- August 20, 2026 Loading Between 2024 and 2026, Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputies used license plate recognition cameras, or license plate readers, to arrest or recover 191 individuals. Not only are criminal suspects identified through the use of the technology, missing children and senior citizens with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease have been located using license plate readers. Flock is a brand name, and MCSO has 79 Flock cameras installed across the county. Including other brands, MCSO uses 134 license plate readers. Distrust of Flock cameras has been growing over the past year or two, but Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said his department has been using license plate readers for nearly six years. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there about license plate readers and how they’re being used,” Wells said. “The only thing that they’re taking a picture of is your vehicle and your license plate. We can’t tell who’s driving. You hear about facial recognition. That’s a lie.” The cameras read thousands of license plate numbers every day. Sheriff’s deputies are going into the system with a purpose. Wells used the example of a burglary. If a detective is given a vehicle description, he or she can search for that vehicle, but they have to enter a reason for the search, the case number associated with the investigation and exactly what they’re looking for, such as a red Toyota, before they can even enter the system. The system is audited every two weeks to ensure those procedures are being followed. The information is also deleted every 30 days. “In a perfect world, if everybody understood (how and why his office uses license plate readers), we could hold the information up to a year with the hopes that if we had a crime that maybe that vehicle was