SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Aug. 10 (Santa Cruz News Online) — The Santa Cruz City Council voted 6-1 on Jan. 13 to terminate the city’s contract with Flock Safety, citing concerns about privacy, data sharing, cybersecurity and control over police surveillance information.
Councilmember Sonja Brunner cast the only opposing vote. The decision ended the city’s use of Flock’s automated license plate reader system and directed city staff to study other systems or safeguards that would provide stronger local control.
The action is a city policy decision, not a criminal case. No arrests, criminal charges or court proceedings are identified in connection with the council’s vote.
What are Flock cameras?
Flock’s automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, use cameras to capture images of vehicles and license plates. The system can record details such as the time and location of a vehicle’s appearance.
Police agencies can use ALPR data to help locate vehicles linked to reported crimes or other investigations. Unlike a traditional traffic camera, an ALPR system is designed to identify and search license plates and other vehicle features.
Santa Cruz had eight Flock cameras. City communications manager Erika Smart said the police department stopped using the system after the council vote and began coordinating with Flock to remove the cameras. Removal was expected to take several weeks, but the supplied information does not establish the date when all eight cameras were physically removed.
Why did the council object?
Councilmembers questioned who could access Santa Cruz’s data, how the information could be shared and whether the city could prevent uses that conflict with local privacy policies or California law.
Police Chief Bernie Escalante said Santa Cruz data had been accessible to law-enforcement agencies outside California through Flock’s national search tool. He described the access as inadvertent and contrary to California law, according to coverage of his council statement.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Flock disabled the California setting connected to national sharing on Feb. 11, 2025. Santa Cruz later opted out of a statewide sharing portal in November, according to the same report.
Councilmember Susie O’Hara said the concern was not simply whether Santa Cruz police officers could be trusted. The issue, she said, was whether the city could ensure that its data would not be used in ways that conflict with Santa Cruz’s values or create fear in the community.
Mayor Fred Keeley said the threat to civil liberties outweighed the benefits the city could receive from what he called a flawed product, according to KQED.
What is known about the data searches?
The advocacy group Get the Flock Out said state agencies accessed Santa Cruz camera data about 4,000 times between June and October 2025 on behalf of federal law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That figure comes from the group’s research and has not been independently confirmed by an official record in the supplied information. The records provided do not identify every agency involved, the specific searches conducted or whether ICE directly accessed Santa Cruz data.
Flock has said that its customers control access to their data and that the company does not share data with the federal government, according to KQED’s account of the company’s position.
The dispute centers on a basic question of data governance: whether a city that installs the cameras can also control who searches the information, how long it is retained and what purposes are allowed.
When did Santa Cruz sign the contract?
The supplied accounts differ on the agreement’s start date. One account says the city entered the contract in 2024, while another says the council approved the agreement in December 2023.
The contract was scheduled to expire March 27. The council’s action allowed termination with 30 days’ notice, making Feb. 12 the earliest end date cited in the supplied coverage.
Could Santa Cruz use license-plate readers again?
Possibly. The council directed city staff to examine alternative ALPR systems or safeguards that could address the concerns raised during the debate.
That means the vote did not necessarily reject every use of automated license-plate technology. It ended the city’s Flock contract and immediate use of that system while leaving open a future discussion about local control, privacy protections, access rules and vendor accountability.
The decision applies to the city of Santa Cruz. Other Santa Cruz County jurisdictions, including Capitola and Watsonville, were reported to still have Flock deployments; the city council’s vote did not terminate those agreements.
