Upon entering Fulshear, Texas, it’s apparent that this town places a high value on natural beauty. The grassy prairie and serene hills cover what is primarily farm and ranchlands, though Fulshear has a growing commercial district situated along the Brazos River bank. The city is one of the fastest-growing districts in the state, exploding in population from 12,000 in 2018 to over 18,000 today. 

While excellent for business, that population explosion causes concern for the Fulshear Police Department, led by Chief Kenny Seymour. Last year, Fulshear earned recognition as the safest city in Texas, and Chief Seymour would like to keep it that way. 

“One thing about being one of the safest cities is trying to stay on that list,” Chief Seymour said. “We don’t rest on those laurels; we’re always trying to be on the offensive when it comes to crime prevention.”

Of course, like many smaller agencies around the country, Chief Seymour has a limited staff — and only so much discretionary budget. Fulshear’s 26 sworn officers are charged with protecting the 11-mile city limits, as well as an additional 40 square miles of what Texas calls “extraterritorial jurisdiction” (ETJ), or the unincorporated area contiguous to a city. 

Covering that entire 50 square miles is the Fulshear Criminal Investigation Division, comprised of just one investigator: Detective Bobby Villa. Detective Villa is called upon to work every crime reported in Fulshear.

Needless to say, Detective Villa rarely has a boring day. And yet, when it came to the choice of adding an additional team member or purchasing intelligent, effective technology that collects actionable evidence and objective leads, Detective Villa chose the tech. 

“You can continue to have poor, very limited information come in. You can saturate the cities with bodies, but if they don’t have good information, you’re not going to solve crimes.”

In 2020, Fulshear Police made what Detective Villa calls an “easy decision”, installing 25 Flock Safety license plate reader cameras across the city. 

A crime that would not have been solved

One week after the Flock LPR cameras were installed in Fulshear, a report of one of the first residential burglaries in Fulshear’s history crossed Detective Villa’s desk. Four burglars had entered a house, taking property including firearms, and violating the family’s privacy. 

Detective Villa found no fingerprints, but was able to pull a grainy video from a neighbor’s doorbell camera. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but he could make out the color and vehicle type: a white passenger car.

With this bare bones lead, Detective Villa performed a search in the newly-installed Flock Safety network and got a hit. He was, for a moment, disheartened — the vehicle had a temporary, paper license plate, which in the vast majority of license plate reader systems will not lead to an identification.

But Detective Villa wasn’t using any license plate reader; he was searching on the Flock Safety system, which does categorize and identify paper license plates. The investigator identified three out of the four suspects, and the agency executed a felony arrest within a few weeks.

“Being a one-man unit, it’s a lot of pressure,” admitted Detective Villa. “But even if we had 5 or 10 people, what do you do if you don’t have the video? What do you do if you don’t have the evidence?”

“Flock gives you the confidence to know that you can go out and clear these cases. You are your own data analyst in a few strokes of a key.”

Based on the performance of Flock Safety in the less than one year that they’ve been standing guard in Fulshear, Detective Seymour is already looking forward to installing additional license plate readers.

“I could have 50 officers out here, but they have to be at the right place at the right time,” said Chief Seymour. “Strategically, I can put technology at the right place at the right time every time.”