Flock camera debate heats up District 2 council race
on October 10, 2026
Something that haunts District 2 Councilmember Charlene Wang is the story of local chef and supporter Eric Rivera, who was imprisoned for five years for a crime he didn’t commit.
“He said to me, if there had been cameras, he wouldn’t have been wrongfully put away,” Wang said. “There’s other innocent people in prison where if the evidence was there, the right person would have been.”
Debates around the use of Flock Automatic License Plate Readers have animated discussions in cities around the country, and it has divided residents in City Council District 2, which Wang has represented since winning in a special election last year.
She is facing a challenge in November from Nate Adams, a community organizer and former co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s East Bay chapter. They are on opposite sides of the Flock debate, with Wang supporting Oakland’s use of the technology, with safeguards, and Adams pledging to eliminate it.
Wang said that while she takes the community’s concerns about privacy and how Flock uses data seriously, she sees advantages to the program.
“I get calls about people’s vehicles still getting stolen, and the automated license plate reader technology is used to literally recover stolen vehicles in real time,” she said. “I certainly don’t want to see undocumented communities or any communities harmed by this technology.”
Adams said he shares residents’ safety concerns, but believes Flock cameras don’t actually make people safe.
“I think if your answer is Flock, it’s not because you actually believe that’s the solution, it’s because of a lack of imagination,” Adams said. “If we care about keeping communities safe, then we cannot be having contracts with companies like Flock that are actively working with ICE.”
Oakland data shared
Flock cameras capture images of license plates and use proprietary technology to turn the plate image into searchable text. That data is checked against a “hot list” of cars that police may be looking for. The system notifies police if there’s a hit. Data can be stored for up to 30 days.
According to Flock data, Oakland has 293 cameras that have captured over 1.6 million unique plates and 100,000 “hot list” hits in the past month.
The cameras were initially supplied by the state under contract with the California Highway Patrol. In December, Wang and six other council members voted for a two-year, $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety. The city is still working to finalize and sign the contract.
Concerns rose over the use of city data after the San Francisco Standard reported in November that other California police departments has tapped into data from Oakland’s system hundreds of times, including to assist the FBI and possibly Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response, the Oakland Police Department said it does not directly share data with federal agencies.
Wang offered a conversation, spending about 20 minutes talking to a few of the protesters.
In her short time on City Council, Wang, a Department of Transportation appointee in the Biden administration, has been one of its most prolific policy makers. Supporters at her canvassing event said they appreciate her pragmatic approach to governance, including her vote for Flock cameras. Among the legislation she has written was a safeguard to protect the data collected by the cameras from being shared and misused by Oakland’s Police Department.
Michael Andemeskel, a Wang supporter who lives in the San Antonio neighborhood, said, “If we don’t have enough police officers, we need to make that up somehow, and cameras can make that up.”
Adams said that if elected, he would try to terminate the Flock contract and work with the council to fully implement crime prevention programs that are already on the books, including the community violence reduction plan passed by voters in 2024. The measure increased parcel and parking lot taxes to hire more emergency service personnel and fund community violence prevention programs.
During a canvassing event for Adams on Sept. 23, Jesse Rosemoore said Adams’ stance on Flock was the primary reason for his support.
“I reached out to Charlene Wang’s office in good faith with serious concerns about Flock and ICE’s access to the data it collects,” he said. “Her chief of staff gaslit me, and her office sidelined and ignored the concerns of the community and proceeded to advocate for this clearly unsafe technology.”
Rosemoore has knocked on hundreds of doors to share Adams’ vision for Oakland and his mission to remove the cameras from the city.
During one such session in the Lakeshore neighborhood last month, he sold Logan Caraway on Adams after mentioning his desire to eliminate Flock from the city. Caraway said he’s concerned about increased surveillance in the city and was especially excited about Adams’ history of involvement with the DSA.
After dropping off food at Wang’s event, Rivera, the man who believes surveillance cameras may have proven his innocence sooner, headed straight for the council member to give her a hug.
“Charlene has always been there for me,” Rivera said.
When he sees a pile of garbage on his street corner, he said, “I want to know who did it, and when I don’t have a camera that gives me an indication of who did that so we can make them pay for it, then I’m pissed.”
(Top photo: The District 2 candidates are pictured at a September debate, with moderator Precious Green standing between them, by Yuan-Hsi Chou.)
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