St. Johns County commissioners revoke permits for all license plate readers on county roads in 3-2 vote

St. Johns County commissioners voted 3-2 on Tuesday, Oct. 20, to revoke the permits for every automated license plate reader on county roads, ordering the removal of cameras that Sheriff Rob Hardwick has called one of his most effective crime-fighting tools. The decision goes further than the state's order this summer, which forced plate readers off state highways but left county and city roads to local officials.

According to the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, the vote requires the removal of 89 plate readers on county rights of way. No date has been set for shutting them off. Readers on private property and those run by homeowners associations are not affected.

How the commission split

Commissioners Sarah Arnold, Ann Taylor and Christian Whitehurst voted to revoke the permits, while Chairman Clay Murphy and Commissioner Krista Joseph voted to keep the cameras, according to Jacksonville Today and First Coast News. Whitehurst introduced the motion and said beforehand that he did not expect it to pass, Action News Jax reported.

Arnold said she did not want to take away a tool that could help law enforcement keep residents safe, but that the technology appeared to have outpaced the safeguards around it. She said she hoped to work with county legal staff and the county's legislative delegation on a program that better protects residents' rights. Whitehurst said he was open to taking the cameras down while the state looks further into their effects, and he has said he would favor bringing them back once lawmakers put guardrails on the technology, Jacksonville Today reported.

Joseph wanted to keep the cameras with stronger safeguards. She said cellphones are "more insidious" than the cameras and called removing them "radical," adding that "the toothpaste is out of the tube," according to Action News Jax. Murphy said he did not want to suspend the cameras while those safeguards were being worked out, News4JAX reported.

Whitehurst had asked the board earlier this month to put the issue on Tuesday's agenda, saying a roundtable with law enforcement that commissioners agreed to hold on Sept. 15 had never taken place.

The sheriff pushes back

Hardwick, who has been the most visible defender of the cameras in Northeast Florida, said the commission had overstepped. "I believe the decision made at the county commission meeting encroaches on my ability to keep our community safe," he said in a statement. "Throughout this process, the victims of crime have been lost in the conversation." He said the technology is effective and that his office "will continue working to bring it back to St. Johns County."

The Sheriff's Office said it disagrees with the decision and is confident it "will ultimately affect the safety of our community." It said it supports legislation that sets clear standards for use of the technology.

The agency said it had already tightened its program in response to criticism. It shortened its data retention period to 30 days, limited who can use the system, ended sharing data with outside agencies and strengthened auditing, officials said. They also said the system does not use facial recognition or collect cellphone data.

The case for the cameras

Before the vote, Howard Cole, the Sheriff's Office director of criminal investigations, pointed to a recent armed bank robbery. "We caught him in 15 minutes because of this technology," Cole told commissioners, News4JAX reported.

Hardwick has cited 2026 figures he attributes in part to the readers, including:

• 29 stolen vehicles and 23 stolen license tags recovered
• 35 wanted people arrested and 62 people charged
• 132 felony and 54 misdemeanor charges cleared
• 35 missing people recovered

The parents of Tristyn Bailey, the 13-year-old St. Johns County cheerleader killed by a classmate in 2021, spoke in favor of keeping the cameras. Her father, Forrest Bailey, said the day his daughter went missing was the first time he had heard of plate readers, and that knowing law enforcement had the tool gave the family hope she could be found.

Asked whether camera data had ever been misused inside the agency, Cole said there had been one case: a detective who searched the system for a vehicle he was buying from the Panhandle because he feared he was being scammed. Cole called it "completely inappropriate personal use" and said the detective was disciplined, Action News Jax reported.

Residents' privacy concerns

The removal push in St. Johns County was driven largely by residents. Debra Campbell founded a group called DeFlock St. Johns and launched a petition in July. At a commission meeting earlier this month, she told commissioners that after requesting her own records she learned the cameras had captured her plate 154 times in 30 days, and that 11 of the cars logged under her plate were not hers. She also raised concerns that Flock Safety, the private company that operates the cameras, keeps tracking data longer than the Sheriff's Office does. Campbell said more than 1,000 residents had signed her petition.

Other residents at Tuesday's meeting raised concerns about privacy, data retention, false reads and the chance that someone could be wrongly stopped because of a camera error. Campbell told News4JAX after the vote that she feels vindicated. "It can help, don't get me wrong, but it's not an excuse to do warrantless searches," she said.

Not everyone outside the county agreed. Rich Kolko, a 21-year FBI veteran, told News4JAX the decision "sounds like a little bit of an overreaction."

How the state set this up

On Aug. 31, the Florida Department of Transportation revoked approvals for automated license plate readers on the State Highway System and gave agencies 30 days to remove them, after Gov. Ron DeSantis raised concerns about privacy and surveillance. The St. Johns County Sheriff's Office said it removed 84 readers from state rights of way in September and is in full compliance with that order. It was one of the last agencies in Northeast Florida to comply, News4JAX reported.

Agencies in the region have taken different paths since then. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters ended plate reader use throughout Duval County, and Putnam County Sheriff Gator DeLoach ended his department's program. Baker County Sheriff Scotty Rhoden told News4JAX that the loss of a camera near Interstate 10 slowed an investigation after two children were shot while riding in their mother's car.

The FDOT order did not reach city or county roads, which is why the St. Johns County cameras stayed up until Tuesday. Hardwick has said at least 100 plate readers in the county are owned by neighborhoods, and those remain in place.

What's next

County staff and the Sheriff's Office still have to set a timeline for taking down the 89 readers on county roads. The broader fight now moves to Tallahassee, where DeSantis has asked lawmakers to take up limits on the technology in the 2027 legislative session. Both the sheriff and the commissioners who voted for removal have said state rules could open the door for the cameras to return.