My Personal Statement on Flock Safety Cameras in Santa Barbara
Public Safety, Privacy, and Accountability
Santa Barbara is a community that values safety, civil liberties, and public trust. While technology can play a role in public safety, it must be deployed responsibly, transparently, and with meaningful safeguards. After reviewing how Flock Safety’s camera systems operate, I believe their continued use in our city raises serious concerns about privacy, oversight, and the risk of harm to innocent residents.
What Flock Safety Is
Flock Safety is a private, for-profit company that provides automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and related software to law enforcement agencies, homeowner associations, and private entities. These cameras capture images of vehicles that pass through their field of view and record data such as license plate number, location, date, and time. The system also identifies vehicle characteristics including make, model, color, and other visible features. Flock refers to this data as a “Vehicle Fingerprint.”
Flock Safety’s CEO and founder, Garrett Langley, has been reported to have stated the company’s goal is:
“To eliminate crime by blanket monitoring all neighborhoods.”
While Flock states that its systems are intended to support investigations, this approach reflects broad, ongoing data collection rather than narrowly targeted surveillance.
Data Access and Oversight
The data collected by Flock cameras is stored on Flock Safety’s servers and accessed by customers through the company’s software platform. Law enforcement agencies typically pay for access to this data rather than hosting it themselves. Policies governing who may search the data, how long it is retained, and whether it can be shared with other agencies vary by jurisdiction and by contract.
Because this data is held by a third-party vendor, civil liberties organizations have raised concerns that access to historical location data may occur without a warrant in some circumstances, depending on local policy and interpretation of existing law. Courts across the country continue to examine how long-term location tracking intersects with Fourth Amendment protections.
Expanding Capabilities: Flock Nova
Flock Safety has introduced a product known as Flock Nova, which is designed to help investigators analyze license plate data alongside other records. According to reporting and company materials, Nova is intended to help law enforcement identify potential connections between vehicles, people, and locations by drawing from multiple datasets.
According to leaked internal company materials reported by 404 Media:
“An investigator could jump from a license plate reader hit to a person & understand content linked to other people related to it, through marriage or even gang affiliation. Creating a very powerful linking of an individuals network.”
Privacy advocates have warned that tools which combine location data with other records can significantly expand surveillance capabilities beyond their original purpose, increasing the risk of misuse or overreach.
Real-World Harm and Documented Risks
Automated license plate reader systems, including those used by Flock Safety, are not infallible. Errors and misuse have led to serious real-world consequences.
August 2020 — Aurora, Colorado: Police stopped Brittney Gilliam and her family at gunpoint after an ALPR system incorrectly flagged their vehicle as stolen. The alert actually referred to a different vehicle in another state. The City of Aurora later settled the case for $1.9 million.
July 2023 — Española, New Mexico: Police detained Jaclynn Gonzales and her 12-year-old sister with weapons drawn after an ALPR misread a license plate. Officers released them after discovering a single-digit error.
2024–2025 — Nationwide: Investigative reporting revealed that FedEx, which operates a private police force, has partnered with Flock Safety to use ALPR technology and share certain data with law enforcement. This arrangement extends license plate surveillance beyond fixed cameras and raises questions about transparency, scope, and public consent.
City of Sedgwick, Kansas: Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after it was revealed he repeatedly used ALPR access to track his ex-girlfriend’s movements more that 160 times from June to October of 2023. The case illustrates how surveillance tools can be abused when safeguards fail.
Civil liberties organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have documented that ALPR errors and misuse can place innocent people at risk, particularly when officers rely on automated alerts without independent verification.
Impacts on Santa Barbara Residents
The concerns surrounding Flock Safety are not abstract. They are playing out right here in Santa Barbara.
SBPD began its contract with Flock Safety in 2024, and 12 cameras are now operating across our city. Five of those cameras are concentrated in the Westside neighborhood, near high-traffic areas around San Pascual, Micheltorena, Carrillo and West Mission streets, one of Santa Barbara's most diverse communities. The placement of surveillance infrastructure in this neighborhood, above others, raises serious questions about who bears the burden of mass monitoring and why.
When it was revealed that a flaw in Flock's system architecture had allowed law enforcement agencies outside California, including federal agencies, to access local camera data, Santa Barbara residents had every right to be alarmed. Undocumented community members, already living with heightened fear of immigration enforcement, were among the most impacted. Several told local reporters they were afraid to drive in their own neighborhoods. That is not the Santa Barbara I want to live in, and it is not the Santa Barbara I will represent.
Our City Council has taken a step in the right direction by voting to reconsider the contract with Flock Safety. But reconsidering is not enough. Residents deserve a full, transparent public review of how this data has been used, who has accessed it, and what policies have meaningfully protected them.
Search records from SBPD show that after public scrutiny intensified in late 2025, officers stopped listing specific reasons for searches altogether, labeling them simply "Withheld By Officer." That is the opposite of accountability.
Santa Barbara is a sanctuary city. We have reaffirmed our commitment to being a welcoming community for all residents, regardless of immigration status or ethnicity. Deploying surveillance technology that puts that commitment at risk, through corporate data vulnerabilities, federal access loopholes, or simple lack of oversight, is incompatible with our values.
I believe our community's safety is best served by trust, transparency, and investment in people, not by outsourcing surveillance to a private company whose data practices we cannot fully control.
Accuracy and Accountability
Studies and audits of ALPR systems show that misreads can occur due to factors such as lighting, angle, or similar-looking characters. While accuracy rates vary, even a relatively small error rate can have serious consequences when alerts lead to armed stops or detentions. Flock Safety states that responsibility for how data is used rests with the customer agency, which means liability and accountability ultimately fall on local governments and taxpayers.
Does This Reduce Crime?
ALPR technology may assist in solving certain crimes. However, the broader question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs to privacy, civil liberties, and public trust. Continuous, location-based surveillance of residents who are not suspected of wrongdoing represents a significant policy choice that deserves careful public debate.
More importantly for Santa Barbara residents: since SBPD began its contract with Flock Safety in 2024, the department has not publicly reported any data specifically attributing arrests, solved cases, or crime reductions to the cameras. The public audit available through SBPD's Transparency Portal logs individual searches but does not track outcomes. Residents are being asked to accept the privacy tradeoffs of a citywide surveillance system without being shown what, if anything, it has delivered in return.
My Position
Public safety strategies must be effective, transparent, and consistent with our constitutional values. Technologies that enable broad surveillance by a private vendor, with limited public oversight and documented cases of harm, do not meet that standard.
For these reasons, I support removing Flock Safety cameras from Santa Barbara and pursuing safety solutions that protect both our community and our rights.