Agenda packet — El Cerrito City Council, May 5, 2026 (part 2 of 2)

ALPR systems pose a distinct threat to marginalized communities.1 As with other surveillance technologies, police often deploy ALPR cameras in poor and historically overpoliced areas, regardless of crime rates.2 When placed in fixed locations, ALPRs essentially create checkpoints throughout a city that log and monitor where residents go and when, threatening their freedom of movement and potentially reinforcing historical patterns of neighborhood segregation.3 Such surveillance can amplify racial and economic disparities in our policing and incarceration systems, and also has serious psychological consequences. 4 2. Out-of-state and federal agencies can exploit ALPR location information to target and locate people.

Government agencies can—and have—used the location information collected by ALPRs – to target and deport immigrants and track people exercising their First Amendment rights.5 Law enforcement agencies, including the federal government, may obtain or demand access to ALPR networks, exposing the lives and futures of immigrants to needless harm. Indeed, we know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Patrol (“CBP”) have exploited locally-collected ALPR location information to target, locate, detain, and deport immigrants as they drive to work, run errands, or drop their children off at school. At least one California law enforcement agency has been sued for sharing the locations of drivers with out-ofstate and federal agencies, a practice which is illegal under California law. 6 1 See, e.g., Angel Diaz & Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Automatic License Plate Readers: Legal Status and Policy Recommendations for Law Enforcement Use, BRENNAN CRT. FOR JUST. (Sep. 10, 2020) https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/automatic-license-plate-readers-legal-status-and-policyrecommendations; Matt Cagle, San Francisco – Paying the Price for Surveillance Without Safeguards, ACLU OF.

NORTHERN CAL. (May 22, 2014) https://www.aclunc.org/blog/san-francisco-paying-price-surveillance-withoutsafeguards. 2 Dave Maass and Jeremy Gillula, What You Can Learn from Oakland’s Raw ALPR Data, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUND. (Jan. 21, 2015) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/what-we-learned-oakland-raw-alprdata; Barton Gellman and Sam Adler-Bell, The Disparate Impact of Surveillance, THE CENTURY FOUND. (Dec. 21, 2017) https://tcf.org/content/report/disparate-impact-surveillance/; see also, e.g., Kaveh Waddell, How LicensePlate Readers Have Helped Police and Lenders Target the Poor, THE ATLANTIC (Apr. 22, 2016) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/how-license-plate-readers-have-helped-police-and-lenderstarget-the-poor/479436/ (summarizing data indicating that Oakland Police Department deployed ALPRs “disproportionately often in low-income areas and in neighborhoods with high concentrations of African-American and Latino residents”).
3 Laura Schenker, David Sylvan, Jean-Louis Arcand, and Ravi Bhavnani, Segregation and ‘Out-of-Placeness’: The Direct Effect of Neighborhood Racial Composition on Police Stops, POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY (Apr. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231171516.
4 Chris Chambers, NSA and GCHQ: The Flawed Psychology of Government Mass Surveillance, THE GUARDIAN (Aug. 26, 2013) https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/26/nsa-gchq-psychologygovernment-mass-surveillance 5 Vasudha Talla, Documents Reveal ICE Using Driver Location Data From Local Police for Deportations, ACLU OF NORTHERN CAL. (Mar, 13, 2019), https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrolabuses/documents-reveal-ice-using-driver-location-data. 6 Case page, Lagleva v. Doyle, ACLU of Northern California website, https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/legaldocket/lagleva-v-doyle-license-plate-surveillance. The California Attorney General (“AG”) recently published an informational bulletin confirming that it is illegal for California law enforcement agencies to share ALPR information with law enforcement agencies outside of the state and attorneys at ACLU affiliates in California and Agenda Packet Page 268 of 528
Letter Opposing Renewal of El Cerrito’s Flock Contract
April 30, 2026

Page 3 ends

We should also consider that the risk to people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care in our community if ALPR-collected location information is shared with or demanded by a prosecutor in a state with anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws. In anti-abortion jurisdictions, driver location information collected by California-based ALPRs may be exploited by investigators or prosecutors to closely monitor abortion clinics, the vehicles seen around them, and the movements of abortion seekers and providers.
7 We should avoid building a system that could be
used to investigate or target someone who visits or travels through our community while seeking refuge and care in California.

Any community considering an ALPR camera network must take the possibility seriously that drivers’ locations will end up in the hands of a government agency that does not share the desire to protect the rights of marginalized people.

3. ALPR systems do not meaningfully improve public safety, but they have triggered unjustified stops of law-abiding people.

ALPR systems have repeatedly triggered dangerous and unjustified stops of drivers in Northern California and elsewhere. In San Francisco, police blind reliance on an ALPR scan led to the wrongful detention of a Black woman at gunpoint, triggering a multi-year civil rights lawsuit. 8 Two brothers returning from Thanksgiving with family were pulled from their rental car on I-80 after ALPR wrongly flagged it as stolen.9 More recently, police in Walnut Creek wrongly detained the director of a non-profit at gunpoint after another license plate reader system error. 10 And in Colorado, police officers forced four Black children to lie face down on the hot pavement after misidentifying their car as a “stolen” vehicle based on an incorrect reading of an ALPR the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote the AG a letter explaining that some agencies still violate this law, putting California reproductive rights at risk. See California Automated License Plate Reader Data Guidance, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (Oct. 27, 2023) https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/2023-DLE06.pdf; ACLU and EFF Letter to California AG Bonta (Jan. 31, 2024) https://www.aclunc.org/sites/default/files/2024-01-31_letter_to_ag_bonta_re_sb_34_final.pdf; see also Nick Hidalgo and Matt Cagle, Californians Fought Hard for Driver Privacy Protections. Why Are the Police Refusing to Follow Them? ACLU OF NORTHERN CAL. (Feb. 12, 2024) https://www.aclunc.org/blog/californians-foughthard-driver-privacy-protections-why-are-police-refusing-follow-them (explaining the ACLU of Northern California’s advocacy regarding ALPRs).
7 Dave Maass, Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Abortion Access. Here’s How Policymakers Can Mitigate the Risk, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUND. (Sep. 28, 2022) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/09/automatedlicense-plate-readers-threaten-abortion-access-heres-howpolicymakers. 8 Kade Crockford, San Francisco Woman Pulled Out of Car at Gunpoint Because of License Plate Reader Error, ACLU, May 13, 2014, https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/location-tracking/san-francisco-womanpulled-out-car-gunpoint-because; Matt Cagle, San Francisco – Paying the Price of Surveillance Without Safeguards, ACLU OF NORTHERN CAL. (May 22, 2014), https://www.aclunc.org/blog/san-francisco-paying- pricesurveillance-without-safeguards. 9 Charlie Warzel, Opinion | When License-Plate Surveillance Goes Horribly Wrong, THE NEW YORK TIMES, (Apr. 23, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/when-license-plate-surveillance-goes-horriblywrong.html. 10 Zach Norris, Opinion: At gunpoint, police handcuffed me after license-plate reader error, THE MERCURY NEWS (June 23, 2021) https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/06/23/opinion-at-gunpoint-police-handcuffed-mebecause-of-a- license-reader-error/.

Agenda Packet Page 269 of 528
Letter Opposing Renewal of El Cerrito’s Flock Contract
April 30, 2026

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system.
11 Whether due to computer or police error, the use of ALPR systems to stop drivers poses a threat to the health and safety of all motorists.

ALPR systems have not been meaningfully demonstrated to prevent crime or meaningfully improve public safety.
12 To the contrary, studies indicate that ALPRs do not have a deterrent effect on crime, with a recent analysis of ALPR cameras in Alameda County finding that auto thefts actually increased following installation of a system in 2020, ending a period of steady decline.13 And while ALPR vendors and police agencies often tout the effectiveness of ALPR in reducing crime, public safety experts point out that any reduction in crime cannot be attributed to ALPR themselves.14 Inaccurate reads are also surprisingly common as well: one randomized control trial in Vallejo, California, found that 37 percent of all ALPR “hits” from fixed readers and 35 percent from mobile ALPRs were misreads — an astonishingly high error rate.15 We urge the El Cerrito City Council to reject the contract with Flock Safety. We also encourage City Council to adopt an ordinance prohibiting the future acquisition of ALPR by city departments including the police. Moving forward, we urge the City of El Cerrito to engage community members in a discussion about non-surveillance alternatives to ALPR that have been demonstrated to improve the health and safety of communities like our own. 11 Matt Novak, Cops terrorize Black family but blame license plate reader for misidentifying ‘stolen’ vehicle, GIZMODO (Aug. 4, 2020) https://gizmodo.com/cops-terrorize-black-family-but-blame-license-plate-rea1844602731. 12 See, e.g., David Maass and Beryl Lipton, Data Driven: Explore How Cops Are Collecting and Sharing Our Travel Patterns Using Automated License Plate Readers, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUND. (Nov. 15, 2018) https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-reader-dataset (finding that between 2016 and 2017, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department scanned 234.36 million license plates with a 0.22 percent hit rate, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department scanned 162.69 million license plates with a 0.06 percent hit rate, and the Sacramento Police Department scanned 116.23 million license plates with a 0.1 percent hit rate). 13 Lauren Do (@laurendo), Twitter (Dec. 21, 2021, 2:05 PM), https://twitter.com/laurendo/status/1473414317605150722?s=11; Alameda County Publicly Accessible Data Sets (Feb. 2022) https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Alameda-County-Demographic-ReferenceData_Feb2022.pdf (finding motor vehicle theft increased from 10,267 in 2019 to 14,456 in 2020); see also Cynthia Lum, Julie Hibdon, Breanne Cave, Christopher S. Koper, & Linda Merola, License plate reader (LPR) police patrols in crime hot spots: an experimental evaluation in two adjacent jurisdictions, JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CRIMINOLOGY (2011) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-011-9133-9 (“Our findings indicate that, when small numbers of LPR patrols are used in crime hot spots in the way we have tested them here, they do not seem to generate either a general or offense-specific deterrent effect.”). 14 Louise Matsakis, Flock Safety Says Its License Plate Readers Reduce Crime. It’s Not That Simple, WIRED (Oct. 24, 2019), https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-license-plate-readers-crime/. 15 Jason Potts, Research in Brief: Assessing the Effectiveness of Automatic License Plate Readers, THE POLICE CHIEF (March 2018) https://theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/March%202018%20RIB.pdf.

Agenda Packet Page 270 of 528
Letter Opposing Renewal of El Cerrito’s Flock Contract
April 30, 2026

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Sincerely,
Tammy Kreznar
Senior Organizer
[email protected]
Sana Sethi
Organizer
[email protected]
Cc: Mayor Gabe Quinto
[email protected]
Councilmember Rebecca Saltzman
[email protected]
Councilmember Carolyn Wysinger
[email protected]
Councilmember William Ktsanes
[email protected]
Councilmember Lisa Motoyama
[email protected]
Agenda Packet Page 271 of 528
From: Soroosh Toosi
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comment for Agenda Item #9B - Resubmitting Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 2:25:29 PM
Dear City Council Members,
I am a resident of El Cerrito (94530), and I would like to express my strong support for renewing the agreement for the Flock License Plate Reading Camera system.

Public safety is extremely important to me and my family, and tools like these cameras play a critical role in helping law enforcement solve crimes, deter theft, and respond more effectively to incidents such as hit-and-runs and vehicle-related crimes.

While I understand there are privacy considerations, I believe that with proper policies and oversight in place, the benefits of these cameras in improving community safety far outweigh the concerns.

I encourage the City Council to renew this program and continue supporting our Police Department with effective tools to protect our community.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Soroosh Falah Toosi
Agenda Packet Page 272 of 528
From: Parnian Eslami
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comment – Support for License Plate Reader Cameras (Agenda Item #9B) Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 2:14:28 PM
Dear Members of the City Council,
I am an El Cerrito resident, and I’m writing to share my support for continuing the Flock License Plate Reader Camera program.

I respectfully encourage the City Council to renew the agreement and continue supporting this initiative.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Parnian Eslami
El Cerrito resident (94530)
Agenda Packet Page 273 of 528
From: Parnian Eslami
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comment for Agenda Item #9B - Resubmit Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 2:27:23 PM
Dear Members of the City Council,
I am an El Cerrito resident, and I’m writing to share my support for continuing the Flock License Plate Reader Camera program.

I respectfully encourage the City Council to renew the agreement and continue supporting this initiative.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Parnian Eslami
El Cerrito resident (94530)
Agenda Packet Page 274 of 528
From: Rachel Sommovilla
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda Item 9B - Please renew agreement with Flock Safety Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 3:03:57 PM
Mayor and Councilmembers and City Clerk,
I am writing to ask that you please continue utilizing Flock safety license plate reading cameras in El Cerrito. I understand that they were recently vital in finding a hit and run driver and solving that crime, which also enabled the city to obtain insurance coverage to reimburse it for its costs. These readers are a crucial part of our city's public safety to help law enforcement solve crimes and deter would-be offenders. When implemented with privacy safeguards and data use policies, I believe these are a crucial tool to protect our city and keep our community safer. I urge you not to take this important tool away from our police officers.

Thank you,
Rachel Sommovilla
Agenda Packet Page 275 of 528
From: DIANA GARCIA
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda Item #9B
Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 4:04:19 PM
Good afternoon,
I received an email regarding a meeting on Tuesday, May 5th regarding the cancellation or renewal of the Flock contract with the City. My comments on this matter are below.

While I believe Flock cameras can be a useful tool in solving crimes, I am concerned that license plate data will be shared with other agencies, and I am not in favor of the system being able to track individuals whether they are criminals or not. I feel that data obtained should be used ONLY for crime solving and not as a surveillance tool for other agencies.

For these reasons, I am not in favor of renewing the contract with Flock.

Thank you
Diana
Sent from my iPad
Agenda Packet Page 276 of 528
From: Andrew Susskind
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda item #9B - flock
Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 5:24:48 PM
While I understand the appeal of surveillance tools, I do not support the funding of a contract extension. While I do personally have cameras inside and around my home, and I have caught images of car break-ins, bicycle thefts, and trespassers, I have also caught thousands of hours of private content like children playing. Of friends drinking. Of arguments with my spouse. To pay for the cameras and services under the guise of increasing security, we have to abandon our sense of privacy. Given the use of AI, the veracity of government access to our collected videos, and the likely data brokerage practices, I think it is time to let flock leave the nest.

Agenda Packet Page 277 of 528
From: David Reedy
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Flock
Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 6:11:45 PM
Flock YES. Library NO.

David B. Reedy
EC
Agenda Packet Page 278 of 528
From: Patricia Perry
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] #9b
Date: Friday, May 1, 2026 7:50:38 PM
I love flock cameras. Honestly I don't know what they look like but I watch all cop shows across the USA and they really help track stolen cars and criminals. I remember El Cerrito put out a statement about 2 times where information was wrongly shared and was fixed in the past. I do not think there is a privacy issue. I only think it's a very helpful tool for police.

Get Outlook for Android
Agenda Packet Page 279 of 528
From: P. Diane Gilbert-Snyder
To: City Clerk
Cc: Paul Gilbert-Snyder
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comment - Agenda Item #9B Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026 7:37:29 AM
Hello. I am a 30-year resident of El Cerrito. I am also a fan of our police department, which I consider one of the best in the country: professional, transparent, and respectful. With so many police departments, both locally and nationally, in the grip of corruption and lack of accountability, ours stands out as a model of credibility. It lives up to the motto "to protect and serve."
So when the captain and officers of the ECPD tell us that the License Plate Reading Camera system is an effective tool to for solving more cases, preventing crime, and lowering crime rates, we should listen. Please do not cancel the Flock Camera contract. We need every tool in our arsenal to keep El Cerrito safe.

Thanks for your attention.

Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
--
Pamela Diane Gilbert-Snyder, CT, MA, MFA
ATA-Certified French–English Translator
Specializing in legal, financial, environmental, and medical fields Agenda Packet Page 280 of 528
Public Comments – Agenda Item #9B (Flock Contract)
To: El Cerrito City Council <[email protected]>
From: Concerned Residents of El Cerrito
Re: Public Comments – Agenda Item #9B (Flock Contract)
We are your neighbors and constituents. We have come together in the last year out of a common and urgent concern to protect our democracy from the obvious authoritarian threats at the national level, and to maintain and protect our local community. This is a time when local governance can really make a difference in light of dangers at the federal level. Your job is so important, as are our voices. We write regarding the El Cerrito Police Department’s proposal to renew the contract with Flock for license plate surveillance.

We urge you: on April 21, do not vote to renew the Flock contract. We think that after hearing from your community as well as perhaps, outside and unbiased experts, you will choose not to renew the contract. However, the first step is to require more consideration. On April 21, give yourselves and us more time by not voting to renew the contract.

Legal and Financial Concerns
Across the country, community members and experts are raising alarms about the integrity of Flock as a company, the security of their cameras, the inability of municipalities to protect their local data from federal agencies, and many documented misuses of the technology.

For example, as described by Police Chief Keith and detailed in the Complaint in the lawsuit currently pending against Flock Group Inc. in the Northern District of California at paragraph 115, El Cerrito’s data was released to two federal agencies AFTER Flock assured El Cerrito that its settings prevented just such a release. These breaches violated California law.

Cities across the Bay Area — including Mountain View, Richmond, and Santa Cruz — have paused the use of Flock or even cut ties with the company after learning that license plate reader data was illegally shared with law enforcement agencies outside of their jurisdictions.

These cities are part of a nationwide trend including Eugene, Oregon; Olympia Washington; and Ithaca, New York.1
1 See deflock.org for a complete list of U.S. communities that have parted ways with Flock.

Agenda Packet Page 281 of 528
Flock raises serious constitutional questions at the State and Federal level. The City of San Jose, its Mayor, and its Police Chief have been sued by SIREN and CAIR in Santa Clara County Superior Court in a lawsuit alleging San Jose’s use of Flock cameras is unconstitutional under the Constitutions of California and the United States. El Cerrito can ill afford the risk of continuing to use Flock cameras should their use be found to be unconstitutional.

At least one court has held that Flock camera data is a public record subject to public records requests 2, and, that ruling caused at least one city to deactivate its Flock cameras in part due to fear of the costs of responding to public records requests. It was also a public record request that led Mountainview to shut down their Flock cameras.3 As public concern about the use of Flock grows, El Cerrito can expect public records requests that will be expensive to respond to or fight. This technology opens El Cerrito to lawsuits and costs that will undermine the diligence you have done to return El Cerrito to a sound financial condition.

The City Council has worked hard to put the City on a firm financial footing. Do not put that stability at risk by continuing to contract with a company that exposes us to these risks.

Flock is an untrustworthy vendor
There is mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to civil liberties: Flock has provided ICE with data despite sanctuary policies4, stolen millions of data points, and its CEO is well-documented for lying to communities.5 Flock stores info in a searchable database, allowing for unethical real-time and historical tracking of residents.6 Youtubers have accessed Flock-provided cameras.7 Flock wants people to think that it is a reliable technology company that partners with local governments and municipalities to make them safer. However, experience has shown that they cannot keep the information they collect private, they have repeatedly allowed information to be shared when it should not be, and their 7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
6https://data.aclum.org/2025/10/07/flock-gives-law-enforcement-all-over-the-country-acce ss-to-your-location/
5 https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-ballistic 4https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-ice-accessing-flock-automated-license-plat e-reader-cameras-via-local-law-enforcement/
3 https://therecord.media/california-city-turns-off-flock-cameras-unauthorized-sharing 2https://www.king5.com/article/news/community/facing-race/washington-immigration/eve rett-shuts-down-flock-cameras-judge-rules-footage-public-record/281-53d8693e-77a4-4 2ad-86e4-3426a30d25ae
Agenda Packet Page 282 of 528
equipment is vulnerable to use by anyone with fairly limited skills. Their cameras have been shown to be easily hackable, in which case anyone can then access the data being collected.

El Cerrito cannot afford to partner with a company that is so unreliable. City Council and the police department have worked hard to reduce crime in El Cerrito and keep us safe. Flock has repeatedly violated the trust that you have placed in it.

Uphold sanctuary and justice
El Cerrito is a sanctuary city, and Chief Keith says he fully intends to uphold that our police department does not collaborate with ICE. We are proud of our city’s policy and grateful for leadership that upholds it. However, due to Flock’s repeated failures and a system that incentivizes sharing of data, ECPD cannot ensure that our data stay within the areas they specify. ICE, Secret Service, and The U.S. Navy all confirmed access to Flock's network in October, 2025.8
Further, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, a federal court (called a FISA Court) may authorize warrants to collect information without any public record. These warrants are executed without any knowledge of the public. Only the number of warrants issued must be reported. Because Flock maintains El Cerrito’s data on its servers, outside of El Cerrito’s control, El Cerrito’s Flock data could be the subject of a FISA warrant, and El Cerrito would never know. Flock has no obligation, in fact, is likely specifically prohibited from informing El Cerrito about such a warrant.9 Thus, once any data has been collected, it is fundamentally out of El Cerrito’s control and subject to being used by a wide variety of Federal and State government agencies without El Cerrito’s knowledge.

In the March 10 community meeting that we attended, Chief Keith twice gave the example of medical data, saying basically that technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data: "You just kind of trust that people are using your data correctly." This comparison is problematic: the business model of a medical data system is to store and transfer personal data securely, whereas Flock’s business model is to collect and share data for the purpose of surveillance.

These are just some of the concerns we have about Flock and its contract with El Cerrito. We are sure you agree that, at a minimum, this information warrants further research and listening. 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act 8https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/usa-flock-safetys-alleged-involvem ent-in-mass-surveillance-by-federal-agencies-raises-privacy-and-due-process-concerns/ Agenda Packet Page 283 of 528
You deserve time to listen to your constituents on this issue and give real consideration of the risks to the City and its citizens – from financial, to legal, to personal.

Can we count on you to take the time to consider this concerning information about Flock, hear your constituents, and make a decision that takes into account the current federal threats and our city’s needs?
Signed:

El Cerrito Residents

1. Abby Ilan

2. Ada Fung

3. Alayna Zuniga

4. Allie Kregness

5. Allison Cooper

6. Aly Baker

7. Amalia Mariño

8. Amber McChesney-Young

9. Amelia Schmale

10. Ana Dunham

11. Andrea Nelson

12. Andrew Saelin

13. Angelina Bustos

14. Anna Belle Rosen

15. Anna Lui

16. Anna Salnikova

17. Avra Goldman

18. Benjamin Emmert-Aronson

19. Benjamin Pauw

20. Berenice Monroy

21. Beth Sauerhaft

22. Boris Krasnoiarov

23. Brianna Fairbanks

24. Brittany Wheeler

25. Carey Stone

26. Catherine Batacan

27. Catherine Isenberg

28. Chelsea Walton

29. Chelsi Sparti
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30. Chris Ladd

31. Chris Rodriguez

32. Christina Gargiullo-Silva

33. Christine W Dexter

34. Cindy McPherson

35. Claire Levay-You g

36. Constance Mank

37. Daniel Huynh

38. Danielle Naboulsi

39. Danielle Sheppard

40. Darris Thomas

41. Dashal Moore

42. Donald Simonson

43. Dora Medrano Ramos

44. Eileen Hazel

45. Eleonor Palabrica

46. Elisabeth Meikle

47. Eliza Stuber

48. Elizabeth Char

49. Elizabeth Magana

50. Emily Deckert

51. Ennis Mcainerny

52. Eric Lawrence Shenk

53. Ethan Smith

54. Evan Toth

55. Faisal Malik

56. Fatemeh Mizbani

57. Forrest Johnson

58. Gayle Greene

59. Gigi Singer

60. Graciela Chong

61. Greta Sim

62. Gretchen Singer

63. Greyson Conant Brooks

64. Henry Obermayer

65. Holland Sherba

66. Inca Arechiga

67. Jacob Emmert-Aronson
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68. Jacqueline Lasahn

69. James Brown

70. James Coates

71. James Ryder

72. James Silvey

73. Janet Evelyn Carter

74. janette Staubus

75. Jason Ibrahim

76. Jeffrey Morris

77. Jegath Geronimo

78. Jenn Tran

79. Jennifer Chapman

80. Jennifer Furlong

81. Jennifer Green

82. Jenny Stevenson

83. Jesse Jayne

84. Jessica Olson

85. Jesus Buil Macarty

86. Jiggy Geronimo

87. Joe Khalaf

88. Jorien Campbell

89. Judith Green

90. Kalsoom khan

91. Kate Frei

92. Katherine “Rin” Kimsey

93. Katherine A Logan

94. Katherine Bierce

95. Katherine Burgess

96. Katherine Plambeck

97. Kathleen Mascarenhas

98. Katie Fournier

99. Katy Bruening
100. Kenneth Edward Longo
101. Kenneth Pack
102. Kevin LaMontagne
103. Kimberly Lockwood
104. Kimberly Theurich
105. KJ Dahlaw
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106. Kristin Sangren
107. Kyle Geronimo
108. Larry Mitchel
109. Laura Palin
110. Leah Anne Carroll
111. Leah Jarvis
112. Leah Sanchez
113. Leslie Adams
114. Leta Negandhi
115. Lily Virginia Kasir
116. Linda Novick
117. Lisa Zimmer-Chu
118. Louise B Halsey
119. Madeleine Lee
120. Madeleine Lee
121. Maggie Feuchter
122. Marcia Simonson
123. Marcie Holmes-Novosel
124. Marguerite Owsley
125. Mariam Hansia
126. Marie Arthur Eggebroten
127. Mark Elson
128. Matt Dexter
129. Matt Richardson
130. Matthew Solomon
131. Maya Spark
132. Megan Quirolo
133. Megan Steffen
134. Melanie Paul
135. Melanie Proctor
136. Melissa Matheney
137. Michael Balmaceda
138. Michael Vulanich
139. Michelle Cho
140. Mika Rosen
141. Mitch Stoltz
142. Monica Hyde
143. Monserrat Palabrica
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144. Nakiesha Koss
145. Nancy Kron
146. Natasha aabeygunawardena
147. Nicholas Walsh
148. Nick Fournier
149. Nicole Betenia
150. Nina Joe
151. Nina Rizzo
152. Olesia Gordynsky Castuera
153. Olivia Liang
154. Oren J. Sofer
155. Peter Hughes
156. Purnell Davis III
157. Rachel Zuraw
158. Radhika Gundechia
159. Rafiq khan
160. Rebecah Kenny
161. Rebecca Jean Alaly
162. Rebecca Raikow
163. Rebecca Rice
164. Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk
165. Rhaiany Leon
166. Rosalyn Fei
167. Rose M Stamm
168. Ry Crawford
169. Ryan Ansley
170. Ryan Ismail
171. Sandra Davis
172. Sarah Carrington
173. Sarah Klauer
174. Serena Fisher
175. Sewellyn Kaplan
176. Shanti Leon Guerrero
177. Shaulnie Mohan
178. Sherri Reeves
179. Sherry Drobner
180. Sietse Braakman
181. Simrun Dhoot
Agenda Packet Page 288 of 528
182. Sonha Nguyen
183. Sonja Hernandez
184. Stephanie Singer
185. Steve Raikow
186. Susanna Jewell Walsh
187. Suzanne Balmaceda
188. Talia Davidow
189. Theodore Lam
190. Tiffany Santana
191. Tom Parks
192. Tova Feldmanstern
193. Travis Campbell
194. Tyler Held
195. Vanessa Warheit
196. Veronika Cole
197. Victoria Yager
198. Vivien Wallis
199. Walla Oriqat
200. Walter S Linsley
201. William Golove
202. Yuko Matsumoto
203. Yvan Iturriaga
204. Zeid Arnaout
Non-Residents

1. Alex Tananbaum

2. Alyssa Rome

3. Amanda Ng

4. Anne Marie Falge

5. Ashlee jones

6. Ashley James

7. Barry Preisler

8. Blanca Alicia Ornelas

9. Charlotte Pratt

10. Ciara dossman

11. Dani Saputo

12. Erica Sigal

13. Haiganoush Preisly
Agenda Packet Page 289 of 528

14. Jennifer Krishnan

15. Jeremiah Maller

16. Jessica Poggi

17. Katharine Bierce

18. Kathryn Collett

19. Lila Del Rosso

20. Lisa Boster

21. Lola Christine Holmes

22. Maybelle Miranda

23. Melissa Hamel

24. Molly Mccoy

25. Nissa Brehmer

26. Peter Bernhardt

27. Rev. Deborah Lee

28. Sam Holtzman

29. Sandy Park

30. Sarah Ross

31. Sofia Villegas

32. Tamiko Panzella

33. Tarin Griggs

34. Xio Etl Ouein
TOTAL: 204 residents, 34 non-residents
Agenda Packet Page 290 of 528
Public Comments May 5 – Agenda Item #9B
To: El Cerrito City Council <[email protected]>
From: Concerned Residents of El Cerrito
Re: Public Comments – Agenda Item #9B (Flock Contract)
Thank you for taking the extra time to give informed consideration to the question of whether to renew any contract with Flock. We ask you: Do not renew the contract or enter into any new proposed contract. Let the current contract expire. El Cerrito has only had this experimental technology for 3 years and the risks to our residents and our city are too great. We will still have red light cameras, businesses will still have their CCTV cameras, and police cars will still be able read license plates. We believe that our police department under the leadership of Chief Keith is sufficiently resourced without the use of this technology.

Flock is an untrustworthy company
● Security failures — there have been multiple incidents in which Flock's systems were compromised or left sensitive data publicly exposed, including a January 2026 breach that made live police camera feeds accessible to anyone on the internet, and stolen officer passwords sold on criminal forums.
● Federal data access — there are many documented cases in which federal agencies (DEA, ICE, Border Patrol) accessed California cities' Flock data without local knowledge or authorization — through the same network architecture that connects El Cerrito's cameras.
● Lack of transparency reports – Major technology companies publish these reports annually to disclose how many times the federal government requested their data under laws like FISA, the CLOUD Act, or National Security Letters. Flock Safety has published no transparency reports of any kind.
● Deceptive default settings — Flock's system was designed to enroll agencies in nationwide data sharing in ways many cities, including communities adjacent to El Cerrito, say they did not knowingly authorize. Flock has begun revising these defaults only in response to sustained public pressure, Congressional inquiry, and contract terminations. And, some communities (such as Ventura County) have found default settings “reset” to allow sharing without the community’s knowledge. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/flock-license-plate-readers-shared-data-wit h-out-of-state-federal-agencies/. It is clear that Flock’s priority is NOT to ensure informed municipal consent.

Agenda Packet Page 291 of 528
Last Fall, Oregon Senator Wyden, who negotiated directly with Flock on privacy protections and watched them be circumvented, concluded: "I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them." His recommendation to local officials was unambiguous: remove the cameras. (Wyden letter to Flock, October 16, 2025) Be like Wyden and 74 cities (the exact number fluctuates almost daily, however, the trend is clear) who have terminated or not renewed their contract with Flock.

Flock will release our data
It is clear in our contract that Flock WILL release our data if it’s requested – regardless of controls El Cerrito puts into our implementation of the software and regardless of CA state law.

Flock will release our data (for example, through FISA) and we won’t even know. Relying on what is “legal” is not enough right now when technology for surveillance is growing faster than policies or regulations to implement it safely or responsibly, and most importantly, as Councilmember Salzman stated in the April 21 meeting, “We know that our federal government is not to be trusted.” We agree with Councilmember Wysinger’s points that, “We are being asked to trust Flock, but these breaches happened in 2023 when we first rolled out… and were only discovered when the City discovered them; that creates a huge amount of distrust…” The current federal government is dangerous
Our national leaders daily are acting contrary to the Constitution, law, and human rights. We need our local government to do what’s in its power to mitigate harm. Upholding Sanctuary – as Agenda Packet Page 292 of 528
El Cerrito does – is one strong way. Listen to your constituents who voiced that maybe we need to let go of something we think makes some of us safer (cameras) right now, because our federal government is so dangerous. We don’t know what changes they might make in the next three years that would even further undermine the foundational premise (i.e. the Constitution and our system of laws) our contract with Flock is based on.

Follow The Money
Marc Andreessen is one of the main right wing techno theorists along with Peter Theil (renowned far-right techno fascist). Andreessen and Theil each invested in Flock's latest $275 million “fundraising round” last spring, which rocketed the company Flock surveillance from a neighborhood surveillance manufacturer to a federal dragnet and landed it on the Forbes 100 company’s list. https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/06/01/flock-safety-surveillance/. Both Thiel and Andreessen openly question the utility of democracy.

Surveillance technology must be carefully considered and monitored Public comments from El Cerrito resident Randi Jimenez and the Chamber of Commerce have expressed concern about racial profiling in their public comments to the City Council.

Researchers of surveillance trends caution that surveillance infrastructure, once installed, rarely stays within its original purpose; and civil liberties eroded through normalized surveillance infrastructure are extraordinarily difficult to reclaim. We have already seen with Flock that mission or scope creep means they are gradually expanding Flock’s tech capabilities to build a multifaceted surveillance system, which is not what clients, like El Cerrito, initially opted into with the first contract. If AI surveillance systems are expanded; if El Cerrito continues to engage Flock technology or another similar vendor, the city cannot promise its residents their data and information will stay safe.

Given all of these concerns and so many more, we ask you, please do not vote to renew any contract with Flock. Heed the concerns of your constituents. Allow El Cerrito to truly be a sanctuary city. Let’s continue to rely, as we have done for many years on El Cerritans to keep El Cerrito safe. Do not renew any contract with Flock.

Sources and Further Reading:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/andreessen-horowitz/summary?id=D000047147 https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0276745D:US
https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-safety-alpr-cameras-misreads-2026-3 https://www.mass50501.org/blog/flock-safety-and-the-dangers-of-alpr https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/06/01/flock-safety-surveillance/ Signed:

El Cerrito Residents
Agenda Packet Page 293 of 528

1. Aaron E Cohen

2. Ada Fung

3. Alan Rockefeller

4. Alondra Trevino

5. Amalia Marino

6. Amelia Schmale

7. Aminna Ibrahim

8. Amy Rakley

9. Andrew Raphael

10. Anna Lui

11. Ariel Gold

12. Asali Rasmussen Echols

13. Avra Goldman

14. Ben Emmert-Aronson

15. Benjamin Pauw

16. Beth Sauerhaft

17. Bethany Holmes

18. Brahm Ahmadi

19. Brenda Carter

20. Brendan Harrison

21. Brett K Levay-Young

22. Brianna Fairbanks

23. Brittany Wheeler

24. Candace Dean

25. Carey Stone

26. Catherine Isenberg

27. Charlotte Chang

28. Chelsea Walton

29. Chelsi Sparti

30. Chiara Bonet-Freeman

31. Chris Rodriguez

32. Christa Salo

33. Christian Stalberg

34. Claire Garcia

35. Colin Brady

36. Corin Seguljic

37. Cynthia McPherson

38. Daniel Elkan
Agenda Packet Page 294 of 528

39. Daniel Huynh

40. Daniel Prechtel

41. Danielle Leard

42. Dashal Moore

43. David Mandel

44. David Willhoite

45. Dora Medrano Ramos

46. Eddie Chow

47. Eileen Hazel

48. Eleanor Wang

49. Eliza Stuber

50. Elizabeth Woolford

51. Elsa-Jennie Bliss

52. Emily Deckert

53. Emily Kevlin Crossen

54. Eugene H. Robinson

55. Faati Mizbani

56. Forrest Johnson

57. hank yukon

58. Hope Kramek

59. James Brown

60. James Coates

61. James Lastoskie

62. James Ryder

63. James Silvey

64. Jamie McBean

65. Jamie Yang

66. Janaki Silva

67. Jane Andreasen

68. Jason Neumark Mickela

69. Jason Vance

70. Jegath Geronimo

71. Jen McDougall

72. Jennifer Dowdy

73. Jennifer K. Patchen

74. Jesse Jayne

75. Jesus Enrique Buil Macarty

76. Jillian McCoy
Agenda Packet Page 295 of 528

77. Jose Umali

78. Josh Buchanan

79. Judith.C. Green

80. Karen Peters

81. Kate Bolton-Schmukler

82. Katherine Curtis

83. Katherine Kimsey

84. Katherine Plambeck

85. Katie Fournier

86. Kristina Garfinkel

87. Kyle Geronimo

88. Larry Mitchel

89. Laurel Ballanti

90. Lauren Arnest

91. Leah Anne Carroll

92. Leah Jarvis

93. Leah Sanchez

94. Liberty Walton

95. Lily Kasir

96. Linda P Milani

97. Lisa Christensen

98. Lose Crawford

99. Mari Toban Blomé
100. Marie Arthur Eggebroten
101. Mark Frischman
102. Mark Hersh
103. Mary T. Curran
104. Matt Richardson
105. Matthew Davis
106. Maya Spark
107. Megan MacMillan
108. Megan Steffen
109. Melanie Proctor
110. Meleah Terheyden
111. Melissa Murphy
112. Mia Parsons
113. Michael Balmaceda
114. Michael DeGroff-Kirchgraber
Agenda Packet Page 296 of 528
115. Michael Waxman
116. Michelle Cho
117. Monica Eleanor Hyde
118. Monica Yvonne Padrnos
119. Nakiesha IKoss
120. Nate Schaffran
121. Nick Fournier
122. Nicole Rivera
123. Nina Rizzo
124. Parisa Zamanian
125. Paula Burch
126. Rachel Henderson
127. Radhika Gundechia
128. Randeep Hothi
129. Randy Barrett
130. Rebecah Kenny
131. Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk
132. Richard Wolinsky
133. Rivka Weinstock
134. Robert William Crawford
135. Roberto Ortiz-Soto
136. Ruth A Meyers
137. Ry Crawford
138. Ryan Ansley
139. Ryan Manriquez
140. Sabra Stepak
141. Sandy Davis
142. Sara Larsen
143. Sarah Klauer
144. Shanti Leon Guerrero
145. Shaulnie Mohan
146. Sherry Drobner
147. Sietse Braakman
148. Somaia Nassef
149. Talia Davidow
150. The Velveteen Bean
151. Theodore Lam
152. Tiffany Pei
Agenda Packet Page 297 of 528
153. Tova Feldmanstern
154. Valerie Neumark
155. Wei-En Chang
156. Wendy Fitch
157. William O’Brien
158. Yara Lomeli-Loibl
159. Yuko Matsumoto
Non-Residents

1. AJ Cho

2. Alison Silveira

3. Amanda Luu

4. Amber Hatfield

5. Amy Murphy

6. Ari Jones

7. Artemis Schatzkin

8. Ashley Daly

9. Benjamin Wayne Gustafson

10. Christina Tan

11. Debra Taube

12. Elijah Barnard

13. Inessa Lee

14. Jacq Le

15. Kiana Borjian

16. Lana Tilley

17. Lauren Alegre

18. Lauren E. Kallie

19. Lisa Robesch

20. Lotara James

21. Maritoni Ciancaglini

22. Meira Salman

23. Rachel Waymack

24. Ramon Viray

25. Rohan Sabnis

26. Sarah Ross

27. Shahrzad Khorsandi

28. Sophia Chen

29. Stephen Shea
Agenda Packet Page 298 of 528

30. Tamiko Panzella

31. Trevor Holbrook

32. Vanessa Jeschke

33. Vanessa Pratt

34. Vanessa Thill

35. Letitia Berlin
TOTAL: 159 residents, 35 non-residents
368 people, across both letters
Agenda Packet Page 299 of 528
From: Edie Bruce
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Re: Agenda Item #9B
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026 3:18:17 PM
Hello,
Please continue the Flock license plate reading program. I think it keeps the residents of El Cerrito safer.

Thank you,
Edith Bruce
Agenda Packet Page 300 of 528
From: Ben Phelps
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda item 9b
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026 4:20:31 PM
To whom it may concernI am a resident and homeowner in El Cerrito for the last 17 years. I am writing to express my strong support for maintaining the flock camera system in El Cerrito. I am very familiar with the system and know that it is a vital tool for crime fighting. I know that Flock not only helps solve cases but also prevents crime by notifying officers of crime related vehicles moving about in the city, as part of an organized retail theft ring or to steal catalytic converters, commit robberies or worse. Flock is one of the greatest crime fighting advancements in the modern age.

It would be an absolute mistake to remove flock knowing that crime will increase and police will have lost a major defensive system to fight against it. Please keep flock and keep us safe. Thank you- Ben Phelps Agenda Packet Page 301 of 528
From: Bea O"Keefe
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Fwd: Public Comment, Flock Cammeras.

Date: Sunday, May 3, 2026 10:55:10 AM
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:

From: Bea O'Keefe
Date: May 3, 2026 at 10:24:19 AM PDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Flock cameras.

I am in favor of continuing the Flock cameras in El Cerrito. They have quickly identified stolen cars and potentially could find a child who has been abducted.

The benefits out-way any detriment to their use. I live in north El Cerrito near Del Norte Bart and receive the police reports of crime and I support the use of this aid in quickly solving crime and potentially reducing it in the area.

Sent from my iPhone
Agenda Packet Page 302 of 528
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From: LuLu
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public comment for council meeting 5 May on the Flock System Date: Sunday, May 3, 2026 11:19:58 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Subject: Flock system comment
Date: May 2, 2026 at 4:02:52 PM PDT
To: [email protected]
I oppose this technology. I have lived in El Cerrito for 20 years. I own a home here. I am a Bay Area native. I dont want the Flock system in our community; it is not a force for good.

Thank you for including my comments.

Lulu Winslow
Agenda Packet Page 303 of 528
The El Cerrito Contract with Flock is Untenable Because it Subjects El Cerrito to Unnecessary Legal Risks
El Cerrito’s contract with Flock Safety poses a legal risk to the City rendering it vulnerable to future litigation on several fronts. It is imperative that El Cerrito conducts a thorough review of recent lawsuits. The legal risks highlighted by these lawsuits include: (1) Constitutional violations, (2) civil litigation, and (3) actions by the California Attorney General.

In Services, Immigrant Rights & Education Network or SIREN v. City of San Jose, SIREN contends that Flock’s contract enabled the City of San Jose to conduct warrantless searches through use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) data: As such, according to SIREN the City of San Jose violated Cal. Constitution Article 1, Section 1 (Right to Privacy) and Cal.

Const. Article 1, Section 13 (Warrantless Searches). El Cerrito uses ALPR cameras provided and maintained by Flock in much the same manner as San Jose. El Cerrito subjects itself to potential litigation for violating the California Constitution if it renews its contract with Flock.

In Javorsky et. al v Flock, a class action lawsuit, plaintiffs contend that the ALPR Privacy Act, codified in Cal Civ. Code 1798.90.5 was violated. The ALPR Privacy Act intends to preserve individual privacy, maintain data security, and preserve civil liberties. The lawsuit highlights several instances in California where ALPR data generated by Flock systems was compromised. This includes but is not limited to the following:

Mountain View PD reported that Federal agencies accessed ALPR data (through Flock’s National Lookup feature) without their knowledge, and only became aware of this via a response to a Public Records Act (PRA) request.

Los Altos PD reported that Flock shared ALPR data despite system settings that prohibited access by Federal agencies.

Ventura County had previously disabled the national lookup feature in 2023, but discovered in February 2026 that it had been reactivated. After an investigation, the Sheriff’s Office determined that no one from their agency activated the feature. This time, Flock claimed that a “system bug” could have automatically activated National Lookup. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/flock-license-plate-readers-shared-data-with-out-ofstate-federal-agencies/ Much like Mountain View, Los Altos, and Ventura, El Cerrito has, up until this point, trusted Flock. And yet, Flock has betrayed the trust of El Cerrito already. Flock has repeatedly failed to live up to its promises, not just to El Cerrito but to many California cities. And, when Flock fails to live up to its promises it violates the ALPR Privacy Act. Renewing any contract with Flock opens up El Cerrito to legal liability for violating the ALPR Privacy Act.

The Flock Contract And El Cerrito’s Current Acceptable Use Policy Are Inadequate to Protect Our Data
Agenda Packet Page 304 of 528
El Cerrito’s prior contract with Flock enabled out-of-state agencies to access ALPR data through Flock’s National Lookup Network feature. According to Flock, El Cerrito’s revised contract no longer includes this feature. However, El Cerrito’s current revised contract with Flock does not explicitly state this feature has been disabled. And, as Ventura County found out, even when such a feature is deactivated, it can, apparently be reactivated by a bug in the Flock system.

Further,Flock has not shown the ability to prevent its National Lookup Feature from being reactivated. https://transparency.flocksafety.com/el-cerrito-ca-pd Moreover, any contract contemplated between El Cerrito and Flock still enables California law enforcement agencies (322 of them) to access data through Flock’s 1:1 data sharing feature.

Javorsky et. al emphasizes that the El Cajon Police Department’s transparency portal currently shows that “the Flock system shares El Cajon’s ALPR data with hundreds of out-of-state law enforcement agencies…and FreeForm audit logs, discussed infra, show that out-of-state law enforcement agencies used that tool to search El Cajon’s networks as recently as January 2026.”
A quick look at the El Cerrito Flock information page shows that El Cajon is on the list of law enforcement agencies with whom El Cerrito’s data can be shared. While the El Cerrito Police Department intends to apply an acceptable use policy in advance of sharing Flock data, its effectiveness is uncertain and relies on an “honor system” approach that does not guarantee that out-of-state agencies will not use it to engage in prohibited activities such as “immigration enforcement, harassment or intimidation, usage based solely on a protected class (i.e. race, sex, religion), (and) personal use.” https://transparency.flocksafety.com/el-cerrito-ca-pd This legal concern is serious. The California State Attorney General’s continues legal action against the City of El Cajon for its data sharing breaches. El Cerrito subjects itself to similar risk if it continues its contract with Flock given that El Cerrito cannot adequately control the manner in which its data is used.
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-continues-legal-challenge-stop-e l-cajon-illegally-sharing
Closing
Renewal of El Cerrito’s current contract with Flock poses significant legal risks. El Cerrito should not renew any contract with a company that exposes the city to so much legal risk. Flock continues to be unable to show sustained compliance with California law. Use of ALPR cameras under a Flock contract might violate the California Constitution. And, the California State Attorney General is taking action against cities for violating the ALPR Privacy Act. El Cerrito should not renew any contract with Flock; it is too risky to do so.

Sincerely,
Katherine “Rin” Kimsey
Rajan Mutialu
Agenda Packet Page 305 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments 9B - in support of Flock Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 8:56:48 AM
We are residents of El Cerrito since the early 80's and live on a busy residential street. A few years ago, a Flock camera was installed right across the street from our house. We feel quite lucky and safer with the camera so close to our home.

We strongly support renewing the agreement. We have been victims of home burglary 15 years ago. It was a very traumatic experience for us.

Thank you ECPD for keeping us safer.

Jennifer P.

Agenda Packet Page 306 of 528
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From: RingCentral
To: Holly Charléty
Subject: New Voice Message from (707) 337-1880 on 05/04/2026 9:40 AM Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:40:36 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Voice Message
Dear Holly Charléty,
You have a new voice message:

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Received: Monday, May 04, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Length: 00:38
To: (510) 215-4305 Holly Charléty
Voicemail Preview:
"Hi, I am Katie Curtis, I am a resident in also. I was calling because I want to oppose the renewal of our contract with Flock. And I was really horrified to hear about flock. And it just feels like a fascist state uses surveillance. We should not be using surveillance. I really care about just anti fascism, but also our vulnerable Community members. I do not trust that that information will not be used to harm them, so please cut ties with flock, thank you."
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Agenda Packet Page 307 of 528
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From: Nicholas Genova
To: City Clerk
Subject: License Plate Reading Camera -9B on City Council Agenda 05/05 Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 11:17:35 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Hello El Cerrito City Clerk,
This email pertains to the city council vote regarding whether or not to turn off our license plate reading cameras. As a citizen of El Cerrito, I think they have been a great help solving crimes, particularly matters as significant as a fatal hit and run. Our police should be supported by technology that allows them to expediency handle crimes until they are closed out with as much evidence as possible, and the license plate reading cameras are an important tool to address these matters in a cost effective manner.

If you need more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best Regards,
Nicholas Genova
Agenda Packet Page 308 of 528
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From: jan bridges
To: Gabe Quinto; [email protected]; City Clerk; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman Subject: Agenda item 9B May 5
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 11:33:20 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

I would like to endorse the continuation of the FLOCK program in El Cerrito.

Most of our adjacent cities are using the program. We have had wonderful community outreach from our public safety department to address concerns, albeit only about 20 residents attended. It was reassuring to hear that there has been little information sharing to Federal agencies, which I too, would find alarming.

I am aware we have had significant arrests, thus far, since we have had FLOCK.

It is of immense benefit in deterring crime, solving hit and runs (which seem to be very prevalent these days), and keeping the bad guys out of El Cerrito.

I am sure a case could be made that it may decrease a certain amount of investigative work for our public safety staff.

The fiscal impact of the program may be somewhat minimized by a certain amount of funding from the COPS program.

Please vote to fund and continue the use of the FLOCK program.

Agenda Packet Page 309 of 528
From: Jegath Geronimo
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] El Cerrito Residents Urge City Council to vote NO on renewing Flock contract Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026 5:38:55 PM
Attachments: ElCerritoResidentsLetter_NOFLOCK_04-21-26.pdf Hello,
Concerned residents of El Cerrito urge you to vote NO on the contract to renew Flock safety. A neighbor submitted this letter last Friday but even more residents have now signed on in opposition to Flock surveillance in our neighborhoods. We wanted to send you this updated letter (attached) for your consideration. Thanks!
Best regards,
Jiggy Geronimo
Resident of El Cerrito - near Castro Park
Agenda Packet Page 310 of 528
Public Comments – Agenda Item #8A (Flock Contract)
To: El Cerrito City Council <[email protected]>
From: Concerned Residents of El Cerrito
Re: Public Comments – Agenda Item #8A (Flock Contract)
We are your neighbors and constituents. We have come together in the last year out of a common and urgent concern to protect our democracy from the obvious authoritarian threats at the national level, and to maintain and protect our local community. This is a time when local governance can really make a difference in light of dangers at the federal level. Your job is so important, as are our voices. We write regarding the El Cerrito Police Department’s proposal to renew the contract with Flock for license plate surveillance.

Agenda Packet Page 311 of 528
Flock raises serious constitutional questions at the State and Federal level. The City of San Jose, its Mayor, and its Police Chief have been sued by SIREN and CAIR in Santa Clara County Superior Court in a lawsuit alleging San Jose’s use of Flock cameras is unconstitutional under the Constitutions of California and the United States. El Cerrito can ill afford the risk of continuing to use Flock cameras should their use be found to be unconstitutional.

The City Council has worked hard to put the City on a firm financial footing. Do not put that stability at risk by continuing to contract with a company that exposes us to these risks.

Flock is an untrustworthy vendor
There is mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to civil liberties: Flock has provided ICE with data despite sanctuary policies4, stolen millions of data points, and its CEO is well-documented for lying to communities.5 Flock stores info in a searchable database, allowing for unethical real-time and historical tracking of residents.6 Youtubers have accessed Flock-provided cameras.7 Flock wants people to think that it is a reliable technology company that partners with local governments and municipalities to make them safer. However, experience has shown that they cannot keep the information they collect private, they have repeatedly allowed information to be shared when it should not be, and their 7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
6https://data.aclum.org/2025/10/07/flock-gives-law-enforcement-all-over-the-country-acce ss-to-your-location/
5 https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-ballistic 4https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-ice-accessing-flock-automated-license-plat e-reader-cameras-via-local-law-enforcement/
3 https://therecord.media/california-city-turns-off-flock-cameras-unauthorized-sharing 2https://www.king5.com/article/news/community/facing-race/washington-immigration/eve rett-shuts-down-flock-cameras-judge-rules-footage-public-record/281-53d8693e-77a4-4 2ad-86e4-3426a30d25ae
Agenda Packet Page 312 of 528
equipment is vulnerable to use by anyone with fairly limited skills. Their cameras have been shown to be easily hackable, in which case anyone can then access the data being collected.

These are just some of the concerns we have about Flock and its contract with El Cerrito. We are sure you agree that, at a minimum, this information warrants further research and listening. 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act 8https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/usa-flock-safetys-alleged-involvem ent-in-mass-surveillance-by-federal-agencies-raises-privacy-and-due-process-concerns/ Agenda Packet Page 313 of 528
You deserve time to listen to your constituents on this issue and give real consideration of the risks to the City and its citizens – from financial, to legal, to personal.

El Cerrito Residents:

1. Katherine “Rin” Kimsey

2. Cindy McPherson

3. Tova Feldmanstern

4. Rebecah Kenny

5. Chris Rodriguez

6. James Ryder

7. Talia Davidow

8. Kristin Sangren

9. Eileen Hazel

10. Suzanne Balmaceda

11. Anna Lui

12. Katherine Bierce

13. Benjamin Pauw

14. Lily Virginia Kasir

15. Amelia Schmale

16. Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk

17. Ada Fung

18. Jiggy Geronimo

19. Gigi Singer

20. Purnell Davis III

21. Leah Jarvis

22. Katie Sell Fournier

23. Greyson Conant Brooks

24. Marguerite Owsley

25. Lisa Zimmer-Chu

26. Jegath Geronimo

27. Kyle Geronimo

28. Sonha Nguyen

29. Benjamin Emmert-Aronson
Agenda Packet Page 314 of 528

30. Yvan Iturriaga

31. Rachel Zuraw

32. Rhaiany Leon

33. Avra Goldman

34. Fatemeh Mizbani

35. Sherry Drobner

36. Katherine Plambeck

37. Dora Medrano Ramos

38. Jenn Tran

39. Ry Crawford

40. Leah Anne Carroll

41. Jacob Emmert-Aronson

42. Danielle Sheppard

43. Walter S Linsley

44. Shanti Leon Guerrero

45. Marie Arthur Eggebroten

46. Megan Steffen

47. Faisal Malik

48. Matthew Solomon

49. Katherine A Logan

50. KJ Dahlaw

51. Sonja Hernandez

52. Jennifer Chapman

53. Gretchen Singer

54. James Brown

55. Matt Dexter

56. janette Staubus

57. Vivien Wallis

58. Katie Fournier

59. Nick Fournier

60. Brianna Fairbanks

61. Rose M Stamm

62. James Coates

63. Sietse Braakman

64. Laura Palin

65. Tom Parks

66. Andrew Saelin

67. Holland Sherba
Agenda Packet Page 315 of 528

68. Elizabeth Magana

69. Olivia Liang

70. Louise B Halsey

71. Angelina Bustos

72. Monserrat Palabrica

73. Rebecca Rice

74. Katy Bruening

75. Eleonor Palabrica

76. Sewellyn Kaplan

77. Inca Arechiga

78. Ethan Smith

79. Allie Kregness

80. Beth Sauerhaft

81. Maggie Feuchter

82. Sandra Davis

83. Janet Evelyn Carter

84. Chelsea Walton

85. Leah Sanchez

86. Olesia Gordynsky Castuera

87. Yuko Matsumoto

88. Larry Mitchel

89. Victoria Yager

90. Eileen Hazel

91. Simrun Dhoot

92. Jenny Stevenson

93. Kimberly Theurich

94. Michael Balmaceda

95. Eric Lawrence Shenk

96. Serena Fisher

97. Leslie Adams

98. Kathleen Mascarenhas

99. Linda Novick
100. Anna Salnikova
101. Boris Krasnoiarov
102. Claire Levay-Young
103. Amber McChesney-Young
104. Rebecca Raikow
105. Steve Raikow
Agenda Packet Page 316 of 528
106. Berenice Monroy
107. Katherine Burgess
108. Radhika Gundechia
109. Megan Quirolo
110. Marcia Simonson
111. Donald Simonson
112. Christine W Dexter
113. Brittany Wheeler
114. Shaulnie Mohan
115. Melanie Proctor
116. Ryan Ansley
117. Jacqueline Lasahn
118. Mark Elson
119. Elizabeth Char
120. Zeid Arnaout
121. Mitch Stoltz
122. Walla Oriqat
123. Catherine Batacan
124. Vanessa Warheit
125. Kalsoom khan
126. Rafiq khan
127. Nina Joe
128. Oren J. Sofer
129. Gayle Greene
130. Ryan Ismail
131. Tiffany Santana
132. Marcie Holmes-Novosel
133. Darris Thomas
134. Henry Obermayer
135. Christina Gargiullo-Silva
136. Judith Green
137. Dashal Moore
138. Nicole Betenia
139. Nancy Kron
140. Eliza Stuber
141. Rebecca Jean Alaly
142. Ennis Mcainerny
143. Andrea Nelson
Agenda Packet Page 317 of 528
144. Jorien Campbell
145. Amalia Mariño
146. Rosalyn Fei
147. Leta Negandhi
148. Chris Ladd
149. Sherri Reeves
150. Ada Fung
Non-Residents:

1. Amanda Ng

2. Charlotte Pratt

3. Maybelle Miranda

4. Sam Holtzman

5. Rev. Deborah Lee

6. Katharine Bierce

7. Haiganoush Preisly

8. Jeremiah Maller

9. Barry Preisler

10. Peter Bernhardt

11. Ashley James

12. Jennifer Krishnan

13. Sarah Ross

14. Nissa Brehmer

15. Melissa Hamel

16. Tamiko Panzella

17. Blanca Alicia Ornelas

18. Kathryn Collett

19. Anne Marie Falge

20. Sandy Park

21. Erica Sigal

22. Alex Tananbaum
Agenda Packet Page 318 of 528
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From: Willie Green
To: City Clerk
Subject: Support for El Cerrito PD Flock Use from STIIIZY El Cerrito Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 12:43:25 PM
Attachments: Outlook-jwdonxqh.png
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To whom this may concern,
My name is Willie Green, and I’m the current GM of STIIIZY El Cerrito.

I’m writing this email regarding the El Cerrito Police Department’s continued use of the FLOCK license plate reader system. We are greatly appreciative of the El Cerrito PD’s use of FLOCK, as we are a cash-heavy business that has been broken into previously. Used appropriately, I believe that FLOCK can be a great tool for our community, so on behalf of STIIIZY El Cerrito, a staple of this community, I am voicing my support for the team.

Best regards,
Willie Green
General Manager at
STIIIZY El Cerrito
(415) 417-7222
STIIIZY, Inc.
www.stiiizy.com
LinkedIn
Agenda Packet Page 319 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Re: ECPD flock support letter
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 1:44:54 PM
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To the City Clerk of EL Cerrito, my name is Daniel Pryde one of the owners of Pastime Hardware in EL Cerrito. I'm writing to you to voice our vociferous support of the ECPD Flock camera program. As a long standing member of EL Cerrito's business community we want The City to continue their contract with Flock. We as members of EL Cerrito need to support the Police department and give them all the necessary tools to help them protect our citizens and to give them the information to help solve crimes. The cameras do just that, they are a proactive crime deterrent while also giving our officers a real time alert to activity in our city. It has shown that cameras like the Flock system reduce crime while also providing a sense of security to all members of EL Cerrito. The City's rationale that the cameras are an invasion of privacy really holds no water. The cell phones in every ones pockets including every city official are far more invasive to personal privacy than the flock cameras ever will be, but you don't see city officials wanting to ban cell phones. We at Pastime Hardware implore the City of EL Cerrito to renew the Flock contract and continue to keep the citizens of our city safe and secure.

Best Regards,
Daniel Pryde
Owner, Pastime Hardware
Agenda Packet Page 320 of 528
From: Ryan Thissen
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comments – Agenda Item #9B
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 3:40:58 PM
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Hello,
This comment is related to City County Agenda Item 9B. As an El Cerrito citizen, I believe the Council should vote in support of adopting the resolution to fund the license plate reading cameras. These cameras can notify our officers of high-risk vehicles on our streets, allowing them to make safer and more informed responses to these vehicles, ultimately increasing the safety of our officers and increasing the chance of getting these high-risk vehicles off the road.

Best,
Ryan Thissen
Additional Public Comments
posted 5/5/2026 AM
Agenda Packet Page 321 of 528
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From: Sheriff Demetri
To: City Clerk; Paul A. Keith
Subject: Flock Cameras
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 4:25:44 PM
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To Our City of El Cerrito and Chief Keith
I am writing on behalf of El Cerrito Honda a longtime suporter of El Cerrito residents — to voice our strong support for the renewal of the city's Flock Safety camera program. I respectfully ask that this letter be entered into the public record and shared with the Mayor and City Council ahead of any vote on this matter.

As a business that operates daily on San Pablo Avenue, we see firsthand how public safety conditions affect our employees, our customers, and the broader business community that funds a substantial portion of the city's general fund. Auto theft, catalytic converter theft, vehicle break-ins, and organized retail crime are not abstract issues for us; they are real costs we absorb in insurance premiums, security investments, and lost productivity. They also directly affect whether customers feel safe coming to El Cerrito to shop, dine, and do business here rather than in neighboring cities.

The Flock automated license plate recognition program has been a meaningful tool in helping the El Cerrito Police Department respond to and solve these crimes. The visible presence of the cameras serves as a deterrent at the I-80 entry and exit points and along our commercial corridor, and the investigative leads they generate help officers recover stolen vehicles, identify suspects, and respond to Amber and Silver Alerts faster than would otherwise be possible. In our city and neighboring cities, the same technology has contributed to arrests in violent crime cases and to the recovery of stolen property that would otherwise be lost. It allows the police to stop crime in progress instead of investigating the aftermath.

I understand and respect the concerns some residents have raised about privacy and data use.

Those concerns deserve thoughtful answers, and the existing program already addresses many of them through limited retention windows, restricted access, and audit logging. If additional safeguards would strengthen community trust, we support refining the policy — but ending the program entirely would be a step backward for public safety and for the business climate that supports El Cerrito's tax base.

El Cerrito Honda is proud to be part of this city. We employ local residents, we contribute significantly to sales tax revenue that funds public services, and we have a direct interest in keeping our community safe and thriving. On behalf of our team, I urge the Council to renew the Flock Safety program.

Thank you for your time and for your continued service to El Cerrito.

Agenda Packet Page 322 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Cc:

Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Flock Camera Vote
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 5:10:15 PM
To City Council Members,
I will attend the meeting on May 5th but as a 25 year resident of El Cerrito and a home owner, I feel compelled to contact you in advance of the meeting, given that I will likely only have one minute for a public comment. I urge you to VOTE NO on the renewal of the Flock camera contract and to reject consideration of any type of surveillance cameras on our city streets.

Please review the letter sent to you from the ACLU that I just read. It succinctly and factually explains the hazards of said cameras and how they do not actually decrease crime. It further discusses breaches in the system, including by law enforcement. California agencies have access to our Flock camera information. It only takes one person with access to pass on information to agencies not entitled to it, such as ICE, Homeland Security and the DOJ.

We are living in an extremely dangerous political climate, with a Federal government that overtly and proudly disregards the law. It is even possible that a MAGA Republican could become the next governor of our state, with all the power that implies. We must stand strong against tyranny at every level of government and work to protect our residents from wrongful stops by law enforcement and the likely chance that the information will reach the desks of those who want a White Nationalist regime to permanently control this country. They can use federal laws to secretly subpoena El Cerrito Flock camera recordings and we will never know about these breaches.

This is one of the most important decisions you may have to make as a City Council member. Please vote to protect El Cerrito residents and visitors from another layer of surveillance that can lead to oppression.

Sincerely,
Judith Green
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 323 of 528
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From: K Kimsey
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Agenda Item 9B Flock
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 5:31:03 PM
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Dear El Cerrito City Council,
I urge you not to renew any contract with Flock. Flock has proven itself over and over to be an unreliable contractor. They “make mistakes” that cause our data to be sent to Federal agencies in contravention of California law. They have no plan to prevent mistakes like that in the future.

Do not risk our safety for a small marginal gain in crime closure rates that cannot be proven.

The El Cerrito Police Department can solve crimes without Flock. And, we will all sleep easier at night knowing that El Cerrito has done its part to prevent our data from being shared. Do not vote to renew any contract with Flock.

Best,
Rin
Get Outlook for iOS
Agenda Packet Page 324 of 528
From:

To: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Cc: City Clerk
Subject: DO NOT RENEW the Flock Contract (or initiate a new one) Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 5:51:52 PM
Dear Council Members and City Clerk,
I was with you at the last City Council meeting, and am grateful for the time you took to listen to concerned community members, including myself. As a faith leader I am imploring you to make the moral choice, and in these times of rising authoritarianism, to protect El Cerrito from techno-fascist mass surveillance. Please do not renew the Flock contract or initiate a new contract.

Although I’m sure you’ve heard from many in the business community about their support for Flock cameras, I ask you as elected leaders to make your choice based on the well-being of all, especially those who are most vulnerable. I ask you to make the wise and courageous choice to turn off the Flock cameras now and reassess their usefulness once more privacy protections are in place and when our federal government is not acting in violent and vindictive ways towards citizens and community members who challenge their fascist ideology due to their gender identity, race, documentation status or political commitments.

El Cerrito is not alone in making this moral choice. I implore you to join over 70 other cities who have already acted for the protection of their community in this way.

This are unprecedented times, and I ask you as leaders to rise to the challenge and lead with moral clarity.

Thank you,
Joanna
El Cerrito
Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk
Associate Pastor,
Unceded Ohlone homelands
(she/her)
Front Light co-host, the podcast of Mennonite Action
Author of "The Movement Makes Us Human: An Interview with Dr. Vincent Harding on Mennonites, Vietnam, and MLK."
"You'll be free indeed, not when your days are without a care, nor your nights without grief, but rather when these things bind up your life, and yet you rise above them, unbound.” -Kahlil Gibran
I answer emails Tuesday-Friday, rarely Saturday and Sunday, and (almost) never on Monday.

Agenda Packet Page 325 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Flock contract - oppose the renewal
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 6:03:24 PM
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To whom it may concern,
As a citizen of El Cerrito, I wish to express my opposition to the renewal of the Flock contract with the City which is item 9B on the agenda. I believe that any positive value of the use of these cameras is more than outweighed by the potential misuse of the data collected by the cameras. Please pass on my concern to all city council members. I have previously emailed each one individually.

Thank you,
Jim Coates
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 326 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Comment for agenda item #9B (Flock surveillance cameras) Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 6:16:47 PM
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Hello,
I'm an El Cerrito homeowner and resident and I am strongly opposed to the city renewing its contract with Flock because the risk of abuse of the system and the potential violations of privacy are too great. The federal government and many states are becoming increasingly authoritarian and seeking to restrict the rights and free movement of Americans. The surveillance data that is created and stored in Flock is a dangerous tool that risks being weaponized for this purpose. Many marginalized groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, trans people, and religious minorities are at risk of being profiled and having their movements tracked. As a sanctuary city, El Cerrito has a particular responsibility not to share the movements of immigrants with agencies like ICE and Border Control which seek to do them harm. As a more general concern, while I expect to give up some privacy when out and about in public, I do not consider it reasonable to be under continuous AI surveillance, which feels like the slippery slope that Flock is taking us down. Systems like this - and the data they collect - take on a life on their own and easily expand from their original purpose.

Regardless of the value of license plate readers in the abstract, Flock in particular is not a trustworthy partner. Time and again they have allowed federal and out of state agencies, including ICE and Border Patrol, to access the Flock data of California municipalities against those municipalities' wishes. Their business model is built around providing the most data to the most agencies, and so they will always be incentivized to find ways to share El Cerrito's data, regardless of what the city and its residents want. Any increases in privacy controls have come not from Flock's own initiative but in response to public pressure, government investigations, and customer cancellations. I worked at a software company that built tools for local governments to manage public records requests - I take the responsibility of handling people's personal information incredibly seriously while also having an insider's sympathy for the challenges and good faith errors that can arise when building software for this purpose.

Flock has demonstrated over and over again that they are not acting in good faith and do not prioritize privacy and security, making further use of their cameras too great a risk to El Cerrito residents.

Thank you,
Rachel Meresman
,
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 327 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 6:19:29 PM
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Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining. Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Flock Safety markets itself as a security company, but in reality, it operates as a private data broker. Their business model is simple: get police departments to pay for their universal monitoring equipment, then monetize OUR data by selling paywall access to other jurisdictions. Their unregulated private surveillance network is so poorly secured that independent researchers have demonstrated it can be compromised in minutes.

In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data, you trust that people are using your data correctly," but this is knowing that there were already several breaches of El Cerrito data. For months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other state agencies across the country accessed El Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities.

Respectfully,
Talia Davidow
Agenda Packet Page 328 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 6:59:32 PM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Nakiesha Koss
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Dear El Cerrito Councilmembers, My 8-year-old daughter and I live just up the hill from the Del Norte BART. We LOVE the vibrant community here and understand that functional, thriving communities require reciprocity: We cannot passively benefit, but are called to contribute by looking out for our neighbors in big and small ways every day. I attended Chief Keith’s community meeting in March, where he said he trusts Flock to deliver on commitments to safety and security. He has confidence in them. I don't. But honestly, it doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter what parameters ECPD sets. It doesn’t matter if we’re ONLY sharing to 322 California municipalities. It doesn’t matter if Flock somehow manages to create a system that works exactly and only as expected. As long as El Cerrito has a contract with Flock, its surveillance data is readily available to all federal agencies — including ICE — through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (aka FISA). FISA Courts authorize warrants to collect information without any public record. Such a warrant would be served to Flock or its cloud host. El Cerrito would not be informed. So for example, if (or when) a federal agency accesses the location of a license plate last Monday at 8:15am. And also last Tuesday at 8:15am. And last Wednesday. And last Thursday. And Friday. And when that information reveals a behavioral pattern, this license plate stops near Kearny St and Stockton Ave. on weekday mornings. If (or when) they collect that… if (or when) they use that information to target not a license plate, but a mother from our community dropping her 8-year-old off at Fairmount Elementary School… if (or when) that happens, the parameters don’t matter. The issue is not how secure ECPD thinks our data is. Our community — in this Sanctuary City, within this Sanctuary State — is at risk simply because it is being collected. Councilmembers:

This is your community, too. Take good care of your neighbors. DO NOT renew the FLOCK CONTRACT and fast-track the removal of the FLOCK CAMERAS in El Cerrito. All the best, Nakiesha Koss
Agenda Packet Page 329 of 528
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From: Brian
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:03:32 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
-Brian Fogg
(El Cerrito resident) Agenda Packet Page 330 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:05:06 PM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Jennifer Patchen
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Jenny Patchen El Cerrito, CA 94530 May 4, 2026 El Cerrito City Council 10890 San Pablo Avenue El Cerrito, CA 94530 Re: Please vote NO on the proposed Flock Safety agreement Dear Mayor and Councilmembers, I am writing to urge you to vote no on the proposed resolution authorizing the City Manager to enter into a threeyear agreement with Flock Safety for license plate reading cameras at a cost not to exceed $315,000. I recognize the importance of public safety and the difficult work of the El Cerrito Police Department. But automated license plate reader systems raise serious privacy, civil liberties, oversight, and fiscal concerns that have not been adequately resolved. A citywide network of cameras that records the movements of residents, workers, visitors, and passersby is not a narrow public safety tool. It is a form of mass location surveillance. The issue is not only whether the cameras can help in some investigations. The question is whether El Cerrito should normalize the continuous collection of vehicle-location data on everyone, including people who are not suspected of any crime. That tradeoff deserves a much higher standard of necessity, transparency, and accountability than this proposed agreement appears to provide. I am especially concerned about the following: First, license plate reader systems collect sensitive location data. A person’s vehicle movements can reveal where they live, work, worship, seek medical care, attend school, visit family, or participate in political or community activity. Even when the stated purpose is crime prevention, the underlying data can be highly revealing. Second, Flock’s own policies allow for disclosure of license plate reader data in response to legal process and in other circumstances the company deems reasonably necessary. That means local assurances about limited use may not fully control how data is accessed, preserved, or disclosed once it is part of a vendor-managed surveillance platform.

Third, regional and national data-sharing practices can expand the practical reach of these systems far beyond the local purpose originally presented to residents. El Cerrito should not enter or renew a long-term agreement unless the City can guarantee strict limits on sharing, retention, auditing, immigration-related use, and secondary uses. Fourth, the cost is substantial. A commitment of up to $315,000 over three years should be evaluated against other public safety investments that do not require mass surveillance, such as traffic safety, violence prevention, youth services, street lighting, community-based response, emergency preparedness, and investigative staffing. Finally, public trust matters. Residents should not be asked to accept a surveillance system first and debate safeguards later. The City should not approve this agreement unless there is clear, enforceable policy language adopted by the Council, independent oversight, public reporting, short retention limits, audit logs, penalties for misuse, and a demonstrated showing that the benefits outweigh the harms. For these reasons, I respectfully ask the Council to vote NO on the proposed Flock Safety agreement. At minimum, the Council should decline any three-year contract and require a separate public Agenda Packet Page 331 of 528
process to evaluate whether this technology is truly necessary, whether less invasive alternatives exist, and whether legally binding safeguards can be adopted before any further use (although I would offer a contract is only as good as our ability to enforce it, which in this case is demonstrably limited from the example of other cities). El Cerrito should prioritize safety, accountability, and civil liberties together. Approving this agreement would move the City in the wrong direction. Sincerely, Jenny Patchen
Agenda Packet Page 332 of 528
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From: Leah Jarvis
To: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger; City Clerk Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:43:40 PM
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Dear El Cerrito City Council members
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

As the parent of a young boy of color I worry a lot about the way that surveillance and racial profiling is used constantly against people of color, including kids and I’m deeply uncomfortable knowing that El Cerrito has a contract with Flock.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Thank you for your consideration.

Leah Jarvis
Agenda Packet Page 333 of 528
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From: Shaulnie Mohan
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:47:27 PM
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I want to understand who paid you to push the flock contract forward. As far as I can tell, the streets of El Cerrito are not riddled with crime. As Fascism creeps into America, it boggles my mind that a liberal town in California would think that Mass surveillance is a good idea.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

There’s literally articles that they are live streaming the inside of children’s daycare, care centers, and pool facilities. Do you think the children are safer when images of them and videos of them can be uploaded directly onto the dark web? At what point do you think you’ll personally be held liable?
I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” this means you’re handing our information directly to the Gestapo.

I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
S. Mohan, MD
Agenda Packet Page 334 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - The Flock system does not benefit El Cerrito residents
Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 8:11:45 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
Apologies for the double email, but I realized I need to put the agenda item in the subject line to have my email counted as a public comment. This issue is very important to me and although I can’t attend the city council meeting because I have covid, I want to make sure my concerns are taken into account.

I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Eva Short
El Cerrito, CA 94530 Agenda Packet Page 335 of 528
From: Tallis Moy
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments -agenda item #9B Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 8:47:12 PM
Hello,
My name is Travis Moy. I live in El Cerrito near El Cerrito Plaza. I'm writing to encourage the city to not renew our contract with Flock. I have written a previous comment in the last meeting in which it was discussed which also expressed my opposition. This is mostly a repost of that one, since the issue at that meeting was deferred until the meeting on the 5th..

I am not in principle opposed to public cameras and license plate readers, but do not believe Flock to be a trustworthy company, because of the lawsuit against Flock in SF which alleges that the SFPD's data was shared, against policy, with the federal government. While the statements made when El Cerrito's data audited purport that the data leakage to the US Postal Service was fixed, with the ongoing lawsuits, I simply do not trust Flock.

I would also like to note that Mountain View has declined to renew their Flock contract. If we do not renew it will not be the first city which has done so.

If in the future these lawsuits are resolved favorably I would not necessarily be against giving Flock a new contract at that time, but feel that as of now El Cerrito should not renew the contract.

Thank you,
Travis Moy
Agenda Packet Page 336 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda item #9B: Please do *not* renew the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:09:10 PM
Dear Mayor and City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to not renew the city’s contract with Flock. I am especially concerned that this system creates a standing surveillance infrastructure that can be misused in ways that conflict directly with El Cerrito’s values as a sanctuary city.

Flock creates risks that local policy cannot fully control.

Even though El Cerrito intends to use license plate readers only for limited public-safety purposes, the data do not remain purely local in practice. California law prohibits sharing ALPR data with federal or out-of-state agencies, yet reporting has shown repeated violations across the state, including searches performed for ICE and CBP. Flock itself has acknowledged the need for new safeguards after federal access concerns. That history should make us skeptical of assurances that “better settings” will be enough.

El Cerrito has already experienced improper access.

ECPD’s own review found that after El Cerrito’s cameras were installed, out-of-state and federal agencies were able to search El Cerrito license plate data, including the FBI, ATF, GSA, the Office of Inspector General, and the National Park Service.

Later incidents involved the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Veterans Affairs Police. I appreciate the Department’s disclosure, but the lesson is not that the system is now fixed; it is that this technology creates failure modes the city did not anticipate and residents did not consent to.

Flock is incompatible with sanctuary-city commitments.

A sanctuary city should not maintain infrastructure that can help federal immigration enforcement track residents’ movements, even indirectly through another agency’s request. That concern is particularly urgent under a Trump administration that has repeatedly tested legal limits in immigration enforcement, and has been found by courts to have violated orders in numerous cases. While the federal government is willing to play loose with legal constraints, El Cerrito should reduce the data available for misuse, not expand or renew it.

Community trust matters more than this tool.

The question is not whether Flock might help in some investigations. The question is whether the benefit justifies building a citywide vehicle-tracking network that can chill movement, endanger immigrant residents, and erode trust in local government. For a sanctuary city, the answer should be No.

Please vote to not renew the Flock contract, and instead prioritize public safety approaches that protect privacy, civil liberties, immigrant safety, and community trust.

Respectfully,
Aaron E Cohen
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 337 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Comment for agenda item #9B (Flock surveillance cameras) Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:16:45 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

As a sanctuary city, El Cerrito has a particular responsibility not to share the movements of immigrants with agencies like ICE and Border Control which seek to do them harm. As a more general concern, while I expect to give up some privacy when out and about in public, I do not consider it reasonable to be under continuous AI surveillance, which feels like the slippery slope that Flock is taking us down. Systems like this - and the data they collect - take on a life on their own and easily expand from their original purpose.

Thank you,
Sarah Klauer
El Cerrito, CA 94530
________________________________________
Agenda Packet Page 338 of 528
Public Comments May 5 – Agenda Item #9B
To: El Cerrito City Council <[email protected]>
From: Concerned Residents of El Cerrito
Re: Public Comments – Agenda Item #9B (Flock Contract)
Thank you for taking the extra time to give informed consideration to the question of whether to renew any contract with Flock. We ask you: Do not renew the contract or enter into any new proposed contract. Let the current contract expire. El Cerrito has only had this experimental technology for 3 years and the risks to our residents and our city are too great. We will still have red light cameras, businesses will still have their CCTV cameras, and police cars will still be able read license plates. We believe that our police department under the leadership of Chief Keith is sufficiently resourced without the use of this technology.

Agenda Packet Page 339 of 528
Last Fall, Oregon Senator Wyden, who negotiated directly with Flock on privacy protections and watched them be circumvented, concluded: "I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them." His recommendation to local officials was unambiguous: remove the cameras. (Wyden letter to Flock, October 16, 2025) Be like Wyden and 74 cities (the exact number fluctuates almost daily, however, the trend is clear) who have terminated or not renewed their contract with Flock.

Flock will release our data (for example, through FISA) and we won’t even know. Relying on what is “legal” is not enough right now when technology for surveillance is growing faster than policies or regulations to implement it safely or responsibly, and most importantly, as Councilmember Salzman stated in the April 21 meeting, “We know that our federal government is not to be trusted.” We agree with Councilmember Wysinger’s points that, “We are being asked to trust Flock, but these breaches happened in 2023 when we first rolled out… and were only discovered when the City discovered them; that creates a huge amount of distrust…” The current federal government is dangerous
Our national leaders daily are acting contrary to the Constitution, law, and human rights. We need our local government to do what’s in its power to mitigate harm. Upholding Sanctuary – as Agenda Packet Page 340 of 528
El Cerrito does – is one strong way. Listen to your constituents who voiced that maybe we need to let go of something we think makes some of us safer (cameras) right now, because our federal government is so dangerous. We don’t know what changes they might make in the next three years that would even further undermine the foundational premise (i.e. the Constitution and our system of laws) our contract with Flock is based on.

El Cerrito Residents
Agenda Packet Page 341 of 528

1. Aaron E Cohen

2. Ada Fung

3. Alan Rockefeller

4. Alondra Trevino

5. Amalia Marino

6. Amelia Schmale

7. Aminna Ibrahim

8. Amy Rakley

9. Andrew Raphael

10. Anna Lui

11. Ariel Gold

12. Asali Rasmussen Echols

13. Avra Goldman

14. Ben Emmert-Aronson

15. Benjamin Pauw

16. Beth Sauerhaft

17. Bethany Holmes

18. Brahm Ahmadi

19. Brenda Carter

20. Brendan Harrison

21. Brett K Levay-Young

22. Brianna Fairbanks

23. Brittany Wheeler

24. Candace Dean

25. Carey Stone

26. Catherine Isenberg

27. Charlotte Chang

28. Chelsea Walton

29. Chelsi Sparti

30. Chiara Bonet-Freeman

31. Chris Rodriguez

32. Christa Salo

33. Christian Stalberg

34. Claire Garcia

35. Colin Brady

36. Corin Seguljic

37. Cynthia McPherson

38. Daniel Elkan
Agenda Packet Page 342 of 528

39. Daniel Huynh

40. Daniel Prechtel

41. Danielle Leard

42. Dashal Moore

43. David Mandel

44. David Willhoite

45. Dora Medrano Ramos

46. Eddie Chow

47. Eileen Hazel

48. Eleanor Wang

49. Eliza Stuber

50. Elizabeth Woolford

51. Elsa-Jennie Bliss

52. Emily Deckert

53. Emily Kevlin Crossen

54. Eugene H. Robinson

55. Faati Mizbani

56. Forrest Johnson

57. hank yukon

58. Hope Kramek

59. James Brown

60. James Coates

61. James Lastoskie

62. James Ryder

63. James Silvey

64. Jamie McBean

65. Jamie Yang

66. Janaki Silva

67. Jane Andreasen

68. Jason Neumark Mickela

69. Jason Vance

70. Jegath Geronimo

71. Jen McDougall

72. Jennifer Dowdy

73. Jennifer K. Patchen

74. Jesse Jayne

75. Jesus Enrique Buil Macarty

76. Jillian McCoy
Agenda Packet Page 343 of 528

77. Jose Umali

78. Josh Buchanan

79. Judith.C. Green

80. Karen Peters

81. Kate Bolton-Schmukler

82. Katherine Curtis

83. Katherine Kimsey

84. Katherine Plambeck

85. Katie Fournier

86. Kristina Garfinkel

87. Kyle Geronimo

88. Larry Mitchel

89. Laurel Ballanti

90. Lauren Arnest

91. Leah Anne Carroll

92. Leah Jarvis

93. Leah Sanchez

94. Liberty Walton

95. Lily Kasir

96. Linda P Milani

97. Lisa Christensen

98. Lose Crawford

99. Mari Toban Blomé
100. Marie Arthur Eggebroten
101. Mark Frischman
102. Mark Hersh
103. Mary T. Curran
104. Matt Richardson
105. Matthew Davis
106. Maya Spark
107. Megan MacMillan
108. Megan Steffen
109. Melanie Proctor
110. Meleah Terheyden
111. Melissa Murphy
112. Mia Parsons
113. Michael Balmaceda
114. Michael DeGroff-Kirchgraber
Agenda Packet Page 344 of 528
115. Michael Waxman
116. Michelle Cho
117. Monica Eleanor Hyde
118. Monica Yvonne Padrnos
119. Nakiesha IKoss
120. Nate Schaffran
121. Nick Fournier
122. Nicole Rivera
123. Nina Rizzo
124. Parisa Zamanian
125. Paula Burch
126. Rachel Henderson
127. Radhika Gundechia
128. Randeep Hothi
129. Randy Barrett
130. Rebecah Kenny
131. Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk
132. Richard Wolinsky
133. Rivka Weinstock
134. Robert William Crawford
135. Roberto Ortiz-Soto
136. Ruth A Meyers
137. Ry Crawford
138. Ryan Ansley
139. Ryan Manriquez
140. Sabra Stepak
141. Sandy Davis
142. Sara Larsen
143. Sarah Klauer
144. Shanti Leon Guerrero
145. Shaulnie Mohan
146. Sherry Drobner
147. Sietse Braakman
148. Somaia Nassef
149. Talia Davidow
150. The Velveteen Bean
151. Theodore Lam
152. Tiffany Pei
Agenda Packet Page 345 of 528
153. Tova Feldmanstern
154. Valerie Neumark
155. Wei-En Chang
156. Wendy Fitch
157. William O’Brien
158. Yara Lomeli-Loibl
159. Yuko Matsumoto
160. Aleida Kasir
161. Alice Hawley
162. Amanda Hunter Johnson
163. Andy Zieminski
164. Ann Manheimer
165. Arin Rook
166. Dolma Chuteng
167. Eva Short
168. Hatice Seflek
169. Jane Daly
170. Kelly Moore
171. Kelsey Jones
172. Leilani Lau
173. Mehmet Seflek
174. Michael Gravelle
175. Nicholas Shawn Perry
176. Osman seflek
177. Peter Jenks
178. Rafael Quintero
179. Raqeeb Chang
180. Richard Padrnos
181. Robert Fuentes
182. Rochelle Bunyapanasarn
183. Sara Seflek
184. Steffi Kaiser
185. Virginia Reinhart
Non-Residents

1. AJ Cho

2. Alison Silveira

3. Amanda Luu
Agenda Packet Page 346 of 528

4. Amber Hatfield

5. Amy Murphy

6. Ari Jones

7. Artemis Schatzkin

8. Ashley Daly

9. Benjamin Wayne Gustafson

10. Christina Tan

11. Debra Taube

12. Elijah Barnard

13. Inessa Lee

14. Jacq Le

15. Kiana Borjian

16. Lana Tilley

17. Lauren Alegre

18. Lauren E. Kallie

19. Lisa Robesch

20. Lotara James

21. Maritoni Ciancaglini

22. Meira Salman

23. Rachel Waymack

24. Ramon Viray

25. Rohan Sabnis

26. Sarah Ross

27. Shahrzad Khorsandi

28. Sophia Chen

29. Stephen Shea

30. Tamiko Panzella

31. Trevor Holbrook

32. Vanessa Jeschke

33. Vanessa Pratt

34. Vanessa Thill

35. Letitia Berlin

36. Angela Abruzzese

37. Camille Taiara

38. Cheryl Davila

39. David Brehmer

40. Deena wls

41. Elieth Malfatti
Agenda Packet Page 347 of 528

42. Elizabeth Vogt

43. Erica Morse

44. Hannan Chang

45. Jenna Price

46. Kai Yishin Law

47. Lee Rose

48. Letitia Berlin

49. Madeline Stacy

50. Rocky Chau

51. Sarah Gao
TOTAL: 185 residents, 51 non-residents
403 people, across both letters
Agenda Packet Page 348 of 528
From: Chris Ladd
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:33:07 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Chris Ladd
, El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 349 of 528
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From: Michelle Ayazi
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:34:11 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I hope you’re all doing well and taking good care. Thanks for all that you do.

I am an El Cerrito resident writing to kindly urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Respectfully,
Michelle Ayazi
Agenda Packet Page 351 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B: Please do *not* renew the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:42:40 PM
Dear Mayor and City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to not renew the city’s contract with Flock. I am especially concerned that this system creates a standing surveillance infrastructure that can be misused in ways that conflict directly with El Cerrito’s values as a sanctuary city.

Flock creates risks that local policy cannot fully control.

El Cerrito has already experienced improper access.

Flock is incompatible with sanctuary-city commitments.

Community trust matters more than this tool.

Please vote to not renew the Flock contract, and instead prioritize public safety approaches that protect privacy, civil liberties, immigrant safety, and community trust.

Respectfully,
Aaron E Cohen
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 352 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:46:06 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Respectfully,
Randeep Hothi
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 353 of 528
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From: Cindy McPherson
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:59:53 PM
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Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident and have attended the Police Department's public meeting about Flock data breaches in March, as well as the previous City Council meeting. I am writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California Agenda Packet Page 354 of 528
cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Sincerely,
Cindy McPherson
94530
Agenda Packet Page 355 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 10:05:44 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena Agenda Packet Page 356 of 528
compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Arthur Swislocki
El Cerrito CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 357 of 528
From: Megan Steffen
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 11:15:48 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I'm writing to ask you not to renew the Flock contract. I live in El Cerrito off of Cutting. I'm the parent of two young children, and I'm also been the victim of petty theft and a car break in in El Cerrito. Even with all that, I absolutely oppose Flock. I think the evidence is clear that Flock cannot be trusted with our data. We shouldn't stick with them just because they're who we have. They have a bad track record, and we can do better. Especially in an election cycle where we're weighing whether or not to give the City more money through Measure C, it's important to show citizens that we can do the right thing even when it's hard and cancel a bad contract with a bad company that has a bad track record.

In a similar vein, I encourage the Council to count public comment in an honest way. I heard that the Clerk reported that pro-Flock and anti-Flock comments were about equal; with a letter that had over a hundred signatures when I signed opposing Flock, it's impossible to imagine how that could be. This kind of bad faith bureaucratic wrangling is precisely why citizens have lost trust in the city and are so deeply opposed to Measure C. I encourage the Clerk to take all public comment regardless of the fact that this is an agenda item that's held over from a previous meeting, and I encourage the Clerk to be honest in their accounting of the number of comments and not dismiss letters that are signed by citizens with the expectations that their voices will matter. The City clearly has a lot of work left to do to rebuild trust with citizens; no better time to start than now.

I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Sincerely,
Megan Steffen
Agenda Packet Page 358 of 528
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From: Chelsi Sparti
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 11:27:37 PM
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Dear El Cerrito Mayor, City Council members, and City Clerk:

I am an El Cerrito homeowner urging you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock. The company violates privacy practices and poses serious risks to our civil liberties.

Flock systems are racist and faulty. This is not the decade to be inviting cameras into our neighborhoods. It is time to terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras ASAP.

Keep up the good work on behalf of our City,
Chelsi
Agenda Packet Page 359 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment for item 9B on May 5th City Council Meeting Agenda Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 11:49:39 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

I am writing to express my support for keeping Flock license plate readers in El Cerrito.

While I understand, and to some extent share, reservations that others have about privacy and the potential for data misuse by private entities, the reality is that we are all on camera pretty much everywhere we go, and our location is constantly being tracked through our cell phones, vehicles, toll transponders, etc. The data collected by the Flock cameras is far more limited, and I believe they provide a net benefit for public safety.

I have seen first-hand how our police department can use the Flock system as tool – when my child had a concerning encounter with a stranger at EC Plaza, an officer was able to trace the path of that person’s vehicle through the city afterward. Similarly, after a friend’s car was stolen from in front of their home, ECPD was able to use Flock to help track the vehicle.

I hope that the City Council also recognizes the value that the Flock license plate readers provide as a law enforcement tool and chooses to keep them.

Thank you for taking my comment into consideration.

John Bowen
Agenda Packet Page 360 of 528
Flock Contract Supplemental Analysis · April 2026 · Page 1 Supplemental Analysis
The Flock Safety Contract Before You
A side-by-side review of the existing 2023 agreement and the proposed Master Services Agreement on the May 5, 2026 Council agenda
April 2026

AT A GLANCE
The new contract is materially different from the one currently in force. It removes five substantive protections that exist in the current agreement — including Flock's binding commitment not to sell customer data, the City's right to terminate for convenience, and roughly half of Flock's liability exposure to the City. In exchange, it adds one new financial penalty for unauthorized sharing that is real but, on careful reading, excludes the documented threat patterns it appears designed to deter.

The Chief and the City Attorney did secure one important concession not present in Flock's standard February 2026 template: California governing law and California venue, in place of the Georgia mandatory arbitration Flock has been pushing on other municipalities. Credit where due.

Council members are entitled to weigh this tradeoff with full awareness of what is being traded. The Council deferred this item from April 21 because, as members stated on the record, they did not feel sufficiently informed to vote. This document is offered to help close that gap. The Council is under no obligation to enter the proposed new agreement on May 5; the City's continuing relationship with Flock would be governed by whatever the existing contract's renewal status provides. $103,500 40 5 $34,500
Annual cost
under current contract
Cameras currently
deployed in El Cerrito
Protections removed from
current contract
Per-violation penalty added
(narrowly scoped)
Why This Document
This supplement focuses narrowly on what is in the contract the Council is being asked to approve, and how it compares to the contract currently in force. It does not cover the broader civil liberties record of Flock Safety as a vendor — that material is addressed in a separate briefing.

The contract analysis matters because the cover memo from Chief Keith presents three changes positively: a financial penalty for unauthorized sharing, a defined termination process, and a survival clause covering data protection obligations. These are real, and the Chief and City Attorney appear to have negotiated in good faith.

But a careful side-by-side comparison shows that the new agreement also removes several substantive protections that exist in the current contract, and that the new penalty clause is narrower than it appears.

Agenda Packet Page 361 of 528
Flock Contract Supplemental Analysis · April 2026 · Page 2 Council members deserve to see both sides of that ledger before voting.

What Has Changed: Side-by-Side
Each row below identifies a provision in the current 2023 agreement that has been removed, weakened, or replaced in the proposed new MSA. Section references are to the respective contracts.

PROVISION CURRENT CONTRACT (2023) PROPOSED NEW MSA (2026) Sale of data §§4.2, 4.3, 4.5
"Flock does not own and shall not sell Agency
Data." Equivalent prohibitions on selling
Agency Generated Data and Aggregated Data.

Not present
No equivalent language. The "shall not sell"
prohibition is removed entirely. Flock's Feb.
17, 2026 blog post acknowledges the removal,
calling it "redundant."
Termination for
convenience
§ 6.2
"Either Party may terminate this Agreement for
convenience" with immediate effect. Agency
pays a $500 per-camera removal fee; pro-rata
refund provided on the camera lease portion
only (Wing Suite and Advanced Search not
refundable).
§§ 7.2, 7.4
Removed. Termination only for material
breach (with 30-day cure), violation of law, or
bankruptcy. All amounts due through
termination remain owed.

Flock's liability cap § 8.1(E)
2× the prior 12 months' fees — approximately
$207,000 for El Cerrito.
§ 9
1× the prior 12 months' fees — approximately
$103,500. Flock's exposure cut roughly in half.

Insurance
protections
§ 7.5
Detailed schedule: City as additional insured,
claims-made tail, prohibition on "wasting"
policies, subcontractor coverage, City's specific
remedies.

Exhibit A
Substantially weakened. Coverage limits
retained, but the additional-insured
requirement, claims-made tail, and
subcontractor language are absent.

Data ownership
scope
§ 4.2
Agency retains right, title, and interest in
Agency Data with limited license to Flock for
service provision.
§ 4.1
Adds "irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide"
license to use Customer Data "to support and
improve Flock's products and services" — with
no expiration after termination.

The removal of the "shall not sell" language matches an April 14, 2026 ACLU advisory identifying it as one of four significant alterations Flock made to its standard terms in the seven months leading up to the February 2026 template — the same template the proposed El Cerrito agreement appears to be based on.

What the New Contract Adds: Read Carefully
In exchange for the removed protections, the new agreement adds three principal provisions that warrant close examination.

Agenda Packet Page 362 of 528
Flock Contract Supplemental Analysis · April 2026 · Page 3 THE $34,500 UNAUTHORIZED SHARING PENALTY (§ 4.3)
Flock pays the City $34,500 per "Violation" if Flock causes an Unauthorized Sharing of Customer Data. The clause is meaningful and should be credited — but three features of how it is drafted deserve attention:
• One incident equals one violation, regardless of breadth. A "Violation" is defined as "a single, discrete act or incident … irrespective of the volume or number of records, cameras, or data elements involved." The April 2025 incident in which a single CHP query reached 845 California agency databases on behalf of ICE would, under this definition, be one violation — a $34,500 penalty for an event affecting hundreds of agencies.
• The clause excludes the most likely real-world scenarios. The penalty does not apply to disclosure made pursuant to "lawful process, emergency, or regulatory compulsion, or as a result of circumvention of Flock's controls." In practice, this excludes FISA orders, National Security Letters, CLOUD Act demands, exigent requests, and stolen credential incidents (such as the August 2025 DEA case in Palos Heights, Illinois). • The penalty is the City's exclusive remedy. By accepting it, the City contractually waives any other recovery — including damages or injunctive relief — for the same conduct. The penalty is a cap, not a floor.

THE FEDERAL TASK FORCE CARVE-OUT (§ 4.3)
The same section contains language not highlighted in the Chief's cover memo:
"Access to Customer Data by individuals deputized or seconded to a federal task force, or by federal personnel embedded within a state or local agency, shall not constitute an Unauthorized Sharing … [nor shall] access to Customer Data that is initiated, authorized, or facilitated by Customer, including Customer's acceptance of a sharing request or participation in a Lookup tool via the user interface." This provision contractually authorizes — rather than prohibits — the precise mechanisms by which other municipalities have lost control of their Flock data:
• Federal task force access is the documented pathway by which DEA, ATF, Border Patrol, and ICE have accessed local Flock data through partnerships with deputized local officers. • Lookup tool participation is the mechanism by which Mountain View Police Department learned, after the fact, that a "national lookup" feature had been enabled without their knowledge for three months in late 2024, exposing their data to nationwide query.

The $34,500 penalty does not apply to these scenarios because the contract explicitly defines them as not constituting Unauthorized Sharing.

Agenda Packet Page 363 of 528
Flock Contract Supplemental Analysis · April 2026 · Page 4 THE SEVEN-DAY NOTICE PROVISION'S GAPS (Customer Data Policy) The new MSA references an attached "Customer Data Policy" (dated March 16, 2026) committing Flock to notify the City within seven calendar days of any legal demand for City data — unless Flock is prohibited from disclosing the demand by law. The provision sounds protective. Three limitations significantly narrow what it actually covers:
• The federal demands most likely to reach this data are exempt. National Security Letters, FISA orders including Section 702 collection orders, federal grand jury subpoenas with non-disclosure orders under 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), and CLOUD Act demands all carry mandatory secrecy provisions. In each case Flock would be legally barred from notifying El Cerrito that a demand had been received. • Emergency and exigent requests bypass the seven-day window entirely. For these, the policy states Flock "reserves the right to respond immediately" with notice only after disclosure — and even then "except when Flock is prohibited from doing so by law." Federal law enforcement routinely invokes exigent circumstances under ECPA's emergency disclosure provisions. • The policy references a separate "Evidence Policy" that has not been provided. This referenced document governs how Flock accepts and processes legal demands. It is not in the council packet. The Council is being asked to approve a contract that incorporates by reference a policy document the Council has not seen.

The Customer Data Policy itself is also a document Flock can revise unilaterally, not a binding contract provision.

What Was Successfully Negotiated
In the interest of an even-handed analysis, one provision in the new MSA reflects a genuine concession not present in Flock's standard February 2026 template.

California governing law and California venue. Section 11.5 of the new MSA specifies that California law governs the agreement and that the federal and state courts of California are the exclusive venue for any disputes.

Flock's standard February 2026 template requires mandatory arbitration in Georgia under Georgia law — a provision the ACLU has flagged as one of the most concerning recent changes. The City Attorney's office appears to have held the line on this, and the Council should credit that work.

Three Questions for the Council
The question before the Council is not whether Flock's technology is useful. The Chief has presented documented investigative wins, and that record is not in dispute. The question is whether the proposed contract — as drafted, with the specific changes documented above — is one the City should sign.

Three questions are worth putting to Chief Keith and the City Attorney before the May 5 vote:
1 Why does the new contract remove the "Flock shall not sell" language? If Flock's position is that they cannot and do not sell data, why was the Council not given the opportunity to retain the binding contractual commitment to that effect?
Agenda Packet Page 364 of 528
Flock Contract Supplemental Analysis · April 2026 · Page 5 2 Why was termination for convenience removed? The current agreement allows the Council to exit the contract at any time, subject to a $500 per-camera removal fee and a pro-rata refund on the hardware portion. The new agreement removes the termination-for-convenience right entirely. What was the negotiation rationale for accepting this loss of flexibility? 3 Why does the new $34,500 penalty exclude the documented threat patterns? The exclusions for "lawful process," "emergency," and "circumvention of Flock's controls" cover the exact scenarios — federal legal demands, exigent requests, stolen credential incidents — that have produced the documented harms in other jurisdictions. Was this exclusion negotiated, or is it Flock's standard language? A vote to approve the proposed agreement is a vote to accept a contract that, on careful reading, contains fewer protections than the one currently in force — in exchange for a financial penalty that is real but narrowly scoped, and an explicit contractual carve-out for federal task force access. That is the tradeoff before the Council on May 5. The Council is not obligated to enter the proposed new agreement; the factual record laid out above is what is being voted on, and it is a record the Council is entitled to weigh on its own terms.

Sources
All citations to the existing contract refer to the executed Government Agency Agreement and Order Form between Flock Group Inc. and the City of El Cerrito, DocuSign envelope D6BA8C4C-608C-4AB3-B91A-67AE2AE60D90, signed March 27–29, 2023 (Supplemental Materials, pages 21–55).

All citations to the new MSA refer to Attachment 1, "Revised Proposed Agreement," to the April 21, 2026 Council Agenda Item No. 8.A. (Supplemental Materials, pages 11–24), with associated Exhibit A on Insurance and the attached Flock Safety Policy for Responding to Legal Demands for Customer Data dated March 16, 2026.

Flock Safety, "Flock Provides Terms & Conditions Update to Make Definitions Simpler and Provide Customer Clarity," February 17, 2026:
flocksafety.com/blog/flock-provides-terms-conditions-update American Civil Liberties Union, "Municipalities: Beware of Changes in Flock's Legal Terms If You're Using or Considering License Plate Readers," April 14, 2026: aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flocks-terms-and-conditions HaveIBeenFlocked.com, "The Deal Has Been Altered Further: Flock Publishes New Terms," February 16, 2026:
haveibeenflocked.com/news/terms-feb2026
Agenda Packet Page 365 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026

CITY OF EL CERRITO

COUNCIL BRIEFING
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Program
A Review of Security Failures, Data Sharing Practices, and Governance Risks March 2026 | Prepared for City Council Consideration
TL;DR — Summary
El Cerrito contracts with Flock Safety for license plate reader cameras that feed into a national database, which until very recently was shared with law enforcement agencies nationwide. Chief Kieth has presented documented wins. This briefing documents why the Council should look harder before taking further action.

Key Problems
• Security breaches: Live police camera feeds were publicly exposed on the open internet. Stolen officer passwords sold on criminal forums and used for unauthorized federal surveillance. • Unauthorized federal access: Flock's architecture allowed a single CHP query, conducted on behalf of ICE, to reach 845 California agency databases simultaneously. El Cerrito's prior-period exposure is an open legal question.
• Public statements diverged from the record: Flock has characterized accurate reporting as 'misinformation' on incidents where court records later contradicted the company's own public statements. Privacy protections have consistently been added in response to external pressure rather than proactively.
• Misuse by officers: Multiple documented cases of officers using Flock to stalk romantic partners.

The system logged all searches as "investigation."
What Other Cities Have Done
• 30+ cities have terminated or suspended contracts since early 2025, including Mountain View, Santa Cruz, and Los Altos Hills.
• Richmond shut cameras down in October 2025 after discovering unauthorized access to its data. • Senator Wyden, after negotiating directly with Flock on privacy protections and watching them be circumvented, recommended removing the cameras entirely.

Questions for the Council
• Has any federal agency ever accessed El Cerrito's Flock data? • Does our contract contain the clause giving Flock a perpetual license to share agency data regardless of local settings?
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 1 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 366 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 • Has the City Attorney reviewed this contract for California ALPR Privacy Act compliance? Executive Summary
El Cerrito currently contracts with Flock Safety, a private Atlanta-based company that operates license plate reader (LPR) cameras throughout the city. Each camera photographs every passing vehicle and feeds that data into a searchable national database accessible to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country. Chief Kieth has presented documented wins — but the full record warrants careful review before the Council makes any further decisions about this contract.

This briefing presents three categories of documented concern, each supported by named sources:
• Security failures — multiple incidents in which Flock's systems were compromised or left sensitive data publicly exposed, including a January 2026 breach that made live police camera feeds accessible to anyone on the internet, and stolen officer passwords sold on criminal forums. • Federal data access — documented cases in which federal agencies (DEA, ICE, Border Patrol) accessed California cities' Flock data without local knowledge or authorization — through the same network architecture that connects El Cerrito's cameras. • Deceptive default settings — Flock's system was designed to automatically enroll agencies in nationwide data sharing in ways many cities, including communities adjacent to El Cerrito, say they did not knowingly authorize. Flock has begun revising these defaults only in response to sustained public pressure, congressional inquiry, and contract terminations.

Summary: Documented Incidents and Concerns
Issue What Happened Current Status
Live camera feeds
exposed publicly
Condor cameras streamed live police
footage to anyone with internet access;
footage could be deleted
Flock says resolved; limited
independent verification
Stolen police logins
on criminal forums
Police credentials sold online; federal law
enforcement exploited login-sharing to
search for immigration targets
Two-step login verification now default
for new customers; ~3% of agencies
still not using it
Hardcoded API key
exposed surveillance
network
Master access key accidentally embedded
in public-facing code, exposing real-time
location data
Flock claims patched

2.3M license plates
released via FOIA
Police agencies failed to redact Flock audit
data; tens of millions of search records
exposed
Data remains accessible; Flock
attempted legal takedown
DEA used stolen
password for
immigration search
Federal agent used local officer's
credentials without consent to conduct
immigration surveillance, violating Illinois
law
Isolated incident; systemic vulnerability
remains
ICE searched 845 CA
databases via one
query
CHP query on behalf of ICE accessed
nearly every CA Flock agency
simultaneously through sharing network
Flock says sharing defaults changed;
lawsuit pending
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 2 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 367 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 National Lookup
default — agencies
enrolled without
knowledge
75% enrollment in national sharing tool;
many cities say they did not knowingly
consent
Flock reversing defaults under public
pressure
No transparency
report re: federal legal
demands
Flock has never disclosed whether it has
received FISA, NSL, or CLOUD Act data
demands from federal intelligence agencies
No change; no report published
What Is Flock Safety, and What Does It Collect?
Flock Safety was founded in Atlanta in 2017. As of 2025, it operates cameras in over 5,000 communities across 49 states and performs over 20 billion vehicle scans per month nationwide. The company has raised over $950 million in venture funding at a reported valuation of $7.5 billion. El Cerrito is one of hundreds of Bay Area communities with Flock cameras.

What the cameras capture:
• Every vehicle's license plate number
• Date, time, and precise location of each scan
• Vehicle color, make, model, and visible features (bumper stickers, roof racks, damage, etc.) • Direction of travel
What Does This Data Actually Reveal?
A record of every time a vehicle passes a Flock camera builds a detailed log of where a person goes, how often, and when — doctor's appointments, places of worship, political events, legal consultations, support group meetings. A single scan is not sensitive. Thousands of them, accumulated over months, create a precise portrait of a person's movements and associations. This is what privacy researchers call a 'movement pattern profile,' and it is why courts are increasingly treating this category of data as constitutionally sensitive.

In June 2024, a judge in Norfolk, Virginia ruled that collecting location data from 172 Flock cameras constituted a Fourth Amendment search — and therefore required a warrant to use as evidence.

Who can access El Cerrito's Flock data?
By default, Flock enables what it calls a "National Lookup Tool" — a shared database through which any enrolled Flock law enforcement customer can search the cameras of other enrolled agencies. Flock reported to Congress in August 2025 that 75% of its law enforcement customers participate in this tool. That means when an officer in Texas, Florida, or any other state searches for a vehicle, they may be querying camera footage collected by El Cerrito's police department.

Section 1: Documented Security Failures
Flock's public marketing states that the company has "never experienced a data breach." The incidents below complicate that claim. Each is documented and on the public record.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 3 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 368 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Incident 1: Live Police Camera Feeds Exposed to the Public (January 2026) What happened: Flock's Condor cameras — its advanced police model with 360-degree pan-tilt-zoom capability — had their live video feeds inadvertently made publicly accessible over the internet.

Security researcher and technologist Benn Jordan discovered the exposed cameras using Shodan — a public search engine that indexes internet-connected devices — from his home in Atlanta. No credentials or login of any kind were required. He and colleagues could access live feeds, view a full month of archived footage from cameras across the country, and even delete video from active police systems. A 404 Media journalist confirmed the exposure independently by driving to a street corner in Bakersfield, California and watching himself live on his phone through the exposed feed.

Flock's explanation: The company attributed the exposure to a "standard testing process" for checking cellular carrier compatibility, and characterized it as an isolated error that was promptly corrected.

Why it matters: The exposed cameras were deployed as law enforcement tools in communities across the country. Anyone with internet access could watch live footage of police-monitored public spaces, track movement patterns at specific locations, and — by deleting footage — interfere with active investigations.

Flock framed this as a procedural lapse. Independent security researchers described it as a serious breach of law enforcement infrastructure.

Source: WFLX News, January 9, 2026
Incident 2: Stolen Police Logins Sold on Criminal Forum (November 2025) What happened: Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) filed a formal complaint with the FTC in November 2025 after discovering that login credentials belonging to Flock law enforcement customers had been stolen by malware and were actively available for purchase on criminal forums.

What Are 'Stolen Credentials' and Why Does It Matter Here? When a username and password are stolen — typically through malicious software on a police officer's computer — criminals can log in to systems as though they were that officer. In Flock's case, anyone who obtained these logins could query the National Lookup Tool, accessing billions of vehicle scans from thousands of agencies including El Cerrito, and would appear in the system as a legitimate law enforcement user. There would be no alert, no record of unauthorized access, and no notification to the affected city.

The missing safeguard: A standard security measure — the same two-step verification used by most online banking systems, where a code is sent to a phone in addition to a password — would have blocked these stolen logins from being used. Flock made this protection available but did not require it — a fact the company confirmed directly to Congress in October 2025, according to the Wyden/Krishnamoorthi FTC letter. Congress confirmed this directly with the company in October 2025.

Scale of exposure: Cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock identified at least 35 compromised Flock law enforcement passwords. Flock's own chief legal officer told TechCrunch (November 3, 2025) that approximately 3% of the company's 5,000+ law enforcement customers — potentially dozens of agencies — had still not enabled this basic protection, citing 'reasons specific to them.' Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 4 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 369 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Sources: TechCrunch, November 3, 2025 | Sen. Wyden FTC Letter (PDF) | 404 Media Incident 3: Master Access Key Found in Publicly Readable Code What happened: A security researcher discovered that Flock's publicly accessible website code contained a hardcoded API key — a master credential embedded directly in the software — for the company's mapping and location data system.

What Is a 'Hardcoded API Key'?
An API key is a digital credential that unlocks access to a system. Keeping it secret is a basic security requirement. 'Hardcoding' means a developer wrote the key directly into publicly readable code — equivalent to writing the combination to a safe on the outside of the safe door. Anyone who examined the code could find it and use it without restriction.

The exposed key granted unrestricted access to Flock's infrastructure, which aggregates data from approximately 12,000 law enforcement, community, and private sector sources. While active, this credential made real-time surveillance data available to anyone who located it.

Source: WebProNews / Nexanet Security Report, January 2026 Incident 4: 2.3 Million License Plates Released Through Public Records Requests What happened: Multiple California police departments failed to properly redact sensitive data when responding to public records requests. The unredacted files contained 2.3 million license plates and tens of millions of search records from thousands of agencies — including the identities of surveillance targets, suspects, and crime victims.

Flock's response: The company sought to have websites hosting this information taken down, claiming the material posed "an immediate threat to public safety." Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure provider that received the takedown demands, declined, finding insufficient grounds.

Source: SAN / 404 Media, January 2026
Section 2: Federal Government Access to Local Data
Flock's network architecture creates structural pathways for federal agencies — including immigration enforcement — to access data collected by local police departments, sometimes without the knowledge or authorization of either the city council or the police department itself.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 5 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 370 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 The DEA Incident: A Federal Agent Used a Local Officer's Password (August 2025) A Drug Enforcement Administration agent used the Flock login credentials of a local police officer to conduct an immigration-related search — without that officer's knowledge or authorization. The officer, from the Palos Heights Police Department in Illinois, learned about the search only after a journalist filed a public records request.

Why it matters: Using license plate readers for immigration enforcement is illegal in Illinois. The federal agent bypassed both state law and Flock's own terms of service simply by borrowing a local officer's login.

The Palos Heights department confirmed it had not enabled two-step login verification prior to the incident — and only did so after learning of it through press coverage.

Sources: 404 Media, August 2025 | TechCrunch
ICE Access Through the "Side Door": The California Problem In April 2025, the California Highway Patrol conducted a search on behalf of ICE that simultaneously reached 845 separate California agency databases through Flock's sharing network. Because of how Flock's architecture connects enrolled agencies, a single CHP search functioned as a dragnet, touching the camera data of nearly every California law enforcement Flock customer — including communities throughout Contra Costa County.

What Is the "Side Door"?
California's ALPR Privacy Act prohibits local police from sharing license plate data with federal or outof-state agencies. But Flock's network architecture built in a structural gap: a federal or out-of-state officer with access to any single enrolled agency's Flock account could, through the national sharing architecture, effectively search the data of hundreds of connected agencies — without separate agreements with each one. They needed only one login. Researchers called this the 'side door':
indirect access that circumvented the restrictions California had enacted.

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights documented that Mountain View PD learned only recently that federal agencies had been accessing its camera data through Flock's nationwide sharing tool — a feature that had been enabled without the department's knowledge or consent.

Sources: Courthouse News, February 2026 | UW Center for Human Rights, October 2025 No Transparency Report — What We Don't Know
Major technology companies — Microsoft, Apple, Google — publish annual transparency reports disclosing, in aggregate, how many times the federal government requested their data under laws like the CLOUD Act, FISA, or National Security Letters. These reports do not reveal the details of individual cases, but they establish for the public the general scale of federal access.

CLOUD Act, FISA, and National Security Letters — What Are These? Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 6 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 371 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 These are federal legal authorities that allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to compel private companies to produce data:
• CLOUD Act (enacted 2018): Allows law enforcement to compel any US company to produce any data they possess — including data held on behalf of a local police department — even if stored outside the country.
• FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enacted 1978, significantly expanded 2008): Authorizes intelligence agencies to collect data for national security purposes.

Recipients of FISA orders are legally prohibited from disclosing that a demand was made — including to their own customers.
• National Security Letters (NSLs, authority codified 1986, expanded under the PATRIOT Act 2001): FBI-issued demands for subscriber and transaction data, with no court involvement required and mandatory gag orders attached. Courts have allowed limited challenges, but most NSLs remain confidential.

Flock Safety has published no corporate transparency report of any kind — a gap Senator Wyden explicitly flagged in his October 2025 letter to the company, noting that Flock "was not transparent about which federal agencies can access its data." (Wyden letter to Flock CEO, October 2025) There is no public record of how many federal legal demands Flock has received or complied with. The absence of such a report cannot be taken as evidence that no such demands exist — and this is not a technicality. Under FISA, recipients of intelligence collection orders are legally prohibited from disclosing that an order was ever issued — not just its contents, but its existence. A company could be under an active FISA order and be legally forbidden from telling its own customers, its own board, or the public. The absence of a denial is not the same as a denial. For a company operating one of the largest movement-tracking databases in the country, the lack of any transparency report means El Cerrito has no way of knowing whether federal intelligence agencies have accessed its residents' data — and Flock itself may be legally barred from saying so.

Flock operates one of the largest movement-tracking databases in the United States. It is a US company fully subject to these federal legal tools. It has never published any disclosure — voluntary or otherwise — indicating how many such demands, if any, it has received or satisfied.

How Cameras Enter Police Networks Without Council Votes A growing number of Flock cameras are purchased not by city governments but by private nonprofits, police foundations, neighborhood associations, and community groups — which then donate or grant access to police departments. In Los Angeles, community groups raise funds and donate cameras to the LAPD via its Police Foundation nonprofit. In Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation has channeled over $3.7 million into Flock cameras through an advisory process described by participants as 'almost completely devoid of broadbased public input.' (Atlanta Press Collective, April 2026) The EFF has flagged this pattern explicitly:
surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement free access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. (EFF, February 2026) When cameras enter a police network through nonprofit donation rather than city procurement, the city council may never have voted on them — and normal public records and oversight requirements may not apply to the purchasing entity. Whether any El Cerrito cameras were acquired through this mechanism is worth confirming.

Section 3: Deceptive Design — The Nationwide Sharing Default This section addresses a core governance question: whether Flock's software was designed to maximize data sharing in ways that local agencies did not fully understand or authorize when they signed their contracts.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 7 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 372 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 What Flock Claims vs. What the Record Shows
Flock's claim: "Every Flock customer has complete control over their sharing relationships, and Flock never shares customer data without their knowledge or permission." (Flock Safety website) The documented record:
• The ACLU of Massachusetts found that Flock's standard contract grants the company a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right and license" to disclose agency data for 'investigative purposes' — independent of whatever sharing settings the local agency has configured. (ACLU, October 2025)
• Documented accounts show that local governments were enrolled in national sharing "either by blindly approving the inquiries or unknowingly signing onto the national sharing option." (Wikipedia — Flock Safety)
• 75% of Flock's law enforcement customers are enrolled in the National Lookup Tool. That enrollment rate is difficult to reconcile with a genuine opt-in process. Flock confirmed this figure to Congress in August 2025. (Sen. Wyden FTC Letter) What Is a "Dark Pattern"?
Definition: Dark Pattern
A 'dark pattern' is a software design term for an interface structured to steer users toward choices that benefit the company at the user's expense — often without the user recognizing that a consequential decision has been made. Common forms include pre-checked consent boxes, obscured opt-out controls, and defaults set to maximum data sharing. California law (the CPRA) defines a dark pattern as 'a user interface designed or manipulated with the substantial effect of subverting or impairing user autonomy, decision making, or choice.'
The pattern here — nationwide enrollment that agencies say they did not knowingly authorize, contract language preserving Flock's right to share data regardless of local settings, and architecture that allowed ICE to search 845 California databases through a single query — is consistent with a system designed to maximize data breadth rather than to ensure informed municipal consent.

Flock has begun changing these defaults — under pressure.

The company has announced a series of modifications since late 2025:
• October 2025: Immigration and reproductive care search filters introduced (Flock Safety blog; NPR, February 2026)
• January 2026: Agencies can now disable all federal sharing through a single toggle (Flock Safety, "Does Flock Share Data With ICE?")
• February 2026: New disclosure added at the point of login And Flock's Standard Terms Are Quietly Getting Worse
While Flock has been adding opt-out features under public pressure, its standard Terms & Conditions have been moving in a different direction. The ACLU documented in April 2026 that Flock revised its standard T&Cs four times in the seven months leading up to its February 16, 2026 contract template — the same template the proposed El Cerrito agreement is based on. (ACLU advisory, April 14, 2026; Flock T&C blog post, Feb 17, 2026; HaveIBeenFlocked analysis) The documented changes include:

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 8 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 373 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 • Removed the clause stating 'Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data' — Flock acknowledged this removal in a February 17, 2026 blog post, calling it 'redundant.' • Added perpetual rights for Flock to use customer data to 'support and improve' services even after contract termination.
• Expanded liability protections shielding Flock from claims of willful misconduct or gross negligence. • Added mandatory arbitration in Georgia under Georgia law. (Note: El Cerrito's specific contract retains California venue — credit to the City Attorney for preserving that.) • Made it harder for customers to terminate contracts, including when councils vote against renewal or fail to appropriate funds.

The Problem With "We Fixed It"
These changes arrived only after sustained investigative reporting, a Congressional inquiry, a formal FTC complaint, civil litigation, and contract terminations by dozens of municipalities. A company that had prioritized local control from the outset would likely have built these protections into the original design rather than adding them years later in response to external pressure.

At least 30 cities have terminated or declined to renew Flock contracts since early 2025, with much of the activity concentrated in the last three months, per NPR. Among them: Austin (TX), Denver (CO), Santa Cruz (CA), Mountain View (CA), Los Altos Hills (CA), and others.

Richmond's situation warrants particular attention given its proximity to El Cerrito. Police Chief Simmons shut down Richmond's Flock cameras in October 2025 after discovering that a 'national lookup' configuration had allowed outside agencies to access Richmond's data without authorization — a direct violation of city policy and California law. The contract expired February 28, 2026. The Richmond City Council convened March 3 to vote on the question, but the meeting ran out of time before a vote could be taken. The cameras remain offline. Mayor Martinez summarized the bind plainly: 'That trust has been broken — that is shame on Flock. If we choose to trust them again and it happens again, then that shame is on us as leaders of the community.' (Grandview Independent, March 4, 2026; ContraCosta.news, March 4, 2026)
Section 4: A Pattern of Misleading Public Statements
The incidents described in Sections 1–3 raise questions about Flock's technical practices and contract design. This section addresses a different category of concern: what the company has said publicly when its practices were questioned — and how those statements compare to what the documented record shows.

Across multiple incidents, Flock's public posture has followed the same arc: deny the problem, attack those who report it, and make changes only when forced. For a city considering whether to trust this company's assurances about how its data is being used, that pattern is directly relevant.

The Texas Abortion Search — And Flock's Response
In May 2025, a sheriff's deputy in Johnson County, Texas conducted two searches across more than 83,000 cameras spanning nearly 7,000 Flock networks — including cameras in states where abortion is a protected right, including Illinois and Washington. The official reason entered in the search log: "had an abortion, search for female."
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 9 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 374 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 When the story was reported by 404 Media, both the Johnson County Sheriff and Flock Safety publicly denied that the search was related to the woman's abortion. Flock issued a statement saying she "was never under criminal investigation by Johnson County. She was being searched for as a missing person, not as a suspect of a crime." Flock CEO Garrett Langley called 404 Media's reporting a "misleading account by an activist journalist." The company's communications director told 404 Media it would not respond to further questions until the outlet admitted to "purposefully spread[ing] misinformation which you know to be untrue."
In October 2025, the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained sworn court records from the case. Those records told a different story entirely. The lead detective's affidavit described the matter as a "death investigation" of a "non-viable fetus." Police had collected FedEx packaging, pill instructions, and photographs from the scene. Investigators consulted the District Attorney's office about whether they could charge the woman with a crime — on the same day as the Flock search. The abortion had occurred more than two weeks before the search was conducted. The death investigation remained open for weeks. The DA ultimately concluded the state could not charge her.

Flock had promoted the sheriff's narrative on its own blog and in media appearances. When those court records emerged contradicting it, the company declined to comment.

Sheriff King has since been indicted on felony counts in an unrelated case, including aggravated perjury — context noted only to underscore the credibility issues with the account Flock chose to amplify.

What Flock Said vs. What the Record Shows
Flock's public statement: "She was never under criminal investigation by Johnson County. She was being searched for as a missing person, not as a suspect of a crime." The sworn affidavit of the lead detective: The case was a "death investigation" of a "non-viable fetus." Police collected evidence, reviewed the woman's text messages, and consulted the DA about charges — on the same day the 83,000-camera search was conducted.

Flock called the journalists who reported this accurately "activist journalists" spreading "purposefully misleading" information. The court records were obtained by EFF through a public records request — from Flock's own customer. (EFF, October 2025; 404 Media, October 2025) Officers Using Flock to Stalk Romantic Partners — A Documented Pattern El Cerrito has a good working relationship with its police department, and nothing in this briefing suggests local officers would misuse this system. The concern here is structural: Flock grants database access to hundreds of employees per department, requires only a free-text field labeled "reason" to conduct a search, and has no technical barrier preventing personal use. That combination has produced a documented pattern of abuse elsewhere in the country.

In spring 2025, Milwaukee Police Department Officer Josue Ayala used Flock to run his girlfriend's license plate 124 times and her former partner's plate 55 times over two months — logging every single search as "investigation." He was charged with misconduct in public office and negotiated a resignation from the department. The abuse was discovered not by Flock's internal auditing, but because one of the victims checked their own plate on HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a third-party website that publishes Flock audit log Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 10 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 375 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 data. Separately, a Kenosha County deputy was found to have run repeated Flock searches on a colleague he was romantically involved with. In an earlier Kansas case, a police chief used Flock 228 times to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. He received probation and lost his police certification.

Four Milwaukee aldermen subsequently wrote to the city's Fire and Police Commission that such cases "underscore the systemic oversight gap rather than an isolated failure." The ACLU of Wisconsin put it plainly: Flock misuse is "a pattern we've seen across the country — law enforcement using taxpayerfunded policing tools to spy on women they have a romantic interest in." The question for El Cerrito is not whether local officers would behave this way. It is whether the city is comfortable operating a system where the primary check against personal misuse is a third-party public website — not the vendor's own safeguards.

Sources: Urban Milwaukee, February 2026 | Wisconsin Examiner, March 13, 2026 | ACLU of Wisconsin A Recurring Pattern in Public Communications
The abortion case is not an isolated example of Flock's public communications diverging from the documented record. Flock's marketing materials claim the system has "never experienced a data breach" — language that was on its website while stolen police credentials were being sold on criminal forums and a live police camera feed was publicly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The company confirmed to Congress that it had not required basic login security, only after lawmakers began a formal investigation. Every privacy protection Flock has added — immigration search filters, the federal sharing toggle, enhanced login requirements — arrived after public exposure and sustained external pressure, never before.

Senator Wyden, who negotiated directly with Flock on privacy protections and watched them be circumvented, concluded: "I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them." His recommendation to local officials was unambiguous: remove the cameras. (Sen. Wyden letter to Flock CEO, October 16, 2025) The relevance for El Cerrito is this: the city cannot rely on Flock's voluntary disclosures to understand how its data is being used. The company's track record — documented across multiple incidents and confirmed by multiple independent sources — is to deny problems until they are exposed by others, then characterize the exposure as misinformation, then make the minimum change necessary to quiet the criticism. That is not a partnership built on transparency.

Section 5: Mission Creep — The Documented Pattern
One of the most important questions a city council can ask about a surveillance contract is not 'what does this technology do today?' but 'what will it be used for once the infrastructure exists?' The answer, across every major surveillance technology deployed in American cities over the past thirty years, has been consistent: capabilities expand, stated purposes broaden, and safeguards lag behind.

With Flock Safety, this pattern has already played out — not as a future risk, but as documented recent history.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 11 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 376 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Mission Creep Within Flock Safety (2017–2026)
Flock was founded in 2017 with a single product: a solar-powered license plate reader. Within eight years, the company has expanded into the following capabilities — most of which were not disclosed to cities when they signed their original contracts:
• Vehicle 'fingerprinting': Beyond license plates, Flock now uses AI to identify vehicles by make, model, color, bumper stickers, dents, and roof racks — enabling tracking even when a plate is obscured or absent. Cities that originally contracted for license-plate reading now have a system that identifies vehicles by visual characteristics independent of plates. • Nationwide cross-agency search (National Lookup Tool): Many cities understood their original Flock deployments as local tools. The National Lookup Tool was designed to allow any participating officer anywhere in the country to query cameras of connected agencies. Chief Kieth has indicated that El Cerrito has since disabled nationwide search access. However, many cities believed this feature was off when it was not — Mountain View being a documented California example — and the question of what access existed during prior years of the contract remains open. Many cities say they did not knowingly consent to this when they signed. • Drone acquisition (October 2024): Flock acquired Aerodome, a drone-as-first-responder company, for over $300 million. Cities that contracted with Flock for plate readers are now customers of a company building an autonomous drone fleet. Flock's CEO has described the goal as a 'seamless safety ecosystem' built on the camera infrastructure already deployed in thousands of cities.
• "Raven" audio sensors (2021, expanded 2025): Flock's Raven product was marketed as a gunshot detector. In October 2025, Flock announced that Raven would also detect 'human distress' — originally advertising this feature with alerts for 'screaming.' After public criticism, Flock revised the marketing language from 'screaming' to 'distress,' but the underlying capability was unchanged.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation described this as 'a significant step toward comprehensive audio analytics.' Cities that installed microphones to detect gunfire now operate sensors capable of flagging human voices.
• Ring doorbell integration (October 2025): Flock partnered with Amazon's Ring to allow agencies on its Nova platform to request footage from Ring doorbell cameras. Amazon Ring has an estimated 10 million US users. The partnership was cancelled in February 2026 following public backlash — but its existence illustrated Flock's direction.
• Nova AI investigation platform (February 2025): Flock launched Nova — a data fusion platform aggregating license plate reader data with other sources. 404 Media reported in May 2025 that Nova was designed to supplement plate data with information from data breaches (including from a hacked parking meter application), public records, and commercially available data. After the 404 Media reporting, Flock publicly committed not to source data from the dark web or known data breaches. The pattern is the same one documented elsewhere in this briefing: a privacy concern surfaces through external reporting; a corrective change is announced after the fact. (404 Media, May 2025)
• Protest surveillance (documented 2025): An EFF analysis of 12 million Flock searches logged by 3,900 agencies found hundreds of searches linked explicitly to political demonstrations — the 50501 protests, Hands Off protests, and No Kings protests. Nineteen agencies conducted searches specifically tied to No Kings protests. A system deployed to address vehicle crime became an instrument for monitoring constitutionally protected political activity.

Flock's CEO, in His Own Words
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 12 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 377 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 The Broader Pattern: Other Surveillance Technologies
Flock Safety's trajectory is not an anomaly. It follows a pattern well-documented in American surveillance technology deployment.

StingRay Cell-Site Simulators
StingRay devices were introduced to domestic law enforcement as tools for locating specific criminal suspects. Within a decade, they were being deployed to sweep protest crowds, collecting the phone data of everyone present regardless of any individual suspicion. The Baltimore Police Department used StingRays more than 4,300 times over several years. The DEA and U.S. Marshals deployed them at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. A technology developed to track fugitives became an instrument of political surveillance. Federal courts spent years trying to establish warrant requirements — legal frameworks that never quite kept pace with the technology's actual use.

ShotSpotter Acoustic Gunshot Detection
ShotSpotter was marketed to cities as a narrowly scoped gunshot detection system. In practice, its microphones became persistent neighborhood surveillance infrastructure. Studies found the system produced no measurable reduction in gun violence, while substantially increasing police presence in majority-minority communities — with consequences that were sometimes fatal. In Chicago, 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot and killed by an officer responding to a ShotSpotter alert; he was unarmed. One Illinois village trustee, explaining his decision to cancel Flock's Raven microphone contract, noted that local data showed over 99% of Flock alerts generated no police action whatsoever. ShotSpotter and Flock Raven are functionally analogous products — and Flock has now extended Raven to flag human voices, tracing the same expansion arc.

The Consistent Arc
The thread connecting these technologies is not misconduct — it is institutional momentum. Once infrastructure is in place, expansion feels incremental and internally justified: the system already exists, it is already paid for, and each additional use case seems marginal relative to what is already operational. LPR cameras have expanded from vehicle tracking to immigration enforcement, to abortion investigations, to protest monitoring, to drone integration, to ambient audio detection. These are not isolated decisions. They represent a single predictable arc, observed across every surveillance technology that preceded Flock.

Where This Is Heading: The Near-Term Trajectory
The most consequential question before this Council is not what Flock Safety's cameras do today. It is what the infrastructure being installed in El Cerrito will enable in three to five years — grounded not in speculation, but in capabilities Flock has already deployed, publicly announced, or is demonstrably developing.

Step 1 (Already Deployed): Tracking People, Not Just Vehicles Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 13 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 378 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Flock's cameras have always captured pedestrians, cyclists, and bystanders alongside vehicles — documented explicitly in the ACLU of Oregon's 2025 lawsuit. The change is what can now be done with that footage.

Flock's FreeForm search product — a commercially available, opt-in tool launched in 2025 — allows an officer to enter a plain-language description such as 'man in blue shirt and cowboy hat' and surface visual matches from video-enabled cameras within their sharing network. Importantly, person-description search requires video-enabled cameras rather than standard LPR units; vehicle-description search works across all LPR and video cameras. The ACLU has noted that searches can encompass descriptions of vehicle occupants and passing pedestrians: their apparent age, clothing, visible tattoos, facial hair, and the text visible on hats or shirts. Whether El Cerrito's current contract includes video cameras — and therefore whether this capability applies here — is a question worth confirming directly with Flock or Chief Kieth.

Flock's Condor PTZ cameras, deployed in some jurisdictions, include Guardian Mode — an AI feature that automatically detects, tracks, and zooms in on individuals around the clock without a human operator.

People Detection Alerts separately notify police when anyone enters a defined area at an unauthorized time.

The cameras El Cerrito contracted for vehicle plate-reading are part of a product family that now tracks human movement autonomously.

Step 2 (Already Deployed): AI That Designates Who Is 'Suspicious' In July 2025, Flock launched a feature that automatically flags vehicles and individuals based on 'suspicious' movement patterns and notifies police — without any officer initiating a search. The algorithm makes the determination independently. (ACLU, July 2025)
The ACLU raised direct questions about this capability in a published analysis (ACLU, July 2025): whether movement patterns genuinely predictive of criminal behavior can be identified without generating enormous numbers of false positives among innocent people; whether the algorithm's training data, logic, and error rates are publicly known (they are not); and whether an algorithm trained on historical criminal data — in which low-income and minority communities are statistically overrepresented due to well-documented systemic biases — might effectively treat residence in certain neighborhoods as inherently suspicious. Flock is a private company. Its algorithms are not subject to public records law, independent audit, or oversight by any elected body.

Step 3 (Available, Not Yet in El Cerrito): Drones with Persistent Aerial Coverage Flock's Alpha drone, unveiled at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in late 2025, carries a 40x optical zoom capable of reading a license plate from 2,000 feet. It launches automatically in response to a ground-camera alert, covers a 3.5-mile radius, and can land, swap batteries, and redeploy in approximately 90 seconds.

Chief Kieth has indicated El Cerrito has no plans to acquire drones, and doing so would require a separate purchase decision. However, the underlying camera network and data platform that integrates with the Alpha is already installed in El Cerrito. Should a future administration choose to add drone capability, the existing Flock infrastructure is designed to support it without rebuilding from scratch — making it a procurement decision rather than an infrastructure one.

Step 4 (Converging): The Path to Facial Recognition
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 14 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 379 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Flock states on its Privacy & Ethics page that its ALPR cameras 'do not use facial recognition.' That statement is technically accurate with respect to the hardware category — and increasingly beside the point.

The ability to search for an individual by physical description is already live — available across any videoenabled Flock camera within an officer's sharing network, potentially reaching tens of thousands of cameras.

Cameras that autonomously track and zoom on individuals are already deployed. Flock's drone fleet carries high-resolution optics designed to follow people. The Nova platform is built to cross-reference vehicle records with personal data — in Flock's own terminology, to 'jump from LPR to person.' Facial recognition is the logical next layer in this architecture, and it is already present in the broader law enforcement technology ecosystem that intersects with Flock's data. ICE uses Clearview AI facial recognition in the same enforcement operations that access Flock data. Amazon Ring had deployed a 'Familiar Faces' feature that catalogs the faces of recurring visitors — and maintained an active partnership with Flock as recently as February 2026.

The technical distance between 'search for a person matching this description across thousands of cameras' and 'identify this face across thousands of cameras' is a single model update — deployable to cameras already installed in El Cerrito, on infrastructure already paid for, already networked nationally.

The Picture This Paints
The ACLU offered this image of the system Flock is building: imagine a police officer standing on your street, writing detailed notes on every person who drives or walks by — vehicle make, color, and bumper stickers, but also the number of occupants, their approximate age and gender, their clothing, any visible tattoos, what their hat or shirt says. Now place an officer like that on every block simultaneously. Give each one a perfect memory, instant access to every other officer's notes nationwide, and an algorithm that automatically surfaces anyone whose movements seem unusual.

That is not a description of a system being designed. It is a description of the panopticon being built — using infrastructure that cities like El Cerrito are already paying for.

Senator Wyden's Conclusion
After working directly with Flock to negotiate privacy protections and watching those protections be circumvented, Senator Ron Wyden wrote to the company in October 2025: 'I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them. In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.' (Sen. Wyden letter to Flock CEO, October 16, 2025)
Section 6: California Legal Exposure
El Cerrito's use of Flock may create specific legal exposure under California law. The following is an overview for the Council's consideration; a formal legal opinion from the City Attorney is recommended.

Note: A separate analysis of the contract proposed for Council vote on May 5, 2026 — including a side-byside comparison with the existing 2023 agreement — has been prepared and is available alongside this briefing.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 15 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 380 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 • California ALPR Privacy Act: Prohibits local law enforcement from sharing license plate data with federal or out-of-state agencies. El Cerrito may have been in violation of this statute during the period when nationwide lookup was active — not through any deliberate decision to share, but through default settings that allowed outside agencies to query local data. Whether that prior-period exposure creates ongoing legal liability, even after settings were corrected, is a question the City Attorney should assess.
• California AG Enforcement: California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the city of El Cajon in October 2025 for refusing to comply with the ALPR Privacy Act's data-sharing restrictions — signaling active enforcement intent at the state level. (Courthouse News, February 2026) • Fourth Amendment exposure: A Virginia court ruled in June 2024 that mass ALPR data collection constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant. While not binding in California, this legal trajectory is moving toward greater restrictions on how this data can be used as prosecutorial evidence. (Wikipedia — Flock Safety; Institute for Justice) • CPRA liability: To the extent that Flock's contract contained consent provisions that functioned as dark patterns under California's Consumer Privacy Rights Act, questions may arise about whether past data sharing arrangements were legally valid — and whether the city bears any residual liability even now that settings have been updated.

Section 7: Questions and Recommended Actions for Council The Council may wish to consider the following questions and actions:

Questions to Put to Flock Directly
• Transparency report: Has Flock Safety ever received a FISA order, National Security Letter, or CLOUD Act demand for data from El Cerrito or any connected agency? Will Flock commit to publishing an annual transparency report?
• El Cerrito-specific access log: Which agencies outside El Cerrito have queried this department's Flock data? A complete audit log for the past three years should be requested. • Federal access: Have any federal agencies — including ICE, CBP, DEA, FBI, or HSI — accessed El Cerrito's Flock data, directly or through shared network lookups with other agencies? • Contract language: Does El Cerrito's contract contain the clause granting Flock a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license" to disclose agency data? If so, the Council should demand its removal.
• Login security: Is El Cerrito's Flock account currently protected by two-step login verification — the type that requires a secondary code sent to a phone in addition to a password? Pricing and Data Rights
Pricing and data rights: Flock charges approximately $2,400 per camera per year — roughly one-tenth the cost of competitors like Motorola's Vigilant Solutions. (Sacra, 2025) Flock states it does not sell data, but the perpetual irrevocable license it retains — including after contract termination — grants rights to use agency data to improve its platform and services. Before any contract renewal or termination decision, the Council should confirm what specific data rights El Cerrito's contract grants Flock over locally-generated data, and whether those rights survive the end of the contract.

Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 16 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 381 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Recommended Actions
• Request a legal review: Ask the City Attorney to review El Cerrito's Flock contract for compliance with the California ALPR Privacy Act and CPRA requirements, including an assessment of whether the 'side door' access pattern may have already triggered a violation — and whether any residual liability remains now that settings have been updated.
• Require a full data audit: Require Flock to produce a complete audit of every agency that has accessed El Cerrito camera data, and the stated purpose of each query. • Consider a moratorium: Several California cities — Santa Cruz, Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, Richmond — have suspended or terminated Flock contracts while legal and policy frameworks develop. El Cerrito could take a comparable precautionary position. • Recognize the infrastructure problem: Both Senator Wyden and a growing number of municipalities have concluded that Flock's documented abuses are not a fixable configuration problem — they are a product of the architecture itself. A nationwide interconnected database accessible to thousands of law enforcement users, held by a private company operating without transparency requirements, cannot be made reliably safe by adding opt-out toggles after the fact.

The Council should weigh the long-term civil liberties implications of ALPR infrastructure against documented crime-solving benefits, recognizing that infrastructure decisions of this kind are difficult to reverse.
• Coordinate with Contra Costa County: Neighboring jurisdictions should be consulted to understand whether Flock's national sharing network is being used to access El Cerrito data through other agencies — the 'side door' pattern documented in communities throughout California.

The constitutional concerns raised by mass surveillance infrastructure are not new. The Supreme Court has addressed them directly:
“Awareness that the government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms.

And the government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse.”
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, United States v. Jones, 2012 — — —
“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps.

Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen.” — Justice William O. Douglas, Osborn v. United States, 1966 Sources and References
All sources below are publicly available. Hyperlinks are included for direct access.

Source Link Topic
404 Media (Dec
2025)
https://www.404media.co/flock-exposedits-ai-powered-ca...Condor cameras exposed via Shodan; journalist tracked
himself on livestream
Sen. Wyden Letter
to Flock CEO (Oct
2025)
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/
press-releases/wyden-...

Wyden: abuses 'inevitable';
recommends removing cameras
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 17 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 382 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 WFLX News (Jan
2026)
https://www.wflx.com/2026/01/09/flocksafety-exposed-li...Live camera feed breach — Condor cameras
TechCrunch (Nov
2025)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/03/
lawmakers-say-stolen-...

Stolen police logins / FTC
complaint
Sen. Wyden FTC
Letter
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/
media/doc/wyden_letter...

Congressional complaint re:
login security failures
404 Media (Aug
2025)
https://www.404media.co/feds-used-localcops-password-t...DEA immigration search via stolen credentials
404 Media (Nov
2025)
https://www.404media.co/flock-loginsexposed-in-malware...Flock credentials in infostealer malware
Courthouse News
(Feb 2026)
https://courthousenews.com/californiadrivers-accuse-fl...CA lawsuit — 845 databases, side-door access
ACLU (Oct 2025) https://www.aclu.org/news/privacytechnology/flock-mass...Flock contract clause, perpetual data license
ACLU (Oct 2025) https://www.aclu.org/news/privacytechnology/flock-roun...ICE use, abortion investigation, expansion
UW Center for
Human Rights
https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/
2025/10/21/leav...

WA state — ICE, side-door
access, federal sharing
WebProNews (Jan
2026)
https://www.webpronews.com/flocksafety-api-key-leak-ex...Hardcoded ArcGIS API key exposure
SAN / 404 Media
(Jan 2026)
https://san.com/cc/flock-threatenswebsite-hosting-lice...2.3M plates released; Flock takedown attempt
ACLU (Jul 2025) https://www.aclu.org/news/nationalsecurity/surveillanc...Flock AI 'suspicious' movement feature; algorithm critique
ACLU (Oct 2025) https://www.aclu.org/news/privacytechnology/flock-roun...FreeForm person search; 'army of officers' description
Flock Safety
(product page)
https://www.flocksafety.com/products/
flock-freeform
FreeForm natural language
person/vehicle search
Flock Safety
(product page)
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/new-aivideo-analytics...Guardian Mode and People Detection Alerts
Flock Safety —
Alpha drone
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flocksafety-unveils-a...Alpha drone specs — 40x zoom, 2,000ft plate-reading
Flock Safety —
Privacy & Ethics
https://www.flocksafety.com/privacy-ethics Official denial of facial recognition on ALPR cameras
Flock Safety —
Search Safeguards
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/searchsafeguards-how-...Immigration/reproductive care filters (Oct 2025)
Flock Safety —
Federal Sharing
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/doesflock-share-data-...January 2026 single-toggle federal sharing disable
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 18 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 383 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 Toggle
Police1 / IACP (Jan
2026)
https://www.police1.com/artificialintelligence/up-clos...Alpha drone; NightShift AI; IACP 2025 presentation
Brennan Center
(2025)
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports...

Nova data fusion; predictive
policing risks
TechCrunch (Feb
2026)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/
amazons-ring-cancels-...

Ring/Flock partnership
cancelled; facial recognition
trajectory
NPR (Feb 2026) https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-
5612825/flock-cont...
30+ cities canceling contracts;
immigration concerns
Courthouse News
(Feb 2026)
https://courthousenews.com/californiadrivers-accuse-fl...California drivers lawsuit; AG El Cajon suit; 845-database query
Grandview
Independent (Mar
2026)
https://www.grandviewindependent.com/
richmond-council-r...

Richmond council fails to vote;
cameras remain offline
ContraCosta.news
(Mar 2026)
https://contracosta.news/2026/03/04/
richmond-city-counc...

Richmond contract expiry;
Mayor Martinez statement
GovTech (Mar 2026) https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/ debate-continues-...

Richmond debate; neighboring
Bay Area cities reviewing
contracts
Institute for Justice
(Aug 2025)
https://ij.org/press-release/public-interestlaw-firm-r...Fourth Amendment / Norfolk ruling; federal access pause
EFF (Nov 2025) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/
how-cops-are-usin...

Flock used to surveil protesters
and activists
EFF (Oct 2025) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/
flocks-gunshot-de...

Raven 'distress detection' audio
expansion
Police1 / Forbes
(Sep 2025)
https://www.police1.com/real-time-crimecenter/from-lpr...Flock CEO on Nova, drones, pothole expansion
DroneLife (Mar
2025)
https://dronelife.com/2025/03/20/flocksafety-secures-2...Aerodome acquisition, $275M raise, drone expansion
Oregon Capital
Chronicle (Oct 2025)
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/
2025/10/23/alleging-...

Wyden letter: abuses 'inevitable';
Eugene termination
The Intercept (Jul
2020)
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/
protests-surveillan...

StingRay mission creep —
protests, BLM surveillance
GovTech (May 2025) https://www.govtech.com/biz/flocksnewest-police-tool-s...Flock Nova controversy — EFF 'dystopian panopticon'
ACLU of Oregon
(Jan 2026)
https://www.aclu-or.org/press-releases/
aclu-of-oregon-a...

Cameras capture pedestrians;
Oregon public records lawsuit
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 19 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 384 of 528
CITY OF EL CERRITO — COUNCIL BRIEFING | Flock Safety LPR Review | March 2026 EFF (Oct 2025) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/
flock-safety-and-...

Flock & Texas sheriff lied about
abortion investigation; court
records
404 Media (May
2025)
https://www.404media.co/a-texas-copsearched-license-pl...Texas abortion search — 83,000 cameras, nationwide dragnet
404 Media (Oct
2025)
https://www.404media.co/police-said-theysurveilled-wom...Court records contradict Flock/sheriff's 'missing person'
narrative
Urban Milwaukee
(Feb 2026)
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/
2026/02/25/milwaukee-cop-use...

Officer Ayala — 179 Flock
searches to stalk romantic
partner
Wisconsin Examiner
(Mar 2026)
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/
2026/03/13/wisconsin-comm...

Pattern of misuse; Kenosha
case; Milwaukee aldermen letter
ACLU of Wisconsin https://www.aclu-wi.org/press-releases/ aclu-of-wisconsi...

ACLU: misuse is 'a pattern
across the country'
Atlanta Press
Collective (Apr 2026)
https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/04/17/
atlanta-metro-resi...

Nonprofit/police foundation
camera funding; oversight gap
Sacra Research
(2025)
https://sacra.com/c/flock-safety/ Flock pricing ~1/10th competitors;
$2,400/camera/year; 20x
coverage claim
United States v.

Jones, 565 U.S. 400
(2012)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/
565/400/
Sotomayor concurrence on
location surveillance and data
aggregation
Osborn v. United
States, 385 U.S. 323
(1966)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/
385/323/
Douglas dissent on
imperceptible erosion of privacy
— End of Briefing —
Prepared for El Cerrito City Council — March 2026 | Page 20 of 20 Agenda Packet Page 385 of 528
Allow sender | Block sender
From: Brian
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public Comments – Flock Contract renewal agenda item #9B Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:06:17 AM
Attachments: Flock_Contract_Supplemental_Analysis.pdf
flock_council_briefing.pdf
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Two documents to be included in the packet / for publication for the May 5th meeting.

Supplemental_Analysis doc is a very detailed comparison document comparing the two contracts.
flock_council_briefing.pdf is an extensively researched document covering the civil rights issue from many angles.

Please consider this case carefully. It's way bigger than El Cerrito. -Brian
Agenda Packet Page 386 of 528
From: Kels Jones
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 7:15:26 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Agenda Packet Page 387 of 528
Respectfully,
Kels Jones
El Cerrito
They/Them Why this Matters
On Miwok, Muwekma, Ohlone, and Confederated Villages of Lisjan Land Native Land Map Agenda Packet Page 388 of 528
Allow sender | Block sender
From: Katie Curtis
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 7:21:35 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident.

I was horrified to learn about Flock surveillance especially in light of the growing fascism in our country.

Please cut all ties with Flock permanently, and please show better care for our community.

Thank you deeply for all of the work you do for El Cerrito.

Sincerely,
Katie Curtis
Agenda Packet Page 389 of 528
From:

To: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger; City Clerk Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B Please do not renew Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 7:30:13 AM
Last email didn’t include correct subject line so forwarding it It’s been around for three years, and in that short time we know the Feds have accessed data without notifying El Cerrito Police. We should not be part of a system that is so ripe for abuse, especially with the Trump administration in power. If someone seeking an abortion is tracked down or ICE disappears an asylum seeker by accessing our data, that can’t be undone. Please show courage, like Mountain View did, and do not renew the flock contract.

Ariel Gold
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 390 of 528
From: Tamiko Panzella
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 7:46:25 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am a caregiver for my grandmother who lives in El Cerrito, that means 7 days a week I drive on El Cerrito streets. My family has been in El Cerrito since my grandparents bought thier house there in 1961, they chose El Cerrito because at that time El Cerrito was welcoming to Japanese Americans while many other cities in the Bay Area were not. What a shame, what a disapointment, what a faiulre, if this council decides to move forward with this contract that makes immigrants, people of color, and disadvantaged communities less safe. This would tarnish El Cerrito's legacy as a welcoming safehaven for these very communities. We have a strong community, we have the police, we do not need an outside company to profit off us with their mass surveillance.

I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Tamiko Panzella
Agenda Packet Page 391 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public Comment: Do NOT renew the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:30:37 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal Agenda Packet Page 392 of 528
practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Selene Fabiano
El Cerrito CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 393 of 528
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From: Michelle Ayazi
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:45:59 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
Good morning! I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 394 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Michelle Ayazi
Agenda Packet Page 395 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:54:03 AM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Lani Goto
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Re: Agenda item 9B, Flock Safety Agreement - I strongly oppose this resolution and urge you to vote no. The federal government has been using Flock cameras to conduct immigration "enforcement" searches but as we've seen in Minnesota and many other places, this does nothing to keep people safe. ACLU NorCal opposes Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) because they make our communities *less* safe by violating privacy, increasing the risk of dangerous police encounters, and risking exposure of our immigrant community members to harm. I've always felt the community is what makes El Cerrito a good place to live, and endangering that with Flock at a cost of up to $315,000 is shameful.

Consider how those funds could go to useful programs or services that actually help the people here instead. I want El Cerrito to be a city that stands up for residents' civil liberties and stops invasive surveillance technology. Please protect your community and vote no.

Agenda Packet Page 396 of 528
NUG El Cerrito
11888 San Pablo Ave.

El Cerrito, CA 94530
May 4, 2026
El Cerrito Police Department
Attention: Chief Paul Keith
10900 San Pablo Ave.

El Cerrito, CA 94530
RE: Flock Safety Program
Police Chief Paul Keith,
I am writing to express NUG’s strong support for the renewal and expansion of the City’s contract with Flock Safety. As a retail business in the El Cerrito, I am encouraged by the El Cerrito City Council’s upcoming discussion regarding these safety measures. The data from El Cerrito and neighboring cities highlights the undeniable impact of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs). In an era where criminal activity is increasingly mobile, providing our oWicers with real-time, objective leads is essential for keeping our businesses and neighborhoods safe.

I also want to commend the department’s proactive stance on privacy and data security.

Seeing that the department regularly audits the camera network and that Flock Safety has implemented new safeguards to prevent unauthorized federal access gives me great confidence in the program.

I urge the City Council to approve the contract extension to ensure our law enforcement has the modern tools necessary to protect the El Cerrito community eNectively.

Sincerely,
John Oram
CEO
Agenda Packet Page 397 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - Please DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 10:15:57 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident who was born and raised in this lovely town and have been lucky enough to move back here in my adulthood to raise my daughter with my husband and my immigrant mother-in-law. I have included a templated email below because I think it sums up the justified urgency, concern, and risks of continuing a relationship with Flock which puts all of us El Cerritans privacy and lives in danger, but as many other residents so overwhelmingly spoke out about this at the last public hearing, I feel so strongly about this that I it’s a struggle to put into words what I feel is at risk.

I am grateful to live less than a mile from my parent who live in the home where I grew up (a few blocks from Korematsu/my former school Castro). My husband and I now have the privilege of walking my daughter to school everyday, passing neighbors, workers, students and their families who make up our diverse and wonderful community.

A few months ago, when ICE raids around the country became an unbelievable reality and real fear, we saw communities on the news coming together to protect each other. In El Cerrito we've have been lucky not to experience any of this profiling or dehumanization first hand, however, an incident just a block over in East Richmond Heights showed the terrifying reality that could have been played out. On a street nearby, masked federal agents were seen at a home, and concerned neighbors came out to record and try to ensure accountability. We heard later that the warrant they were serving was ‘above board’. However, at the same time in the nearby open space at Mira Vista Field, a person walking their dog encountered some masked agents walking through the park and asked them to remove their mask (as per CA law). The agents laughed at this man, said ’No’, and as they walked away, one say to another something along the lines of 'an off-leash dog would be enough reason to haul this guy in.’ This was just a little interaction happened just a chain link fence away from an incredible group of young children from all different walks of life just trying to learn, and yet it is the very thing that I struggle to protect my child from daily.

My hope is that the masked agent who ‘joked’ about hauling my concerned neighbor away, was a one-off bad apple. The problem right now is that we live in a world where the handful of 'bad apples’ have been given immense power, and no limits. It only takes one bad actor to use this insanely powerful data collected and analyzed by Flock to use it to harm communities like ours.

Tonight please protect our El Cerrito community and vote no on renewing any FLOCK contract.

Respectfully,
Laurel Ballanti
El Cerrito
---------------
Agenda Packet Page 398 of 528
I am writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Agenda Packet Page 399 of 528
Send to:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Their unregulated private surveillance network is so poorly secured that independent researchers have demonstrated it can be compromised in minutes.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:

Agenda Packet Page 400 of 528
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Alice Hawley
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 401 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 10:49:45 AM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Benedek Nyikos
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Dear El Cerrito City Council, I am a citizen of El Cerrito, and I have been living here for over 15 years. I urge you to end the city's contract with Flock Safety and to stop using Flock cameras. This level of surveillance is antithetical to a democratic society, and these technologies unfairly target immigrants in our community. I believe in safety and security, but not at the expense of people's privacy. Thank you! Agenda Packet Page 402 of 528
From: whatsup doc
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] 5/5/26 city council meeting agenda item 9b Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 5:56:36 PM
My name is Ry Crawford, I am a resident of EL Cerrito and a home owner in El Cerrito. I write to urge the city not to renew the Flock ALPR contract and to urge the council members to vote no on Police Chief Keith's proposal.

There is a known and documented danger of Flock sharing data with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Customs Enforcement, the FBI and Customs & Border Patrol. El Cerrito has not wanted that and has specied that the data collected in our city not be shared that way. However, we as a city have no real control over the use of the data. For that reason it is irresponsible for El Cerrito to continue to work with Flock. We have a duty to protect the citizens of El Cerrito.

Please vote no on the proposal to renew the Flock contract.

Thank you for your help with this.

Ry Crawford, EL Cerrito resident
Agenda Packet Page 403 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:06:40 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Valeria Romero
Sent from my phone, please excuse any typos
Agenda Packet Page 404 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract! Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:13:22 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Respectfully,
Wei-En Chang
Agenda Packet Page 405 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:15:42 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Katie Patterson
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 406 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Flick Camera Contract Renewal Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 7:38:13 PM
I support renewal of the Flock camera contract. I believe that ECPD can manage the contract to provide adequate privacy to EC citizens while providing invaluable information for monitoring criminal activity.

Tim Montgomery
El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 407 of 528
From: Carey Stone
To: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger; City Clerk Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 9:43:09 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Carey Stone, El Cerrito resident
Agenda Packet Page 408 of 528
From: Dora Medrano
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 10:04:32 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Dora Medrano Ramos
Agenda Packet Page 409 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully, Christa Salo El Cerrito, CA
Agenda Packet Page 410 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Sietse Braakman
, El Cerrito Agenda Packet Page 411 of 528
From:

El Cerrito is a sanctuary city, or at least we are supposed to be. At a time when our community has expressed a commitment to protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents from federal overreach, continuing to invest in surveillance technologies that can so easily be weaponized against those same neighbors is not aligned with El Cerrito’s values.

In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data, you trust that people are using your data correctly," but this is knowing that there were already several breaches of El Cerrito data. For months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other federal agencies across the country accessed El Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities.

I need to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the Agenda Packet Page 412 of 528
ACLU of Northern California, cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, civil liberties, and community building in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove their cameras from our community now.

Respectfully,
Grey
-------------------------------
Greyson C. Brooks (he/him)
El Cerrito, CA 94530
M.A. Anthropology & International Development
Agenda Packet Page 413 of 528
From: Ameena Jandali
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - PLEASE DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 10:40:57 PM
Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 414 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Regards,
Ameena Jandali
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 415 of 528
From: Katherine Plambeck
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 10:42:53 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Katherine Plambeck
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 416 of 528
From: James M. Ryder
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Cc: James Ryder
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 10:45:44 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I want our El Cerrito leaders to say what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
James Ryder
El Cerrito 94530
Agenda Packet Page 417 of 528
From:

Respectfully,
Mia Parsons
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 418 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Cc: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger; Gayle Greene Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:08:12 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, Agenda Packet Page 419 of 528
you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

PLEASE!
Gayle Greene
El Cerrito CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 420 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Michael DeGroff-Kirchgraber
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 421 of 528
From: PAUL GILBERT-SNYDER
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments - regarding Flock camera agenda item Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:10:48 AM
Dear City Council members,
I have been a resident of El Cerrito for over 30 years. During that time I’ve had the opportunity to interact with the ECPD on multiple occasions, and I’m happy to say that my interactions have always been positive and professional. I believe our police deserve tools that will help them to serve the citizens of El Cerrito. I believe automated camera systems are a great tool for policing and I support their use in El Cerrito.

IF ECPD or the City Council find specific instances of misuse of the data collected in El Cerrito, then the vendor should be held accountable. However, to discard the tool because of its potential for misuse is a grave disservice to our police department and our citizens. If there are legitimate concerns that the vendor has misused or is misusing our data, those concerns should be addressed. If specific concerns can’t be resolved, alternative vendors should be researched. The tool is too useful to ignore, and doing so would fail to provide our police with the tools and support they deserve.

Thanks,
Paul Gilbert-Snyder
Agenda Packet Page 422 of 528
From: Stephanie Sieveke
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:21:00 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council member,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents. I am drawn to El Cerrito because of its values of being a sanctuary city and this contract defies our values.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Thank you,
Stephanie Sieveke
El Cerrito Ca 94530
Agenda Packet Page 423 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Agenda Packet Page 424 of 528
Respectfully,
Eileen Hazel
El Cerrito CA 94530
--
Eileen Hazel
Song catcher, Song leader, Priestess
Agenda Packet Page 425 of 528
From: Douglas Jackson
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 9:25:40 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 426 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Douglas W. Jackson
Agenda Packet Page 427 of 528
From: Charlotte Chang
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 10:48:40 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Charlotte Chang
94530
Agenda Packet Page 428 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:01:02 AM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Alvaro Soria
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Comment for Agenda #9B. Dear El Cerrito City Council members, I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents. Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining. Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE. Flock Safety markets itself as a security company, but in reality, it operates as a private data broker. Their business model is simple: get police departments to pay for their universal monitoring equipment, then monetize OUR data by selling paywall access to other jurisdictions. Their unregulated private surveillance network is so poorly secured that independent researchers have demonstrated it can be compromised in minutes. El Cerrito is a sanctuary city. At a time when our community has expressed a commitment to protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents from federal overreach, continuing to invest in surveillance technologies that can so easily be weaponized against those same neighbors is not aligned with El Cerrito’s values. In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data, you trust that people are using your data correctly," but this is knowing that there were already several breaches of El Cerrito data. For months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other state agencies across the country accessed El Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities. I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers: "Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect." Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now. Respectfully, Alvaro Soria
, El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 429 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B, NO to Flock Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:07:28 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Hello,
I am an El Cerrito resident, homeowner, and parent. I strongly urge you to oppose the renewal of the Flock contract and remove the cameras now. These surveillance tools have high error rates and the errors too often lead to over-policing of people of color.

Flock is not a company we can trust; they've given data to the federal government at a time when that is especially dangerous, especially for immigrants, people traveling to seek reproductive health care, and people seeking to exercise their First Amendment rights. But it's not just about Flock; once that data is collected it's almost impossible to control how it's used.

I encourage you to read the ACLU NorCal study Seeing Through Surveillance: Why Policymakers Should Look Past the Hype. It includes alternative solutions to surveillance systems that produce public safety results without causing harm.

Thanks,
Virginia Reinhart
, El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 430 of 528

EL CERRITO POLICE EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION
10900 San Pablo Avenue · El Cerrito, CA 94530
[email protected] · [email protected] President Vice President Wage & Benefits Treasurer
Kenneth Hashimoto Ryan Trac Michael Olivieri Lesly Miranda May 5, 2026
City of El Cerrito
Mayor Quinto and City Council Members
10890 San Pablo Avenue
El Cerrito, CA 94530
RE: Agenda Item 9B: Flock Safety Agreement, City Council Meeting – May 05, 2026 Dear Mayor Quinto and El Cerrito City Council Members,
On behalf of the El Cerrito Police Employees Association (ECPEA), we express our strong support for your adoption of a resolution authorizing the continued use of the Flock Safety license plate reading (LPR) system in our community. The ECPEA membership has advocated for this technology since its inception, as it significantly enhances the safety of peace officers and the communities they serve by providing timely, actionable information to help prevent and solve crime.

Since the implementation of the Flock Safety LPR system in El Cerrito, officers have been routinely recovering vehicles that were stolen or used in crimes, developing investigative leads in cases that may otherwise remain unsolved, and preventing dangerous criminal activity from infiltrating our community. As El Cerrito Police Administrators have highlighted on prior occasions, the Flock Safety LPR system has been instrumental in rapidly resolving incidents and providing critical evidence in some of the most violent criminal cases that have affected our community in recent years, including home invasions and homicides to name a few.

The ECPEA also emphasizes that the Flock Safety LPR system has been paramount for officer safety and improved outcomes for the public. The advance notice Flock provides our officers allows them to approach precarious situations with greater awareness of potential safety risks.

With this information, our officers plan coordinated responses to these incidents and utilize alternative resources and de-escalation tactics when feasible. This not only protects our officers but also reduces the likelihood of dangerous encounters in the community as well.

The ECPEA respectfully urges your support of the continued use of this system as part of a comprehensive, modern approach to public safety in El Cerrito.

Thank you,
The ECPEA Board
Agenda Packet Page 431 of 528
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From: Jessica Robbins
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:28:44 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

I am an El Cerrito resident and I am writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties.

Flock also has a history of sharing data with ICE and partnering with Palantir - two organizations that are actively facilitating the brutalization of people across the country and have demonstrated that they feel nothing but contempt for humanity.

El Cerrito is a sanctuary city. At a time when our community has expressed a commitment to protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents from federal overreach, continuing to invest in surveillance technologies that can so easily be weaponized against those same neighbors is not aligned with El Cerrito’s values. These cameras are a stain upon the soul of this city, and as a long-term resident their continued presence makes me feel sick, enraged, and ashamed.

In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data, you trust that people are using your data correctly." However, there have already been several breaches of El Cerrito data. For months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other state agencies across the country accessed El Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that this is not enough to prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, Agenda Packet Page 432 of 528
you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Thanks.

Jessica Robbins
El Cerrito CA
Agenda Packet Page 433 of 528
From: Elena Pinsky
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] FLOCK out of El Cerrito
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:30:55 AM
Please vote against FLOCK in El Cerrito. We do not need this shameful harmful surviellance technology in our community
--
Elena Pinsky
Agenda Packet Page 434 of 528
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From: Allen Cain
To: City Clerk
Cc: Paul A. Keith; Allen Cain
Subject: Flock LPR Cameras, for the 5/5 meeting
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:31:27 AM
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Dear Members of the City Council,
I strongly support the continuation of Flock Safety license plate reader cameras as a practical, proven tool to improve public safety in our community.

Local cities have used these systems to quickly recover stolen vehicles, solve burglaries, and disrupt organized retail theft. What once took days of investigation can now happen in minutes, giving law enforcement a critical edge while using fewer resources.

These cameras do not use facial recognition. They capture license plates and basic vehicle details—information already visible in public—making them a focused, non-intrusive way to generate leads tied to reported crimes.

While no system is perfect, concerns about misuse are rare and manageable with clear policies like limited data retention, audit logs, and restricted access. The real-world results are overwhelmingly positive and measurable.

Flock cameras are a smart, cost-effective investment that enhances safety without expanding the footprint of policing. I urge the Council to continue their implementation alongside strong safeguards that are already in place.

Thank you for your consideration.

Allen Cain
El Cerrito, CA
Agenda Packet Page 435 of 528
From: Ellie Young
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments - Agenda Item 9B May 5th Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:34:04 AM
Please add this to the public comments for the above item/meeting. Thank you.

We strongly oppose the City of El Cerrito renewing the Flock contract and refrain from contracting with any company to deploy ALPR camera in El Cerrito. We agree with ACLU’s position, concern and recommendation to you. Eleanor Young and Alain Henon, , El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 436 of 528
From: Radhika Gundechia
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:31:30 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Radhika Gundechia
Albany, CA 94706 Agenda Packet Page 437 of 528
From: Angela Freitas
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - Please DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:32:45 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Thank you,
Angela Freitas
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 438 of 528
From: Toni Henle
To: William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Cc: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] AGENDA ITEM 9B: Calling on you to not renew Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:37:24 AM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Flock Safety markets itself as a security company but in reality it operates as a private data broker. Their unregulated private surveillance network is so poorly secured that independent researchers have demonstrated it can be compromised in minutes.

El Cerrito is a sanctuary city. At a time when our community has expressed a commitment to protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents from federal overreach, continuing to invest in surveillance technologies that can so easily be weaponized against those same neighbors is not aligned with El Cerrito’s values. Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining. Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
John and Toni Henle
El Cerrito 94530
Agenda Packet Page 439 of 528
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From: Michael Fischer
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comments - Agenda Item #9B
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:51:51 AM
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Mayor and Councilmembers:

I am an East Bay native, a resident of El Cerrito since 1997, and a near lifelong resident of the East Bay.I am a strong supporter of both civil liberties and basic human decency.This leads me reluctantly to oppose the continued use of the Flock license plate surveilance camera system by our police department.

I do trust our police and appreciate what they do for our city.I support Police Chief Keith generally and applaud his bringing this issue to the attention of the council.If the information never left the control of the city, I might well support the continuation of the system.

But the system goes beyond this.I do not trust the federal policing system and especially immigration enforcement.The leadership, from the President down, is racist and inhumane.

And there is no assurance
that they would not seek to access the system, either legally or, indeed, illegally.

I also do not trust the county Sheriff who has reprehensibly taken retaliatory action against the city for its courageous declaration as a sanctuary city.

The Flock system is a potential danger to that
declaration.

I understand you received a lengthy comment from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California that discuses this issue in much greater detail. I join in their comment.

Thank you,
Michael Fischer
Agenda Packet Page 440 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Aaron Bode
San Carlos Ave
Additional 9B Public Comments
received after 12 PM
Agenda Packet Page 441 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 442 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Michelle Katz
El Cerrito, CA
Agenda Packet Page 443 of 528
From: Irene Kiebert
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comments-Agenda item 9B
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:13:44 PM
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Dear Members of the El Cerrito City Council —
I write to object to the continuing use of Flock Safety traffic surveillance cameras, and to urge the Council not to renew their contract. I’m an El Cerrito homeowner, and a 36-year resident.

The primary problem with using Flock is the potential for violating the civil liberties of ordinary people. Constant surveillance and data collection of people going about their normal daily business can produce—and has produced —racial profiling, unjust/illegal/erroneous immigration detentions, and erroneous (therefore arbitrary) ID of vehicles as stolen. Any of these constitutes a breach of the peace, ranging from harassment to violation of the rights to privacy, equal protection of the law, and due process.

In addition, I realize that steps have been taken to protect our data, although that was done only after some info had already been shared with the federal government. (Without the knowledge of the EC Police, according to reporting by KTVU.) Given the fanatic zealousness of the current federal government’s ICE, DHS, and CBP in pursuing and detaining people, and the sophistication of the technology at their command, it is unrealistic to think that they will not find new ways to access Flock-collected data; it’s just undeniably a real danger, if not inevitable. (A few years from now that assessment might be different; let’s hope so.). After all, the fact that such access is and was illegal under state law did not prevent the breaches in the past.

We cannot merely “balance” the risk of actual violations of civil liberties with the debatable public safety value involved here. These are not just “technicalities.” They are fundamental rights. (Reminder: the Bill of Rights also applies to non-citizens.)
I doubt that most residents of El Cerrito even know that their daily movements are being tracked and recorded (if they happen to drive where surveillance cameras have been set up), let alone that information about them may have been, and may in the future be, accessed by the federal government.

The large majority of places around the country (over 60 so far) that have stopped using Flock surveillance have done so since December 2025. Let’s add El Cerrito to the growing list of places in California (Santa Cruz; Mountain View; South Pasadena, Eureka, and all of Santa Clara County) and in other states that have made that choice.

Thank you,
Irene Kiebert
Agenda Packet Page 444 of 528
From: Shanti Leon Guerrero
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:16:56 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
--
Shanti K. Leon Guerrero
Agenda Packet Page 445 of 528
P. 415.946.8777 Bay Area Council Bay Area Council
www.bayareacouncil.org The Historic Klamath 1215 K Street, Suite 2220 Pier 9, The Embarcadero Sacramento, CA 95814
San Francisco, CA 94111
May 5, 2026
Honorable Mayor Gabe Quinto
Members of the El Cerrito City Council
10890 San Pablo Avenue
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Re: SUPPORT for Item #9B – Flock Safety Agreement
Honorable Mayor Quinto and Members of the El Cerrito City Council, On behalf of the Bay Area Council (BAC), representing more than 370 of the region’s largest employers, I am writing in strong support of Item #9B on the City Council meeting agenda for Tuesday, May 5, 2026 - Flock Safety Agreement. Specifically, BAC is supportive of the continued use of the Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system and associated public safety technology. Approval of this item will support the El Cerrito Police Department (ECPD) in strengthening its ability to respond to and prevent crime, while making more efficient use of limited resources. This item is an essential step toward improving public safety and supporting El Cerrito’s economic vitality.

For 80 years, BAC has engaged business and civic-minded leaders to solve the most challenging local issues to ensure the Bay Area is the most innovative, sustainable, inclusive, and globally competitive region it can be. Nowhere is that collaboration needed more right now than in the East Bay, where cities have been slow to recover postpandemic and crime challenges persist. In response, BAC built a strong coalition of over 125 employers who are based in or otherwise do business in the East Bay who are deeply invested in the future of the region and have been advocating for public safety and economic development improvements.

BAC’s East Bay coalition is strongly supportive of the use of safety technology - implemented with appropriate safeguards - to enhance public safety in the region. And camera technology has become one of the region’s most effective crime-fighting tools, particularly in cities facing persistent law enforcement staffing challenges.

Technology like ALPR helps officers identify suspects faster, connect cases, and provide prosecutors with stronger evidence. On the ground every day, this technology is a proven, effective tool in identifying stolen vehicles, recovering lost or stolen property, tracking suspects in violent crimes, preventing human trafficking, and much more. These systems both deter crime and make it possible to hold repeat offenders accountable, helping to keep momentum toward a safer and more vibrant city.

Agenda Packet Page 446 of 528
P. 415.946.8777 Bay Area Council Bay Area Council
www.bayareacouncil.org The Historic Klamath 1215 K Street, Suite 2220 Pier 9, The Embarcadero Sacramento, CA 95814
San Francisco, CA 94111
Finally, cities across the region, including San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, San Leandro, and Piedmont, have deployed Flock Safety cameras with positive results. El Cerrito deserves equal access to the same evidence-based tools. Using the same technology already deployed in neighboring jurisdictions is crucial for coordination and effective policing across jurisdictional boundaries, as crime does not adhere to city limits.

Approving this contract will allow ECPD to extend its investigative reach, operate more efficiently, and continue advancing its commitment to community safety.

It is for these reasons that BAC requests your support of this important item. Should you have any questions or comments regarding this position, please contact Laura Hill, Vice President of Public Policy, at [email protected]. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Laura Hill
Vice President of Public Policy
Bay Area Council
Agenda Packet Page 447 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:19:24 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members, I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock. In this age of fascism and "immigration enforcement" run amok, it is not responsible policy to provide detailed data on residents' comings and goings to a private company which has shown itself to be an irresponsible steward of this private information. I live just a few steps from a Flock camera, and it deeply concerns me that my privacy is being breached in the name of capturing a few more criminals.

It would be bad enough if this data were truly secure and accessible to El Cerrito Police only.

But providing it to a private company which monetizes these data is yet another step in the move towards a surveillance society, a clear and present danger during this Administration.

I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully, Daniel A. Elkan El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 448 of 528
From:

I am the mother of two little children (ages 3.5 and 1.5) and the idea of a mass surveillance company that is explicitly partnered with Palantir, ICE, and Trump constantly recording our community is terrifying to me and does not make me feel safe.

Also Flock is an incredibly disreputable company. They do not take data concerns seriously and instead view privacy concerns as a PR matter. A reputable city like El Cerrito should not be doing business with such an untrustworthy company that has violated the trust of its customers such that 50 cities have terminated their contracts with this company in the last 10 months alone! Even Ring, a literal mass surveillance company, ended its contract with Flock because it is such a disreputable company.

At a time of rising fascism in the federal government, we are relying on YOU, our local leaders, to protect us and our neighbors. We are scared by what we see on the news and we need to know that you are doing everything that you can to protect us from the very real risk of the Trump regime.

I urge you to terminate our contract with Flock and instead prioritize privacy, safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Jegath Geronimo
Agenda Packet Page 449 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:23:25 PM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Amelia Schmale
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Hello, I'm writing to urge Council to vote NO on renewing the Flock contract. Flock is a notorious company that is incompetent at keeping citizens' data safe. While there are benefits to surveillance systems, the company is too new, too rife with errors. The potential for abuse is HUGE and we're already seeing it in data breaches, stalking of women, and innocent drivers being pulled over because they were erroneously flagged by license plate data entry errors.

Contracting with Flock leave the City open to litigation for Flock's mistakes.

Agenda Packet Page 450 of 528
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From: Yara Lomeli-Loibl
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:26:31 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 451 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now. GET THE FLOCK OUT OF EL CERRITO!
Respectfully,
Yara Lomeli-Loibl
El Cerrito, CA 94530
--
Yara Lomeli-Loibl
Agenda Packet Page 452 of 528
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From: Brianna Fairbanks
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comment - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:41:17 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
Agenda Packet Page 453 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Brianna Fairbanks
Agenda Packet Page 454 of 528
From: Karen Peters
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] DO NOT renew the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:42:29 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I recently learned that our city has already installed Flock cameras and may have used data collected on private citizens in conjunction with agencies that are infringing on our civil rights. There is no data that shows having this surveillance in our communities makes them any safer. I have great concern about this type of surveillance and how it is used. I believe we still have a reasonable right to privacy in our homes and communities and I find the use of this kind of surveillance very disturbing. In a time when our country is moving in a frightening direction I believe action at a local level is of utmost importance. DO NOT renew the contract with Flock. Set an example and value the preferences of your constituents.

Sincerely, Dr. Karen Peters, ND / El Cerrito homeowner and resident Agenda Packet Page 455 of 528
From: Edmund Arnold
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:39:01 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council Members,
I am a resident of El Cerrito writing to strongly encourage you to reject the renewal of the city’s contract with Flock. Growing evidence shows that the company’s data practices threaten civil liberties, especially for our most vulnerable community members.

Studies indicate that Flock’s systems can disproportionately target young people, unhoused individuals, and communities of color due to misidentification, biased policing patterns, and data-driven redlining. There is also a documented history of the company sharing data with ICE.

Although Flock Safety presents itself as a public safety solution, it effectively functions as a private data broker. Its model relies on selling surveillance technology to police departments, then profiting further by granting paid access to the collected data across jurisdictions. This largely unregulated surveillance network has also been shown by independent researchers to be vulnerable to breaches within minutes.

El Cerrito is a sanctuary city. At a time when we have committed to protecting immigrants and other at-risk residents from federal overreach, continuing to invest in surveillance systems that could be used against those same individuals contradicts our stated values.

During a public meeting on March 10, Chief Keith compared trust in surveillance technology to trust in medical data systems. However, this statement came despite multiple known breaches involving El Cerrito’s own data. For months, federal agencies including the FBI, ATF, and GSA—as well as numerous out-of-state entities—were able to access local license plate reader data, despite state law prohibiting such sharing.

I would welcome hearing our city leadership affirm what another police chief once said when discontinuing similar technology: that community trust matters more than any single tool, and that public safety ultimately depends on strong relationships with the people being served.

Even if tighter controls are placed on Flock data, recent legal developments make clear that local ownership does not shield that data from federal subpoenas. This means El Cerrito would have limited ability to prevent federal access. Legal experts have warned that any surveillance system built at the local level can be leveraged by federal authorities.

For these reasons, I urge you to reject the contract renewal and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant protections, and civil liberties. Please terminate the Flock agreement and remove the cameras.

Respectfully,
El Cerrito Resident
Edmund Arnold
Agenda Packet Page 456 of 528
From: Joemy Ito-Gates
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:45:07 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Joemy Ito-Gates
El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 457 of 528
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From: Mehmet Seflek
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:51:53 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Mehmet Seflek
Agenda Packet Page 458 of 528
From: Jenny Patchen
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:09:36 PM
Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,
I am writing to urge you to vote no on the proposed resolution authorizing the City Manager to enter into a three-year agreement with Flock Safety for license plate reading cameras at a cost not to exceed $315,000.

I recognize the importance of public safety and the difficult work of the El Cerrito Police Department. But automated license plate reader systems raise serious privacy, civil liberties, oversight, and fiscal concerns that have not been adequately resolved. A citywide network of cameras that records the movements of residents, workers, visitors, and passersby is not a narrow public safety tool. It is a form of mass location surveillance.

The issue is not only whether the cameras can help in some investigations. The question is whether El Cerrito should normalize the continuous collection of vehicle-location data on everyone, including people who are not suspected of any crime. That tradeoff deserves a much higher standard of necessity, transparency, and accountability than this proposed agreement appears to provide.

I am especially concerned about the following:

First, license plate reader systems collect sensitive location data. A person’s vehicle movements can reveal where they live, work, worship, seek medical care, attend school, visit family, or participate in political or community activity. Even when the stated purpose is crime prevention, the underlying data can be highly revealing.

Second, Flock’s own policies allow for disclosure of license plate reader data in response to legal process and in other circumstances the company deems reasonably necessary. That means local assurances about limited use may not fully control how data is accessed, preserved, or disclosed once it is part of a vendor-managed surveillance platform.

Fourth, the cost is substantial. A commitment of up to $315,000 over three years should be evaluated against other public safety investments that do not require mass surveillance, such as traffic safety, violence prevention, youth services, street lighting, community-based response, emergency preparedness, and investigative staffing.

Finally, public trust matters. Residents should not be asked to accept a surveillance system first and debate safeguards later. The City should not approve this agreement unless there is clear, enforceable policy language adopted by the Council, independent oversight, public reporting, short retention limits, audit logs, penalties for misuse, and a demonstrated showing that the benefits outweigh the harms.

Agenda Packet Page 459 of 528
For these reasons, I respectfully ask the Council to vote no on the proposed Flock Safety agreement. At minimum, the Council should decline any three-year contract and require a separate public process to evaluate whether this technology is truly necessary, whether less invasive alternatives exist, and whether legally binding safeguards can be adopted before any further use.

El Cerrito should prioritize safety, accountability, and civil liberties together. Approving this agreement would move the City in the wrong direction.

Sincerely,
Jenny Patchen
Agenda Packet Page 460 of 528
From: Kate Isenberg
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:14:26 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I live in El Cerrito. I am writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Kate Isenberg
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 461 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:17:57 PM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Collin Baker
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: As an El Cerrito homeowner, I oppose the continued deployment of FLOCK ALPR cameras in El Cerrito for several reasons: (1) The error rate from the license plate reading function is unacceptably high (around 30%). (2) They will inevitably be used for other kinds of surveillance besides license plates. (3) The data collected, despite promises to the contrary, will inevitably be used by organizations outside El Cerrito, including the FBI, ICE, and unknown others. El Cerrito should join with other East Bay communities in banning the use of this kind of public surveillance equipment.

Agenda Packet Page 462 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Agenda Item #9B
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:21:16 PM
I am a registered voter in El Cerrito and I am resolutely against the use of and contract with Flock for license plate reading. I will vote against any candidate who endorses them and this blatant waste of money, violation of privacy, and police overreach under a farcical notion of prevention of crime.

Agenda Packet Page 463 of 528
From: Rebecah Kenny
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments - agenda item 9B Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:21:37 PM
I strongly oppose renewing the city's contract with Flock, whether under the previous contract language or under new language. Flock has an extensively documented history of privacy violations. Flock willfully deceives and misleads cities about the lack of privacy and data security controls in its contracts and protocols, and the company even changes settings to be more permissive without the knowledge or consent of cities. Working with Flock makes our community less safe and less secure. Vote NO to Flock.

Rebecah Kenny
El Cerrito resident
Agenda Packet Page 464 of 528
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From: Amalia Mariño
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Cc: William O"Brien
Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:26:13 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 465 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Amalia Mariño & Willam O'Brien
Agenda Packet Page 466 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:41:11 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 467 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Chris Rodriguez
Agenda Packet Page 468 of 528
From: Amber Hatfield
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 12:55:04 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of El Cerrito’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Respectfully,
Amber Hatfield
Agenda Packet Page 469 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: Flock out ofr El Cerrito
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 1:49:19 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal Agenda Packet Page 470 of 528
practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Eugene Robinson
El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 471 of 528
Flock Safety Renewal
Paul Keith
Chief of Police
May 5, 2026
Agenda Item No. 9.B
Revised Presentation
Agenda Packet Page 472 of 528
Project Background
Agenda Packet Page 473 of 528
Master Services Agreement (existing)
• 3 years
Term
• Termination for Convenience Clause
• Proration
• Fee for Camera Removal
Major Provisions
Agenda Packet Page 474 of 528
Master Services Agreement (proposed)
• 1 year
• 3 years
Term Options
• Unauthorized Access Penalty = $34,500
• Unauthorized Access Assurances
• Termination Clause
Major Provisions
Agenda Packet Page 475 of 528
Agenda Packet Page 476 of 528
Agenda Packet Page 477 of 528
Camera v. Cellphone
Agenda Packet Page 478 of 528
Other Regional
Surveillance
• Public Transit
• Airports
• Ferries
• Commute Corridors
• Bridges
• Toll Roads
• Businesses
• Private Residences
Agenda Packet Page 479 of 528
Flock Output
Agenda Packet Page 480 of 528
Agenda Packet Page 481 of 528
10 Agenda Packet Page 482 of 528
11 Case Clearances 2022-2025
Crime 2022 Clearance Rate 2025 Clearance Rate % Change
Robbery 19.35% 37.74% 95% increase
Assault 32.94% 45.71% 38% increase
Burglary 6.6% 11.29% 71% increase
Larceny 4.94% 14.42% 191% increase
Agenda Packet Page 483 of 528
Use Cases -
Traffic
Agenda Packet Page 484 of 528
Use Cases - Criminal
Agenda Packet Page 485 of 528
Possible Council Actions
Affirmatively renew existing agreement
Direct staff not to renew existing agreement
Direct staff to enter into a new proposed agreement
Take no action
Other alternatives as developed by council
Agenda Packet Page 486 of 528
Flock Safety Renewal
Paul Keith
Chief of Police
May 5, 2026
Agenda Packet Page 487 of 528
From: Eva Russell
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Flock
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:12:11 PM
Hello all,
Just wanted to express my support for Flock or similar community surveillance to prevent crime. I obviously support privacy as a general matter, but for the sake of safety and identifying those perpetrating crimes, I support Flock.

Thank you,
Eva Russell
EC homeowner
Public Comments Received
after 2 p.m.

Agenda Packet Page 488 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:13:36 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” Agenda Packet Page 489 of 528
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Elizabeth Woolford
(El Cerrito)
Agenda Packet Page 490 of 528
From: Mary Barnsdale
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Please don"t renew the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:18:06 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident opposed to renewing the city’s contract with Flock.

Massive amounts of personal information have been illegally collected by DOGE and others.

ICE remains a threat to our communities. There is mounting evidence that Flock’s privacy practices also pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

As a community proud of its democratic activism, El Cerrito should take a stand against this erosion of privacy and security. Don't make it easy for those who might attempt to curtail our liberties.

Please terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras. Thank you.

Respectfully,
Mary Barnsdale
El Cerrito
Agenda Packet Page 491 of 528
From: Lauren Alegre
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:18:51 PM
To the El Cerrito City Council members:

I am a resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now Thank you,
Agenda Packet Page 492 of 528
-Lauren A.

Agenda Packet Page 493 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; Gabe Quinto; Carolyn Wysinger; Rebecca Saltzman; Lisa Motoyama; William Ktsanes Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Fwd: Public Comments - Agenda Item 9B Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:24:23 PM
Greetings El Cerrito mayor and council members,
I write to you as a quarter century long homeowner in El Cerrito to express very strong opposition to renewal of the flock surveillance contract.

Flock, by design, is a system of mass surveillance and as such is in direct conflict with constitutional rights - starting with the fourth amendment which protects against warrantless searches of persons and their property.

Recent revelations of unauthorized access of the nationwide Flock dataset by federal agencies and others are a wake-up call to all city governments that would consider new or renewed contracts with Flock.

The idea that a system of mass surveillance is necessary to either deter crime or solve crimes is not accurate. There are many other tools that, involve much greater privacy protection, that can achieve the same results.

Please join the growing number of municipalities around the United States that are ending there engagement with this vendor and it's odious constitution shredding system.

Thank you,
Tom Parks
El Cerrito CA
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Thomas Parks <
Date: Tue, May 5, 2026, 2:12 PM
Subject: Public Comments - Agenda Item 9B
To: EC City Council < >
Greetings El Cerrito mayor and council members,
I write to you as a quarter century long homeowner in El Cerrito to express very strong opposition to renewal of the flock surveillance contract.

The idea that a system of mass surveillance is necessary to either deter crime or solve crimes Agenda Packet Page 494 of 528
is not accurate. There are many other tools that, involve much greater privacy protection, that can achieve the same results.

Please join the growing number of municipalities around the United States that are ending there engagement with this vendor and it's odious constitution shredding system.

Thank you,
Tom Parks
El Cerrito CA
Agenda Packet Page 495 of 528
From: Elena Pinsky
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] PUBLIC COMMENTS: NO FLOCK in EL CERRITO Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:39:36 PM
Please vote NO on Flock in El Cerrito. There is no place for this harmful biased technology in our communities. They DO NOT make us safer!
--
Elena Pinsky
Agenda Packet Page 496 of 528
From: Joe Khalaf
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Please Oppose Flock Renewal
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:43:55 PM
Dear Council members,
I am a resident of El Cerrito urging you to vote NO on renewing the El Cerrito Police Department’s contract with Flock Safety when you take your final vote today (Tuesday, May 5, 2026). The current contract for 40 Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in our community is set to expire on June 6, 2026; renewing it would lock El Cerrito into a surveillance platform that endangers privacy, civil liberties, and public safety.

Key concerns and why we need to drop Flock asap:

It’s a platform, not just a camera. The City has been told officers “only have access to still images of plates,” but Flock’s product suite goes far beyond ALPRs including:

FreeForm— AI search that finds people by physical description.

Raven — marketed for gunshot detection and now promoted to detect “human voices in distress,” introducing wide-detecting audio capture.

Patent US11416545B1 — Flock’s patented methods classify people by race, gender, height, and weight into searchable records. These capabilities make the system a searchable, persistent database of people and behavior, not merely a traffic camera.

Documented loss of local control. Official government findings show local communities lose control of their data once it enters Flock’s national network:

Mountain View, CA — Flock enabled a “nationwide” setting without police knowledge; federal agencies later accessed local data.

Cambridge, MA — Flock installed cameras after the council had ordered deactivation; the contract was later terminated for a “breach of trust.” Washington state — Border Patrol accessed data from ten departments that never agreed to share.

These are not mere allegations; they are official, documented incidents demonstrating that local policies and promises can be overridden by networked access.

Hackable — documented vulnerabilities. Vendor and device vulnerabilities are not solved by internal audits alone. Flock-related devices appear in federal cybersecurity records with at least 22 confirmed vulnerabilities. Investigations have shown individual cameras (Condor models) exposed online without passwords, streaming live footage viewable by anyone. A compromised camera can be taken over in seconds — creating direct safety and privacy risks for residents.

New audio collection multiplies harm. The addition of far‑ranging microphones and audio-capable sensors moves the system from location tracking to potential recording of speech and private conversations in public spaces, increasing the risk of chilling lawful expression and broad misuse.

Agenda Packet Page 497 of 528
Disproportionate harms and misuse. Flock’s national network has been used by federal agencies, administrations, and their partners (e.g. Palantir) to target immigrants, protesters, and people seeking reproductive care across state lines. These systems disproportionately harm marginalized communities and erode trust in local institutions.

Weak oversight, retention, and transparency. The contract lacks enforceable, public safeguards: independent audits, strict retention limits, public query logs, and transparent access records. Without these, we cannot verify who has accessed El Cerrito’s data or for what purpose.

Safer, privacy-respecting alternatives exist. Community policing, targeted investigations based on probable cause, neighborhood tip lines, lighting and trafficcalming measures, and investments in social services protect safety without creating a permanent, searchable record of residents’ movements and speech.

Requests of you:

1. Vote NO on renewing the Flock contract.

2. Require a full independent audit of all data collected to date, including a public log of all queries and a list of every agency or party that accessed El Cerrito data before any consideration of a future contract.

3. Pass an ordinance prohibiting mass, continuous ALPR (Automated License Plate Reader) deployment and any audio-capable public surveillance systems that create generalized, searchable records of residents’ movements or speech.

4. Reallocate funds toward non-surveillance public-safety measures and community-based solutions.

Please protect El Cerrito residents’ privacy, safety, and civil liberties by refusing to renew this contract. We’re witnessing the rapid deterioration of privacy and civil rights in the name of a growing surveillance state marketed as “security.” With your leadership and community action, we can remove this surveillance platform from our city and pursue safer, privacyrespecting alternatives.

Sincerely,
7829 Terrace Dr.

Agenda Packet Page 498 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Re: Public Comments – Flock Contract renewal agenda item #9B Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:57:42 PM
footnote4a.org
More excellent reading on the topic of Flock audit reliability for anyone interested.

It appears that the audit logs that Flock provides us are not consistent when viewed on different days and times. This reporting presents strong circumstantial evidence that Flock is at worst manipulating its audit logs or at best extremely technically negligent in how they present this critical oversight data.

You’ll have an opportunity to ask about immutable audit logs tonight when the flock representative is present.

I would like to ask the Flock representative present tonight to answer one question directly, on the record, to this Council:
“I’m light of recent reporting from Footnote4a on the apparent unreliability of your audit logs,how can you guarantee that El Cerrito’s audit logs are truly immutable? — can you guarantee that no record in your audit logging system once written, has ever been altered, deleted, or replaced — and if so, can you provide a cryptographic proof or independent thirdparty attestation of that guarantee?” If the answer is anything other than yes with documentation, the accountability this Council has been sold does not exist.
-Brian Fogg
On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 11:55 PM Brian > wrote:

Two documents to be included in the packet / for publication for the May 5th meeting.

Please consider this case carefully. It's way bigger than El Cerrito. -Brian
Agenda Packet Page 499 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public Comments - Agenda Item #9B: Please Oppose Flock Renewal Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:59:09 PM
Dear Council members,
I am a resident of El Cerrito urging you to vote NO on
renewing the El Cerrito Police Department’s contract
with Flock Safety when you take your final vote today
(Tuesday, May 5, 2026). The current contract for 40
Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in our
community is set to expire on June 6, 2026; renewing it would lock El Cerrito into a surveillance platform that endangers privacy, civil liberties, and public safety.

Key concerns and why we need to drop Flock asap:

It’s a platform, not just a camera. The City has
been told officers “only have access to still images
of plates,” but Flock’s product suite goes far
beyond ALPRs including:

FreeForm— AI search that finds people by
physical description.

Raven — marketed for gunshot detection
and now promoted to detect “human voices
in distress,” introducing wide-detecting
audio capture.

Patent US11416545B1 — Flock’s patented
methods classify people by race, gender,
height, and weight into searchable records.

These capabilities make the system a
searchable, persistent database of people and
behavior, not merely a traffic camera.

Documented loss of local control. Official
government findings show local communities lose
control of their data once it enters Flock’s national
network:

Mountain View, CA — Flock enabled a
“nationwide” setting without police
knowledge; federal agencies later accessed
local data.

Cambridge, MA — Flock installed cameras
after the council had ordered deactivation;
the contract was later terminated for a
“breach of trust.”
Washington state — Border Patrol accessed
data from ten departments that never agreed
Agenda Packet Page 500 of 528
to share.

These are not mere allegations; they are official,
documented incidents demonstrating that local policies
and promises can be overridden by networked access.

Hackable — documented
vulnerabilities. Vendor and device vulnerabilities
are not solved by internal audits alone. Flockrelated devices appear in federal cybersecurity records with at least 22 confirmed vulnerabilities.

Investigations have shown individual cameras
(Condor models) exposed online without
passwords, streaming live footage viewable by
anyone. A compromised camera can be taken over
in seconds — creating direct safety and privacy
risks for residents.

New audio collection multiplies harm. The
addition of far‑ranging microphones and audiocapable sensors moves the system from location tracking to potential recording of speech and
private conversations in public spaces, increasing
the risk of chilling lawful expression and broad
misuse.

Disproportionate harms and misuse. Flock’s
national network has been used by federal
agencies, administrations, and their partners (e.g.

Palantir) to target immigrants, protesters, and
people seeking reproductive care across state lines.

These systems disproportionately harm
marginalized communities and erode trust in local
institutions.

Weak oversight, retention, and
transparency. The contract lacks enforceable,
public safeguards: independent audits, strict
retention limits, public query logs, and transparent
access records. Without these, we cannot verify
who has accessed El Cerrito’s data or for what
purpose.

Safer, privacy-respecting alternatives
exist. Community policing, targeted investigations
based on probable cause, neighborhood tip lines,
lighting and traffic-calming measures, and
investments in social services protect safety
without creating a permanent, searchable record of
residents’ movements and speech.

Agenda Packet Page 501 of 528
Requests of you:

1. Vote NO on renewing the Flock contract.

2. Require a full independent audit of all data
collected to date, including a public log of all
queries and a list of every agency or party that
accessed El Cerrito data before any consideration
of a future contract.

3. Pass an ordinance prohibiting mass, continuous
ALPR (Automated License Plate Reader)
deployment and any audio-capable public
surveillance systems that create generalized,
searchable records of residents’ movements or
speech.

4. Reallocate funds toward non-surveillance publicsafety measures and community-based solutions.

Please protect El Cerrito residents’ privacy, safety, and civil liberties by refusing to renew this contract. We’re witnessing the rapid deterioration of privacy and civil rights in the name of a growing surveillance state
marketed as “security.” With your leadership and
community action, we can remove this surveillance
platform from our city and pursue safer, privacyrespecting alternatives.

Sincerely,
Joe Khalaf
Agenda Packet Page 502 of 528
From: Kenneth Pack
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - Agenda item #9B - Please DO NOT RENEW the Flock Contract.

Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 3:01:15 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the Agenda Packet Page 503 of 528
ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Kenneth Pack
El Cerrito Plaza
Agenda Packet Page 504 of 528
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From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 3:08:51 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to
oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock,
given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy
practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately
criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and
communities of color through misidentification,
racialized policing, and data-driven redlining. Flock
also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Flock Safety markets itself as a security company,
but in reality, it operates as a private data broker.

Their business model is simple: get police
departments to pay for their universal monitoring
equipment, then monetize OUR data by selling
paywall access to other jurisdictions. Their
unregulated private surveillance network is so poorly
secured that independent researchers have
demonstrated it can be compromised in minutes.

El Cerrito is a sanctuary city. At a time when our
community has expressed a commitment to
Agenda Packet Page 505 of 528
protecting immigrants and other vulnerable residents
from federal overreach, continuing to invest in
surveillance technologies that can so easily be
weaponized against those same neighbors is not
aligned with El Cerrito’s values.

In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief
Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like
medical data, you trust that people are using your
data correctly," but this is knowing that there were
already several breaches of El Cerrito data. For
months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other
state agencies across the country accessed El
Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB
34 bars state law enforcement agencies from
sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies
or federal entities.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say
exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike
Canfield said when he turned off their license plate
readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual
tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens
the control on our Flock data, recent case law and
policy guidance show that data ownership does
Agenda Packet Page 506 of 528
not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El
Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order
thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt
Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of
Northern California cautions that “if your community
builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s
information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and
instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract
and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Benjamin Pauw
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 507 of 528
From: erikdragos
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Flock Cameras
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 3:14:52 PM
The use of Flock cameras in our city is nothing less than an unconstitutional system of mass surveillance that is more effective at eroding trust in society than safeguarding it. With official statistics showing the rates of violent crime steadily decreasing for decades, and with civil rights of citizens being eroded faster than ever, we should reject an expensive, risky, privately owned mass surveillance system which has no place in our society. As a registered voter in El Cerrito, I will work to vote out every councilperson who supports the use of Flock.

We all want a safe society, but safety is more than simply tracking everyone's movements by automated camera. The harms of Flock are far greater than it's benefits:
-It's anti-4th amendment: Just as police cannot place a tracker on your car without a warrant, you should not be tracked by Flock cameras everywhere you go, as it is in effect the same thing. -The images and data can and has been abused or misused by city police for personal gain, including stalking, which has happened numerous times across the country. -The system can and has been used by ICE and other federal agencies in violation of local policy, even with attempts at safeguarding against outside use, due to security flaws -Flock inacurately overstates the amount of crimes it helps solve -There are numerous security flaws and people have shown how easily the data is accessible by outsiders
-It captures more than just license plate data; the photos of people walking by and houses are also collected whenever the camera is triggered by vehicle -Innocent people have been wrongly arrested already
-Many cities across the countries are canceling Flock contracts or banning their use due to grave civil liberty concerns and potential for misuse
Please think beyond the potential for crimes to be solved, and think also about the potential harms to innocent individuals and society as a whole that can come from such a powerfully invasive system.

Thank you,
Erik Dragos
Agenda Packet Page 508 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract.

Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:02:10 PM
Subject: Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance Agenda Packet Page 509 of 528
system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Mary T. Curran
El Cerrito, CA
Sent from my iPad
Agenda Packet Page 510 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.” I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now. #GetTheFlockOut Respectfully,
Kelly Beccaria
El Cerrito, CA Agenda Packet Page 511 of 528
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From: Makalia Aga
To: City Clerk
Subject: Flock Safety for License plate reading
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:39:11 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

To whom it may concern,
This device agreement should not be renewed in my opinion. There are other important issues to be addressed in the city that need improvements. Example, the street's potholes.

Thanks,
Agenda Packet Page 512 of 528
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From: kate frei
To: City Clerk
Subject: No to Flock
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:49:30 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Please terminate the contract with Flock and remove the cameras now.

Thank you!
Kate Frei
El Cerrito resident for nearly 20 years
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer
Agenda Packet Page 513 of 528
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From: Suzanne
To: City Clerk; Karen Pinkos; City Manager
Subject: End Flock contract in EC
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:57:14 PM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Hello,
We live in El Cerrito and we are asking you to please end the El Cerrito contract with Flock now. We have learned the following about this company. Please find alternatives, such as speed cameras, ECPD on arterial streets looking for speeding drivers. There are plenty of bad drivers around who need to be stopped and ticketed. However, Flock is not the solution.

Flock is partnering with Palantir to build a national mass government surveillance system and Trump agencies have already improperly accessed our camera system and our private data.

We say NO to FLOCK to protect the privacy of our families and neighbors.

The best way for the city to keep us safe is to STOP COLLECTING DATA they can't protect.

FLOCK is a private surveillance company that leases AI-powered cameras to ECPD. There are currently 40 cameras mounted in El Cerrito. All collected data is hosted by FLOCK, not locally. ECPD is tracking its residents 24/7 with 40 cameras AND grants access to 322 CA state, county, and municipal agencies without any warrant requirement, individualized suspicion, or oversight. At an informational Q&A, Police Chief Paul Keith confirmed federal agencies can subpoena data from FLOCK Systems without ECPD ever being notified.

El Cerrito is a Sanctuary City. FLOCK and federal agencies are untrustworthy and already collaborating. ICE, Secret Service, and US Navy confirmed access to FLOCK's network in October 2025. Nationwide and in the Bay Area, FLOCK data is used by the Trump Administration and ICE to target immigrants and activists. Reproductive rights are being targeted. Texas is using FLOCK data to surveil abortion-seekers up to and across state lines.

FLOCK does not prevent crime. Intervention programs — like lighting improvements, safety ambassadors, violence prevention, and mental health crisis response—cost less and are proven effective for crime abatement. Research shows that FLOCK systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color via misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining. Citizen data in the wrong hands puts vulnerable community members at risk. There are many documented cases of misuse and stalking using FLOCK data.

As demonstrated by security researchers, FLOCK cameras are easily hackable within 30 seconds, allowing unauthorized parties to turn them into personal "spy cameras." FLOCK stores info in a searchable database, allowing for unethical real-time and historical tracking of residents. FLOCK is an untrustworthy vendor that has admitted to using 50 million stolen data points, partnered with ICE despite sanctuary policies, and whose CEO has been documented lying to communities. FLOCK’s history of broken promises and lack of safeguards has a growing number of Bay Area and nationwide cities terminating contracts and cutting ties with FLOCK Safety.

Agenda Packet Page 514 of 528
In late February 2026, Mountain View City Council voted to terminate its relationship with Flock.

Reports in Oakland and SF have found that once the data is in the hands of other agencies, they don’t always follow the rules.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported how Flock data has been used to help ICE carry out its abusive immigration enforcement programs.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) found patterns of Flock data being used to surveil protesters and enable biased policing.
404 Media reported that last year authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras, looking for a woman who had an abortion A 2021 study of FLOCK cameras found that their ALPRs misread 1 in 10 license plates.

Thanks for your time,
Suzanne and Michael Balmaceda
Agenda Packet Page 515 of 528
From: Paul A. Keith
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Support Flock renewal
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 5:05:33 PM
From: Beth Roessner
Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:08 PM
To: William Ktsanes <[email protected]>; Lisa Motoyama <[email protected]>; Gabe Quinto <[email protected]>; Rebecca Saltzman <[email protected]>; Carolyn Wysinger <[email protected]>
Cc: Paul A. Keith <[email protected]>
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Support Flock renewal
Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,
My name is Beth Roessner, and I’m a resident of El Cerrito, writing to express my support for renewing the Flock Safety contract.

Based on the data in your agenda packet, the system has clearly become an effective public safety tool. Since its implementation, it has contributed to at least 64 arrests and over 300 criminal cases, and it now supports nearly every major investigation in the city.

Even more importantly, we’re seeing measurable outcomes. In 2025, El Cerrito experienced historically low levels of burglary and vehicle theft—reportedly the lowest in 40 years—and one of the lowest robbery rates as well.

Clearance rates have also improved significantly compared to pre-camera levels in 2022.

Robbery clearances nearly doubled, burglary increased by over 70%, and larceny clearance rates nearly tripled.

These are not abstract benefits—these are real impacts on community safety, accountability, and deterrence.

At the same time, I appreciate that the City has taken community concerns seriously, especially around data sharing and privacy. The updated agreement includes a financial penalty—about $34,500 per violation—for unauthorized data sharing.

That said, I would encourage the Council to consider negotiating an even stronger financial penalty or enforcement mechanism. Given the seriousness of data privacy concerns, stronger safeguards would help build additional public trust and ensure accountability if breaches occur.

Overall, this program appears to be working. It’s improving investigations, increasing clearance rates, and contributing to reductions in key crime categories. With thoughtful oversight and stronger contractual protections, I believe it’s a tool worth continuing.

Thank you.

Beth Roessner
Agenda Packet Page 516 of 528
From: Clay Sorrick
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 4:37:27 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
As a future El Cerrito resident and a current El Cerrito property owner, I urge you to oppose renewing our city’s contract with Flock. Mounting evidence shows the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, particularly to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

In a public meeting about Flock on March 10, Chief Keith stated that “Technology is everywhere; it’s like medical data, you trust that people are using your data correctly," despite knowing there were already several breaches of El Cerrito data. For months, the FBI, ATF, GSA, and hundreds of other state agencies across the country accessed El Cerrito license plate reader data, even though SB 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing such data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities.

Respectfully,
Clay Sorrick
Agenda Packet Page 517 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Sara Larsen
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 518 of 528
From: Mark Frischman
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 5:29:18 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

I would love to hear our El Cerrito leaders say exactly what Mountain View police chief Mike Canfield said when he turned off their license plate readers:
"Community trust is more important than any individual tool. We know that the most vital asset in public safety is not technology; it is the relationship we have with you, the people we are here to serve and protect."
Further, even if El Cerrito PD successfully tightens the control on our Flock data, recent case law and policy guidance show that data ownership does not prevent federal subpoena compliance. El Cerrito’s ability to legally challenge a federal order thus provides minimal practical protection. Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California cautions that “if your community builds a surveillance system that tracks people’s information, you should expect federal authorities today to potentially exploit that for their own ends.”
I urge you to oppose this contract expansion and instead prioritize privacy, immigrant Agenda Packet Page 519 of 528
safety, and civil liberties in our city. Terminate the Flock contract and remove the cameras now.

Respectfully,
Mark Frischman
, El Cerrito CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 520 of 528
From: Marie Arthur Eggebroten
To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 6:27:16 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Marie Eggebroten
Marie Arthur Eggebroten
Owner & Maker, Wilder June Glass
Agenda Packet Page 521 of 528
From: No Reply
To: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment Submission
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:01:15 PM
This sender is trusted.

Submitted by: Minju Cho
Email Address:

Commented on event: https://elcerritoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/921/overview If you are having trouble viewing the URL above, cut and paste the string into your browser window.

User comment: As a concerned El Cerrito resident, I urge you to oppose the renewal of the contract with Flock. I am concerned both about the extraordinary intrusion into our privacy that Flock facilitates, as well as the cost to the city's fiscal health. The Flock contract is anathema to our values in El Cerrito. I do not believe surveillance technology is the answer to keeping our residents safe from harm - for young people and people of color, who are disproportionately likely to be misidentified through surveillance technology, I believe that this will do just the opposite. Community trust is at stake. Please terminate the Flock contract.

Agenda Packet Page 522 of 528
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From: Brian
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: Re: Public Comments – Flock Contract renewal agenda item #9B Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 12:23:19 AM
Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

I would encourage you all to forward this reporting to Max at Flock and ask him to refute each specific claim made in this article with verifiable proof.

Without cryptographically signed audit logs which are reviewed by a third party auditor we have no way to guarantee that the data flock provides us is reliable, accurate and unmolested.

There is very strong circumstantial evidence documented in this article which suggests that the audit logs are manipulated in an unknown way.

Without full transparency engineered into these logs, we have no confidence in them. (Furthermore, even if these logs are signed and audited, they would still not contain any access via FISA or NSL methods.)
If you would like additional consultation, please call me at any time. -Brian Fogg
On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 2:57 PM Brian < > wrote:
https://footnote4a.org/news/immutable-redux
More excellent reading on the topic of Flock audit reliability for anyone interested.

You’ll have an opportunity to ask about immutable audit logs tonight when the flock representative is present.

I would like to ask the Flock representative present tonight to answer one question directly, on the record, to this Council:
“I’m light of recent reporting from Footnote4a on the apparent unreliability of your audit logs,how can you guarantee that El Cerrito’s audit logs are truly immutable? — can you guarantee that no record in your audit logging system once written, has ever been altered, deleted, or replaced — and if so, can you provide a cryptographic proof or independent third-party attestation of that guarantee?”
If the answer is anything other than yes with documentation, the accountability this Council Agenda Packet Page 523 of 528
has been sold does not exist.
-Brian Fogg
On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 11:55 PM Brian > wrote:

Two documents to be included in the packet / for publication for the May 5th meeting.

Please consider this case carefully. It's way bigger than El Cerrito. -Brian
Agenda Packet Page 524 of 528
From:

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Jim Lastoskie
, El Cerrito
Sent from my iPhone
Agenda Packet Page 525 of 528
From: Forrest Johnson
To: City Clerk; William Ktsanes; Lisa Motoyama; Gabe Quinto; Rebecca Saltzman; Carolyn Wysinger Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:12:15 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Respectfully,
Forrest Johnson
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 526 of 528
From:

To: City Clerk
Subject: [UNKNOWN SENDER] Public comments - agenda item #9B - DO NOT RENEW the Flock contract Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 8:25:49 PM
Dear El Cerrito City Council members,
I am an El Cerrito resident writing to urge you to oppose the renewal of our city’s contract with Flock, given mounting evidence that the company’s privacy practices pose serious risks to our civil liberties, and particular risk to vulnerable residents.

Research shows Flock systems disproportionately criminalize youth, unhoused residents, and communities of color through misidentification, racialized policing, and data-driven redlining.

Flock also has a history of sharing data w/ ICE.

Agenda Packet Page 527 of 528
Respectfully,
Fatemeh Mizbani
El Cerrito CA 94530
Agenda Packet Page 528 of 528

El Cerrito City CouncilMay 5, 2026

El Cerrito City Council
May 5, 2026