FEATURED |
By George B. Sánchez-Tello
Flock Safety has roughly two months to remove more than 60 cameras across unincorporated Monterey County. But automated license plate readers still remain in local cities where police have contracts with Flock — Carmel, Salinas, Seaside, Marina, Monterey and Pacific Grove. And, Supervisor Chris Lopez is organizing South County cities to request federal funding for cameras in the region.
The county Board of Supervisors voted on Sept. 22 to end the Sheriff’s Office’s contract with Flock Safety. In the hours of public comment that led to the vote, residents warned that the tide turning against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, would extend beyond the county and soon focus on cities and agencies like the District Attorney’s Office that maintain contracts with Flock and other ALPR companies.
The readers are mounted, solar-powered cameras that use artificial intelligence to record and identify license plates and other characteristics of an automobile — like make and model — as well as the driver. Contracts and agreements between the company, Flock Safety, and local, state and federal law enforcement agencies allow the sharing of images and data. Flock boasts of a network connecting agencies across 49 states.
“The Get the Flock Out Monterey County coalition will continue working to push the DA to end their contract with Flock and avoid obtaining any new contracts. We will begin increasing pressure on each city council to withdraw the Flock contracts and remove all cameras,” wrote organizer Korina McKinley in an email. “We will also request/demand they do not contract with any other ALPR systems, such as Axon and Motorola.”
The week before the supervisors’ meeting, the coalition appeared during public comment at the Salinas City Council meeting on Sept. 15, demanding an end to ALPRs. Get the Flock Out Monterey County publicly announced its existence at a press conference the week before, describing a local campaign to organize protests against mass surveillance throughout Monterey County.
Organizing against ALPR will necessarily be local and city-by-city, said Michelle “Mickey” Welsh, Monterey College of Law professor emeritus.
“Each city has its own separate flock contract and ALRP policy: That’s what was so insidious about Flock going around the country, city and towns and counties selling its systems and putting them up everywhere to create the mass surveillance system they now have,” Welsh wrote in an email. “So to eliminate all Flock surveillance, each separate city and agency has to vote on it separately. That is the Flock Out effort, starting with the county.”
Instances of unauthorized data access, notably between local and federal agencies, have raised concerns and questions about mass surveillance and civil liberties. Multiple research and reporting organizations have found local and state law enforcement have assisted ICE by allowing immigration agents access to Flock databases.
Individual police officers have even used the surveillance tool to stalk women, according to a report by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm. At least 50 officers used the surveillance tool inappropriately, according to the Washington Post.
Carmel Police, Marina Department of Public Safety, Monterey Police, Pacific Grove Police, Salinas Police and Seaside Police all have operating cameras in their jurisdictions, according to Finding Flock, an independent, online database and map of known Flock and ALPR camera locations.
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Since summer, Supervisor Lopez has asked the mayors and city councils of Greenfield, Gonzalez and King City to sign a letter of support for federal funding to pay for ALPR cameras in South Monterey County. Lopez is seeking a $3 million Congressional Directed Spending request through the office of Congressmember Zoe Lofgren. At the July 14 Soledad City Council meeting, City Manager Megan Hunter recommended the South County city join Lopez’s efforts. Soledad would act as the fiscal administrator, according to the report.
Monterey County became the latest government agency to oust Flock and reconsider the use of ALPR at its late-September board meeting. Two supervisors — Lopez and Luis Alejo — voted to keep the cameras, aligned with Sheriff Tina Nieto and District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni. Supervisors Glenn Church, Wendy Root Askew and Kate Daniels voted to end the county’s contract and remove the 63 ALPR cameras.
The vote capped weeks of public organizing and discussion around an issue that has seemingly galvanized residents and public servants across the country against mass surveillance networks.
Monterey County Supervisors were initially scheduled to vote Aug. 25 on a proposal by Sheriff Nieto to expand her department’s contract with Flock from 63 cameras to 103. The 10-year proposal would have cost $2.7 million. The county’s audit controller had reviewed the contract and did not agree to its non-standard payment provision, according to a report prepared by Nieto for that meeting.
Instead of presenting, the sheriff was given additional time to prepare and respond to more than 30 questions from the board, Nieto said in an email to Voices. Even with the presentation and vote postponed, supervisors went forward with public comment and heard from more than 50 speakers against the proposal. Three days later, the Sheriff’s Office issued a press release inviting the public to attend the Sept. 22 supervisors’ meeting.
The day before the meeting, Pacioni released a statement announcing her support for Flock ALPR. She said more than 6,000 criminal cases brought by Monterey County prosecutors involved evidence from ALPR networks. In her words, Flock’s network “solves crimes.”
When the Sheriff’s Flock presentation was made public in advance of the supervisors’ meeting, the proposal was notably different from what was originally planned in August. Rather than expand the county’s network of ALPR, Nieto proposed maintaining the 63 already in operation and signing a 10-year contract with Flock.
But when public comment began, speakers from all over the county had arrived — or joined online via Zoom — to overwhelmingly oppose the department’s continued use of Flock. Shortly before 7:00 that evening, a three-person majority of the board voted in accordance with public opinion.
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