What Florence Wants
Flock Cameras in Florence SC: The Surveillance Debate
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Florence, SC & the Pee Dee Region
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What Florence Wants
On September 10, 2026, Florence residents pressed city leaders directly, in public, about the license-plate-reading cameras now watching the roads into town. It's the most current fight in this series — and one where both sides put real numbers on the table.
In March 2024, the City of Florence Police Department received a $400,000 state grant covering Flock Safety camera equipment and four years of use. Installation began that month at city entry and exit corridors near I-95 and I-20, and in North and West Florence. Separately, the Florence County Sheriff's Office bought 14 of its own Flock cameras for $62,000, planned for major roads near Timmonsville, Johnsonville, Effingham, Lake City and the county line.
These are Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs): cameras that photograph and log thousands of plates per minute and check them against law-enforcement "hot lists" of wanted vehicles.
$400K
State grant to Florence PD, March 2024
14
County Sheriff's Office cameras, $62,000
4 yrs
Of use covered by the city grant
At the September 10, 2026 meeting, one resident put the core objection plainly:
"Something that is politically charged, something that is in such a legal area of contestation, is something that the citizens of Florence need to have input."
— A Florence resident, at the September 10, 2026 public meeting
The complaint wasn't just about the cameras existing — it was that installation moved forward with, residents said, too little public consultation up front.
Statewide, the concern isn't hypothetical. In Greenville, two sisters sued police after a rental car was wrongly flagged as stolen by a plate reader. The South Carolina Public Interest Foundation has sued the State Law Enforcement Division over its retention of 422 million license plate reads collected from 2019 to 2022. SCDOT itself paused approvals for new camera installations while that litigation played out.
Two sisters sued police after a rental car was wrongly flagged as stolen by a plate reader.
A lawsuit over SLED's retention of 422 million plate reads collected between 2019 and 2022.
Florence Police Chief Angela Green and City Manager Scottie Davis answered the September 10 questions with both results and new limits:
133
Wanted persons apprehended
115
Stolen vehicles recovered
12
Missing people located
294
Other investigations assisted
Data retention cut from 30 days down to 7 days.
Plate searches now restricted to supervisors, who must log a case number to run one.
Only South Carolina law enforcement agencies can query Florence's Flock system — no outside agencies, no commercial access.
Those figures come directly from city officials at a public meeting; we have not yet independently verified them against underlying case records, and we're flagging that distinction rather than presenting police-reported statistics as independently audited ones.
An earlier pass at this story nearly pulled in coverage of a Flock camera fight in a different city — Florence, Oregon, which had its own, unrelated council vote on the same technology this year. That's a real risk with a name this common, and exactly the kind of mix-up that damages a young publication's credibility fast. Every source cited below is confirmed specific to Florence, South Carolina.
Tell us why in the comments. This is a What Florence Wants series question, and your answer shapes what we report next.
Share your takeTwo corrections/additions since publication. First, the city's original March 2024 rollout had a stated target of 30 cameras, with about 15 installed as of that month — this article did not previously note the 30-camera target. Second, an independent public-records tracker, MyTownView, documents 54 surveillance camera locations in Florence (aggregating the EFF Atlas of Surveillance, the Flock Safety transparency portal, and community-mapped DeFlock/OpenStreetMap data), updated as recently as this week. That tracker maps camera locations; this article's reporting — the September 10 public meeting, named officials, and on-record usage statistics — remains the more complete account of the accountability side of this story, but readers who want the location map should know it exists.
Flock security cameras installed around Florence — WPDE, March 2024, Flock Cameras in Florence, South Carolina — MyTownView
Search results for this topic also surfaced a separate, unrelated Flock camera controversy in Florence, Oregon. None of those sources are cited here — every fact above is specific to Florence, South Carolina, confirmed by outlet and dateline.