Under pressure from residents, Oakland council committee backs off plate-reader contract

A deadlocked vote at an Oakland City Council subcommittee late Tuesday night narrowly prevented the expansion of the city’s contract with a quickly growing but increasingly controversial surveillance camera company.

People waiting to speak about the contract filled the ornate third floor council chambers and most of two overflow rooms downstairs. More than 100 speakers signed up to address the subcommittee, the vast majority opposed to approving a contract with Flock Safety. 

After more than five hours of comments and discussion, Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Subcommittee deadlocked with a 2-2 vote. Because the item failed to win a majority of support, it will not proceed to the full council for consideration.

“We believe this Flock contract will put Oakland immigrant residents in grave danger,” Lisa Hoffman, co-executive director of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, an immigration advocacy group, said. “Over the past months, Flock has violated contracts with other sanctuary cities by sharing their data with the federal government for immigration enforcement and lying about it.” 

The proposed contract with Flock, a private company which operates in more than 5,000 cities across the country, would cost Oakland $2.25 million over two years. The contract would have paid for the Police Department to continue to operate 292 license plate-reading cameras in the city, while adding an additional 40 cameras with live video capabilities.

Flock came to Oakland in 2024 when the California Highway Patrol contracted with the company to install 480 cameras in Oakland and on nearby East Bay highways. The Oakland Police Department entered a three-year agreement with the CHP allowing the city to access data from Flock’s cameras.

Flock supporters have argued the cameras have helped the city’s under-staffed Police Department solve crimes more efficiently and that crime might rise without them. Critics view them as part of a private surveillance system which has been used to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its nationwide raids, even in so-called sanctuary cities where police are barred from collaborating with ICE.

“I have no idea how we as a sanctuary city support anything with any association with Donald Trump … or any of his conservative billionaire cronies who are working to reshape this country in the image of something that looks nothing like the people who came here to speak today,” said Councilmember Carroll Fife, who voted against the contract.

Flock backlash

Multiple news outlets have reported that California agencies using Flock cameras have allowed law enforcement agencies outside of the state to access license plate data in violation of a 2015 state law barring the practice.

Unlike a traditional security camera company, which might sell and install cameras for a police department to operate itself, Flock owns the cameras it installs and then allows subscribing agencies to search data from cameras in their city and, sometimes, other jurisdictions throughout the country.

In a presentation, Lt. Gabriel Urquiza framed Flock cameras as an important part of the Oakland Police Department’s “holistic, comprehensive approach” which has helped reduce crime rates significantly over the past few years. While Urquiza described how Flock cameras had been helpful in solving a few crimes in the East Bay, he did not say exactly how many crimes the cameras had been used to solve.

Seeking to allay privacy concerns, Urquiza said the department has prevented agencies from outside of California from accessing its Flock data since it started using the cameras last year. 

Flock, which was founded in 2017 and has grown extremely quickly, has experienced a growing backlash across the country. On Nov. 1, NBC News reported that eight cities around the country had paused or canceled their contracts with Flock since the summer. While a spokesperson for Flock told NBC that cancelled contracts represent a small percentage of the 800 contracts the company signed this year, resistance to the company is clearly growing.

In the Bay Area, multiple cities this week faced pushback over their use of Flock cameras. On Monday, Brian Hofer, the former chair of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission sued the city, alleging that the Police Department has failed to follow its own guidelines to prevent agencies from outside the state from accessing Flock data.

On Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union sued San Jose, alleging its use of Flock cameras violate residents’ right to privacy. The same day, Santa Cruz decided to pause its participation in Flock’s statewide search system, after discovering federal agencies could access data from the city’s cameras. The city’s police chief has said there was no evidence that Santa Cruz’s data was actually used by federal agents.

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