A group protesting local traffic-surveillance cameras, DeFlock SCV, returned to Santa Clarita City Hall for Tuesday’s meeting, determined to get the City Council’s attention.
This time, it did.
At the Aug. 24 City Council meeting, more than a dozen DeFlock SCV members raised concerns about automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which photograph license plates, share the data with law enforcement agencies and store it on a Flock Safety server.
Group members called the cameras — which city officials and local law enforcement have praised as powerful crime-fighting tools — the kind of government overreach George Orwell warned against in “1984.” Some dressed in red and waved copies of the book to make their point.
Speakers described the city’s response at the prior meeting as underwhelming: City Manager Ken Striplin had said he would comment at the end, then the meeting ended without remarks from him.
This time, the group turned out in larger numbers and got responses from Striplin, SCV Sheriff’s Station Capt. Brandon Barclay and each council member.
Still, the group appears no closer to its goal: getting the city to cancel its $125,000 annual contract option for the cameras, which takes effect in November.
The council took the demonstration as an opportunity for a civics lesson aimed largely at student commenters, taking a rare recess early in the meeting of public comment to address noise in the council chambers.
After Mayor Laurene Weste twice admonished the crowd over noise, a comment from DeFlock SCV founder Jaechan Lee drew applause. Weste then asked the council about taking a recess, praising the group’s intelligence but saying the noise level was preventing everyone from being heard and getting their turn. Councilwoman Marsha McLean seconded the motion, and the council recessed for 10 minutes.
When the meeting resumed, public comment continued, with Striplin addressing the council after the first 10 speakers — all of whom raised concerns about Flock.
Striplin said the cameras had been mischaracterized and that the city works closely with the SCV Sheriff’s Station to evaluate its contracts. Through this process, the Flock system has proven to be a vital tool, he said.
“There never will be (enough officers), so the Sheriff’s Department, like any other public agency, looks to technology to supplement and assist in law enforcement,” Striplin said. “And while the speakers may not agree with the tool, there is a process we go by, which is to provide public safety. We rely heavily on the Sheriff’s Department to provide that public safety. They are the experts as it relates to solving crimes.”
One commenter asked about the presentation of the Flock Safety technology to the City Council in November 2024. During that discussion, Councilman Jason Gibbs asked about data deletion, and was told Flock Data is only kept for 30 days.
A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department wrote in an email last week that the license-plate data from the department’s contract, which is with Motorola Vigilant, calls for two years of data storage. Sheriff’s Cmdr. Justin Diez said in a phone call Thursday that contract cities like Santa Clarita have their own terms in Flock Safety contracts, and the city-station-Flock agreement still calls for a 30-day deletion.
In terms of specific local oversight, Diez referred questions to Barclay, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Opponents cited recent reports of Flock data being misused elsewhere despite the safeguards in place. Barclay said at Tuesday’s meeting that the data is subject to multiple internal checks, including “controlled access, individual credentials, audit capabilities, departmental policy, training, supervisory oversight, command accountability and state and federal legal requirements.”
“Personnel are expected to access Flock information only for legitimate public safety or investigative purposes,” Barclay said. “That means no curiosity searches, no personal searches, no looking up information involving friends, family members, neighbors, or anyone else for an unauthorized purpose.”
Even when the cameras are used properly, there are questions about their efficacy, commenters said. A Los Angeles Police Department audit came back in July that prompted the agency to suspend its contract while it re-evaluates the cameras’ usage and their policies.
Gibbs had questions about the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s audit process and whether the station has ever looked at data related to incorrect plate hits.
The LAPD audit showed 161 license-plate “matches” the cameras made were later determined to be inaccurate.
Barclay said he didn’t have any data from audits of local usage to analyze, but he could report back to the City Council. The council did not request a report back.
The Sheriff’s Department said in its prepared statement that its employees are subject to audits from a dedicated team, though it did not specify what the audits cover or how the local data is reviewed. A department subject-matter expert was not made available for this story.
An ALPR team “conducts random monthly audits of authorized users of the Motorola Solutions Vigilant VehicleManager platform to ensure compliance with applicable policies and procedures,” the department said in its Tuesday statement. “In addition, several of the department’s contract cities have purchased Flock Safety ALPR technology and authorized LASD personnel to access and use the resulting data for legitimate law enforcement purposes.”
