Bell County

Volunteers have mapped 317 devices in Bell County and 310 of them are license plate readers, most recorded as Flock Safety cameras. The Bell County Commissioners Court’s own record explains almost none of that. What it does show is a county that has been buying cameras steadily since 2017, whose single largest purchase is a $4,008,816 camera system around an Army airfield, and whose largest recurring contract reached the agenda as the fifty-eighth lettered entry in a list of routine renewals.

We read every agenda and set of minutes Bell County publishes, 1,020 documents from January 2011 to September 2026. The minutes run to 16 December 2019 and record each item with the motion, the seconder and the result. After that the county publishes agendas and, apart from two special sessions, no minutes. So everything below from 2020 onward is an item that was noticed for a vote, and this page does not say how any of those votes went.

The airfield

The county’s largest surveillance figure is not on a county road. In February 2019 the Court approved a contract between the City of Killeen, Bell County and a vendor for security camera improvements at Robert Gray Army Airfield, for $4,008,816, funded by a federal Defense Economic Adjustment Assistance Grant awarded to the county in December 2017 and by contributions from Fort Hood and six cities. The design covers the airfield perimeter, the radar and transmitter sites, two entry control points and a gate. The airfield is also the runway for the Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport.

It is the only surveillance item in this county’s record that was taken up on its own rather than inside the consent block, and it passed unanimously. The airfield camera system has the agreements behind it.

The Axon contracts

The county bought its first Axon body cameras in October 2017, for the Sheriff’s Department at $39,660 a year and, in a second purchase the same morning, for the county unit the item calls MHMR/CRD at $5,904 a year. Then it bought them for the constables, one precinct at a time, in five purchases between November 2018 and October 2019, the smallest of them $4,078. By June 2020 there were twenty-three such contracts and a quote in front of the Court to merge them into one.

In August 2024 the county’s annual contract renewal list carried a five-year Axon contract covering the jail, the Sheriff and the Constables together, with a first-year payment of $450,000 and an estimated annual recurring payment of $553,008. Every one of these was bought through a purchasing cooperative, which under Texas law satisfies the requirement to seek competitive bids, so no bid notice ever described the equipment in public. The Axon body and vehicle cameras has the sequence.

Plate readers

There are 310 plate readers on the community map and two mentions of plate readers in the county’s record, both inside the consent block, five weeks apart at the end of 2023: a resolution to apply to the Office of the Governor for a license plate reader grant, and a resolution for a multiple use agreement letting the state highway department’s right of way carry trailer-mounted readers. Neither has a recorded outcome, and no county record says how many readers the county operates, where they are, how long reads are kept or who can search them.

The readers on the map were bought by city police departments. Bell County’s cities have not been researched for this project, and nothing here claims anything about what any of their councils did. License plate readers has both items.

Cameras in county buildings

The Temple Annex in 2017, the Justice Center in 2018, the Juvenile Justice Center in 2022 and the Central Jail in 2025, from four different vendors, with a $453,895.88 storage array in 2022 for prosecution evidence and jail video. No item says how many cameras, which spaces they cover, or how long the recordings are kept. Cameras in county buildings and the jail has each purchase.

What the record does not contain

Across all 1,020 documents there is no occurrence of Flock, Vigilant, Clearview, Fusus, ShotSpotter, gunshot detection, facial recognition, drone, real time crime center or fusion center. That is a statement about the Commissioners Court’s published agendas and minutes and about nothing else.

Where to take this

The Court meets on Mondays at 9:00 a.m. in the courthouse in Belton, and its consent agenda is where the camera purchases sit. How to show up in Bell County has the room, the comment procedure and what to watch for. If you would rather reduce your own exposure first, the protect yourself guide is the place to start.