department launched a 25-camera pilot in 2022 without a council vote. Two years later, in January 2024, the council approved a five-year, $730,250 contract that doubled the camera count — a deal that moved through as an “unsolicited offer” under the city’s procurement code and passed on the consent agenda without debate or public comment. City taxpayers have paid roughly $146,000 annually for the system since.

The cameras, mounted on poles at intersections and roadways across the city, photograph every passing vehicle and log details including license plate numbers, make, model, and color — regardless of whether the driver is suspected of anything. Police leaders, including Chief Anthony Holloway, have defended the system as a tool that helps investigators solve crimes faster and have said the department does not use it for open-ended surveillance. Data is automatically deleted after 30 days, and officers who misuse it can be terminated, according to the department.

But that defense hasn’t quieted the pushback. A resident group calling itself DeFlock St. Pete formed this month and says its first public meeting drew more than 100 people. The group has used public-records requests to obtain the list of outside agencies with which St. Petersburg’s camera data can be shared, and organizer Zach Schira said the number reaches into the hundreds — a scope he argues residents were never told about. The group is also seeking access logs showing which officers have searched the system and for what purpose, information it says the department has declined to provide. One of the more visible signs of the frustration: a Flock camera near the Snell Isle Bridge has now been vandalized with spray paint three times in five months.

The debate has bled into this fall’s mayoral race. Former Gov. Charlie Crist, who led the August primary and faces Mayor Ken Welch in a November runoff, has called for a moratorium on any expansion of the program until the city can explain, in his words, comprehensively what the cameras are used for. Welch has defended keeping the system in place, calling calls to remove it “knee jerk political theater” and arguing the cameras help track down people who threaten public safety.

Even Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has built his brand on backing law enforcement, has voiced unease with how far the technology has spread statewide, saying he doesn’t want Florida to “become a surveillance state” and calling on the Legislature to consider guardrails. Florida already has close to 7,500 license plate readers in operation, and other local governments have started pulling back — Leon County recently scrapped a planned camera purchase, and Oviedo’s city council is drafting a measure to terminate its own Flock contract.

Thursday’s agenda item was not a vote on the cameras themselves, only on whether to send the contract to committee for a closer look — a distinction Floyd emphasized ahead of the meeting. Whether that review leads to changes, or simply documents a program four years and $730,000 in the making, is now a question for a committee to answer in public, rather than one buried in a City Hall consent agenda.

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