KATY, Texas (Covering Katy News) — The indictment of a former Katy police officer accused of using the city's Flock license plate reader system to track his ex-wife raises an obvious question: Just how powerful is the system he is accused of misusing?
Also Read: Former Katy police officer indicted after allegedly using Flock cameras to track ex-wife
Fort Bend County prosecutors allege former Katy police officer Sergio Guadalupe Rodriguez used Katy's Flock system to track his ex-wife from Nov. 2, 2024, through April 2, 2025. He has been charged with stalking and misuse of official information.
Covering Katy News dug through City of Katy contracts and years of City Council records looking for answers about what the system can do.
What we found is a system that reaches far beyond the 40 Flock cameras owned by the City of Katy.
Katy police can use Flock to search for vehicles across a much larger network, determine where a particular license plate has been spotted and search for vehicles based on physical characteristics even when an investigator doesn't have a complete plate number.
Covering Katy's examination of Flock did not begin with Rodriguez's indictment.
In July, ABC13 reported that a female Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office lieutenant admitted using Flock to conduct searches unrelated to official law enforcement work. The television station did not identify the lieutenant by name because she was not facing criminal charges. Records obtained by ABC13 showed the lieutenant searched one license plate 41 times and another 148 times between January 2022 and December 2025. She received a two-day suspension following an internal affairs investigation.
Similar questions have since surfaced in Harris County. The Houston Chronicle reported that the Harris County Sheriff's Office blocked three deputies from accessing Flock while the department investigates possible misuse of the technology. The deputies have not been publicly identified, and the investigation has not established that they misused the system.
The Fort Bend case, reported in July, prompted Covering Katy News to begin looking more closely at Flock technology in the Katy area. Rodriguez's indictment brought that investigation directly to the Katy Police Department.
Katy's elected leaders have known for years that Flock is a powerful police tool. By early 2024 — months before prosecutors say Rodriguez began using Flock to track his ex-wife — City Council was hearing detailed examples of just how far the system could reach.
Then-Police Chief Noe Diaz summed it up during a January 2024 council meeting.
“The entire region is invested in Flock and they all talk to each other,” Diaz said.
Reader provided photo
A Flock license plate reader monitors traffic at Avenue D and Pecan Lane in Katy. The city operates 40 Flock cameras, with additional privately owned cameras connected to the system.
A suspect enters Katy and police are alerted
Diaz gave council an example involving a suspect from San Antonio.
Authorities in Bexar County had entered information about the suspect into Flock. When he drove into Katy, police here knew about it.
“As soon as he drove into our community, it alerted us,” Diaz said.
Diaz said Katy police located the suspect and believed officers potentially prevented a robbery.
He then gave council another example, this one involving a vehicle connected to 18 robberies in Harris County.
The suspect hadn't hit Katy, but Diaz said police were able to determine that the vehicle had been near U.S. 90 and Pederson Road at about 1:30 that afternoon.
“If he comes back into our community, then we're gonna act upon all that information,” Diaz said.
Diaz called Flock “a tremendous asset.”
Then he told council something else: Katy wasn't using everything Flock could do.
“And that's because we don't have all the settings turned on,” Diaz said. “So, there's so many things. It's different options that we have.”
Flock searches aren't limited to Katy
The city's agreement with Flock fills in some of the details.
Katy's package includes statewide and nationwide license plate lookups. It also includes access to privately owned Flock cameras within Katy's jurisdiction that are available through the system and cameras directly shared with Katy by other law enforcement agencies.
So an officer searching for a vehicle isn't necessarily limited to Katy's 40 cameras.
The system includes time-and-location searches and a license plate lookup feature that can provide the location history of a plate captured by cameras available through the network.
Police don't necessarily need a complete license plate, either.
Flock's Vehicle Fingerprint feature can search for a vehicle using characteristics such as its type, make, color and registration state. It can also identify distinguishing features including bumper stickers, decals and vehicle racks.
Put together, the cameras and software give investigators a way to look for a vehicle well beyond the point where it passed a camera on a Katy street.
About 1 million license plates a month
The amount of information flowing through Katy's system is also significant.
“We will have a million vehicles come through our license plate readers every single month,” Diaz told council in January 2024.
The city wasn't using all of that information strictly for police work.
Diaz told council Flock data could also help city leaders understand traffic and where Katy was growing.
“It's real-time information that you guys can look at and see that this is where the city's growing,” Diaz said.
He also told council the technology wasn't standing still.
“They're, I mean, every day they're getting better and faster with the software,” Diaz said.
Diaz also discussed why he preferred Flock's smaller cameras to some competing systems.
“I didn't want it to look like a police state with all these crazy cameras all over town that actually look like a camera,” Diaz said. “These don't.”
Diaz was referring to the physical appearance of the cameras, contrasting Flock's smaller devices with larger competing equipment.
40 city cameras weren't the entire network
Three weeks later, Flock was back before City Council.
On Feb. 12, 2024, council considered increasing a proposed 35-camera agreement to 40 city-owned cameras.
Diaz walked council through where the five additional cameras would go.
One would capture eastbound traffic on U.S. 90. Another would capture traffic coming south on Pitts Road. Others were planned around Katy Hockley Cut Off, Katy Hockley Road and the Katy Mills area.
“As people turn into our communities, we capture all that information as it comes in,” Diaz said.
“So, right now, we do have everywhere covered.”
Then-Mayor Pro Tem Chris Harris asked about cameras that weren't owned by the city.
“There's 40 city cameras, but how many also are there privately on HOA cameras that are part of the city system?” Harris asked.
“I'd say another 35 or 40 cameras are all over the place,” Diaz responded.
Diaz said police hoped to bring more developments and businesses into the network.
“So, it truly is a partnership,” he said.
Council unanimously approved the 40-camera agreement.
Katy was an early adopter
Katy's relationship with Flock dates to 2020.
City Council approved its original agreement that January. The executed contract provided for 23 cameras at an annual cost of $46,000.
Council records show Diaz described the license plate readers as another layer of security that could provide around-the-clock coverage. During the council discussion, he compared their potential impact to adding about 20 police officers.
The network continued to grow.
Katy approved 10 additional cameras in 2022 at a first-year cost of $27,500, with a recurring annual cost of $25,000.
By 2024, council members weren't questioning whether Flock was useful. They were discussing whether Katy needed even more cameras.
Diaz said Katy had been ahead of much of the Houston area in adopting the technology.
“We were one of the first ones in the greater Houston area,” Diaz said. “Now, it is spread like wildfire throughout the greater Houston area.”
“So, it is changing the way we approach what we do as a police department to keep the community safe.”
Why all of this matters now
The capabilities described in the city's contracts and discussed publicly at City Council take on a different significance in light of the allegations against Rodriguez.
Fort Bend County prosecutors allege he used Flock to track his ex-wife from Nov. 2, 2024, through April 2, 2025.
His ex-wife filed a formal complaint with Katy police in October 2025 alleging Rodriguez was somehow tracking her whereabouts.
Katy police said an investigation was immediately opened and determined Rodriguez had misused Flock to run his ex-wife's vehicle license plate.
Rodriguez was suspended, the findings of the investigation were turned over to the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office, and he was ultimately fired and charged with stalking and misuse of official information.
Rodriguez has pleaded not guilty. The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.
Police say Flock solves hundreds of crimes
Katy police continue to strongly support Flock despite the alleged misuse by a former officer.
The department told Covering Katy News the technology helps solve hundreds of crimes each year and called it “one of the best crime-fighting tools developed in modern policing.”
“Our citizens have given us the trust and ability to use these tools properly for law enforcement purposes,” the department said.
The records reviewed by Covering Katy News help explain why police consider Flock such a valuable tool. It can alert officers when a wanted vehicle enters the community, help locate vehicles across a network extending far beyond Katy and provide investigators with information about where vehicles have been captured.
But the Rodriguez case raises another question.
Katy police say every Flock search creates a permanent digital audit trail showing who conducted the search, when it occurred and why.
Following the investigation and arrest of Rodriguez, the department now says it conducts monthly random audits of officers and quarterly audits of every officer with Flock search privileges. Police also say Flock has since implemented technology designed to identify abnormal searches and automatically lock a user out of the system.
The indictment revealed what one former officer is accused of doing with Flock. The next question is just as important: With every search leaving a digital trail, what safeguards were in place to detect when that power was being misused?
Coming next
Flock tracks the police, too. In our next story, Covering Katy examines the safeguards built into the system.
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