Jacksonville City Council Member Jimmy Peluso plans to file legislation halting new Flock surveillance camera installations for 120 days. The bill would also give neighborhood advisory committees formal say over where the devices go.

Peluso, a District 7 Democrat, announced the four-part proposal on Wednesday, Aug. 26, according to Jacksonville Today. The bill would impose a moratorium on new cameras while the city builds an internal permitting process, require an official city inventory of camera locations, mandate Citizens Planning Advisory Committee (CPAC) approval before any new camera is installed in a given area, and create a resident petition process for removal modeled on the city's existing speed-hump petition system.

For Mandarin residents, the CPAC provision is the most direct change. The Southeast CPAC, which covers the Mandarin area, would gain formal approval authority over any new Flock camera proposed for its district.

"I think JSO is probably going to say these devices save lives. They can help people. I'm not disputing that," Peluso said. "I also think they could be a constitutional abuse … and I think we give residents the power to ask themselves as a community whether or not they want these."

Peluso said he wants the council to act before the Florida Legislature takes up the issue. He expressed concern that state lawmakers could allow third-party companies to sell the data collected by the cameras.

Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in on Wednesday, Aug. 26, calling license plate readers out of control and warning they could lead to a surveillance state, according to Jacksonville Today's reporting on his remarks at Florida International University in Miami.

JSO currently operates 141 fixed and nine mobile license plate reader cameras across Duval County, according to a News4Jax report citing a JSO social media post from Aug. 20. The agency says the cameras have helped solve 15 murders, 17 kidnappings, six forcible sex offenses, nearly 100 shootings and 172 missing-persons cases since 2024. The city's initial contract with Flock Safety was valued at $114,000 per year.

Sheriff T.K. Waters defended the cameras on Aug. 18, telling Action News Jax, "We want to make it extremely difficult to allow you to get away with crime in Jacksonville, and we've been able to do that so far, and we're seeing massive improvements." No JSO response to Peluso's specific legislation has been made public.

Jacksonville does not have a public Flock transparency portal with audit logs and access permissions, unlike some other police departments nationally, according to Jacksonville Today.

Duval County residents spoke both for and against the cameras at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 25. Tony Langhals, speaking in support, called the devices tools that assist JSO in solving crimes. An unidentified speaker opposing the cameras argued that when thousands of observations are automatically collected, stored and made searchable, the government acquires something fundamentally different than a single plate observation.

Mayor Donna Deegan has deferred questions about Flock camera use to Sheriff Waters, saying the cameras are "very limited in their scope" based on what JSO tells her, according to Florida Politics.

Peluso scheduled a public meeting on the proposal for 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 28, in the Lynwood Roberts Room on the first floor of City Hall, 117 W. Duval St. The legislation has not yet been formally filed with the council.