In early May, a North Texas sheriff’s sergeant leveraged an increasingly common surveillance tool to conduct a vehicle search.
The reason for the search — listed in a data file that an anti-surveillance group posted online — was less standard. The sergeant wrote: “had an abortion, search for female.”
The case had started earlier that day, when a man reported he’d found fetal remains at or near his Burleson residence. Officers from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office went to the man’s residence, according to a partial report obtained by The Dallas Morning News. There, they found the fetal remains as well as “a large amount of blood.”
Officers believed the man’s girlfriend had had an abortion, but she was not at the residence.
The fetal remains, the blood and the odd behavior of the Burleson man were enough for a Johnson County sergeant to be concerned the woman might be injured, according to the partial report. So he sent out a search in the Flock Safety system, which gathers license plate data from cameras across the country. (That search was first reported by the independent website 404 Media.)
Johnson County Sheriff Adam King described the search as a welfare check for a woman believed to be harmed or in danger.
“We were just trying to check on her welfare and get her to the doctor if needed, or to the hospital,” King said. He added the woman was not under investigation and has not been charged with a crime.
Privacy and abortion rights advocates don’t necessarily disagree with the attempt to find the woman in this particular situation. But the case has triggered wider concerns for the advocates, who worry about law enforcement wielding massive surveillance networks to track Texans’ pregnancies.
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the privacy rights nonprofit EPIC, pointed to how quickly and easily the sheriff’s office was able to search for the woman.
“Maybe they had good intentions, but all it takes is bad actors with bad intentions to leverage this system,” Scott said. “When you put a system in place like this … it’s only a matter of time before it gets abused.”
The Johnson County case layers together the hotly contested issues of government surveillance and abortion access. And for privacy and abortion rights advocates, it prompts a question: As Texas’ abortion laws continue to settle into place, what role will law enforcement play?
The concern
There is precedent for the fears that abortions and miscarriages could become criminal matters.
A case in Georgia made headlines earlier this year, when a woman was arrested after she had a miscarriage and allegedly placed the fetal remains in a dumpster. The charges against her were dropped.
There have been other cases of women arrested across the country, too, including a 2022 case in Texas.
While Texas’ abortion ban does not allow criminal charges against patients who receive abortions, it does criminalize doctors who provide illegal abortions.
Blake Rocap, a Texas attorney who works in abortion rights advocacy, said the Johnson County case highlights the “inherent problems with attaching criminal penalties to health care.”
“You then have the full weight of the criminal legal system and all of its surveillance and apparatus coming down on people,” he said.
Brian Withrow, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University, said the Johnson County case sounds to him like a genuine welfare check and an appropriate use of the Flock system. It makes sense, Withrow said, for an officer to be worried about a woman who left behind both fetal remains and blood.
Still, Withrow said, he understands why the case could bring up wider concerns.
“Investigative tools sometimes can be used inappropriately,” Withrow said. “There’s a long history of that in all sorts of industries, including policing.”
The key question, Withrow said, is whether departments have strong enough measures in place to prevent misuse.
Guardrails?
Flock Safety is a private company that provides customers access to a nationwide database of license plate information. The data is pulled automatically by cameras posted on roadways and law enforcement vehicles.
Law enforcement agencies can use automated license plate reader systems, provided by Flock or other companies, to track down vehicles and their drivers.
According to a company statement, Flock does not moderate how agencies use the surveillance system.
Company spokesperson Holly Beilin sent the statement on behalf of Flock chief communications officer Josh Thomas. Beilin declined to make Thomas or other Flock representatives available for an interview.
“Our philosophy as a company is that we rely on the democratic process. Flock does not decide which criminal codes to enforce in Texas, Washington, or any other jurisdiction,” the statement said. “But we are committed to ensuring that every customer can leverage Flock technology in a way that reflects their values.”
Beilin added that the Johnson County case is the only time since January 2024 that the word “abortion” has appeared as a search reason in Flock’s national lookup system.
Individual agencies can also create their own policies on license plate reader usage.
Both the Dallas and Fort Worth police departments have such policies, which department spokespeople provided to The Dallas Morning News. Both policies specify that the automated license plate reader system is to be used only for law enforcement purposes. Spokespeople for both departments did not respond to follow-up questions about what specific types of searches might be allowed or banned under the policies.
Savannah Kumar, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said both policies are broad and do not appear to rule out Flock use in abortion cases.
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office does not use automated license plate readers, a spokesperson wrote in an email. The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, Robbie Hoy, responded to emails but did not provide any information on that agency’s use of license plate readers.
Scott, at the privacy rights nonprofit EPIC, said strict laws and regulations would be more effective than department policies.
“You would need actual, real consequences for the misuse and abuse of the system,” Scott said.
A bill filed in the Texas Legislature this session would have restricted and regulated the use of automated license plate readers. That bill did not make it to a committee vote.
Both Kumar and Scott said the only true solution to plate reader privacy concerns would be for the surveillance itself to stop.
Some agencies have moved in that direction. The city of Austin will end its police department’s license plate reader program at the end of the month.
Others, however, have moved toward more surveillance. The city of Dallas expanded its system’s reach this year, installing two dozen new license plate reader cameras in southwest Dallas.
‘All about her safety’
King said he’s never considered tracking someone down to prevent or punish an abortion.
It wasn’t on his mind or his officers’ minds in the early May case either, he said.
The sheriff said the woman in the May 9 search was not under investigation at any point and is not facing any charges. The case is open, according to a Johnson County Sheriff’s Office clerk, as law enforcement investigates family violence “regarding the male complainant.”
“There was no big conspiracy there to be the abortion police,” King said. “That wasn’t our deal, it was all about her safety.”
The woman was eventually located, King said, although not through the Flock search. Officers spoke with the woman a couple days after the Flock search and determined she was fine.
“They talked to her two days later and she was okay and that’s all they wanted to know,” King said.