A public safety report cannot credibly present conclusions without presenting the conditions that produced those conclusions.
The report contains extensive visual branding, slogans, photographs, and motivational messaging including “Service From the Heart,” “Focused on People,” and “Committed to Solutions,” yet fails to address many of the most consequential public safety and constitutional governance questions facing the City.
That imbalance is glaring.
2. THE REPORT COMPLETELY FAILS TO ADDRESS FLOCK ALPR OPERATIONS, DATA SHARING,
REGIONAL INTEROPERABILITY, OR FEDERAL ACCESS RISKS
The most glaring omission in the entire report is the complete absence of discussion regarding the City’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) operations, including any Flock Safety platform usage, data sharing permissions, audit procedures, retention practices, regional interoperability, external agency access, or federal query exposure. Bay Area cities such as Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, and El Cerrito canceled their Flock Safety contracts, while other cities such as San Jose and Sunnyvale significantly tightened their data retention policies and audit intervals.
This omission on how Union City is treating its own data is absolutely, positively indefensible! The City cannot credibly claim to provide a modern police accountability report while omitting one of the most controversial and expansive surveillance systems currently operating within municipal policing.
The public is entitled to know:
• How many Flock or ALPR cameras are currently deployed • Where they are deployed
• Which agencies have reciprocal access
• Whether regional law enforcement task forces can query Union City data • Whether federal agencies can access or request access to data through partner agencies • Whether ICE, DHS, FBI, DEA, ATF, or fusion center personnel have indirect or direct access pathways • How many searches were conducted in 2025
• Whether any misuse audits were performed
• Whether hot list entries originate from outside agencies • Whether geofence style analytics or vehicle pattern analysis are utilized • Whether Union City data contributes to broader interstate surveillance networks The public also deserves to know whether Union City has effectively outsourced portions of its surveillance infrastructure to vendor-managed ecosystems with regionalized query capabilities far beyond what ordinary residents reasonably understand.
The absence of any discussion of this issue strongly suggests the City intentionally avoided discussing it publicly. That is not transparency. That is omission by design.
3. THE REPORT FAILS TO DISCUSS THE UPCOMING FREMONT DISPATCH CONSOLIDATION
CONTRACT RENEWAL AND ASSOCIATED FISCAL AND OPERATIONAL RISKS The report also completely ignores one of the most operationally consequential pending public safety transitions facing Union City, namely the upcoming dispatch and communications integration involving Fremont Police dispatchers and call takers routing Union City Police Department calls for service that's been in effect since at least 2015.
This omission is extraordinary.
The public is entitled to know:
• The projected long-term cost of the dispatch arrangement • Whether costs are fixed or subject to Fremont labor escalators • Whether future labor agreements in Fremont will automatically increase Union City obligations • Whether Union City will bear proportional pension, overtime, staffing, technology, or supervisory costs
• Whether dispatch staffing shortages in Fremont could affect Union City response quality • Whether Union City will retain any independent dispatch redundancy • Whether there are performance benchmarks, termination clauses, or service guarantees • Whether there are interoperability cybersecurity concerns associated with integrated CAD and records systems
This issue is even more pressing because Fremont itself is currently engaged in ongoing labor negotiations with multiple employee groups and bargaining units involving at least two police and two fire bargaining units. That means Union City may be entering a long-term dependency structure while labor costs and operational assumptions remain unsettled on the Fremont side. That is a material fiscal risk, yet none of it appears in the report.
A police annual report that omits a major pending operational restructuring affecting emergency communications is fundamentally incomplete.
4. THE REPORT PRESENTS DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITHOUT ACTUALLY ADDRESSING
ENFORCEMENT EQUITY
The report includes broad demographic charts regarding police staffing and city demographics, yet carefully avoids the actual accountability metrics the public would reasonably expect.
The report states that the Police Department workforce is 66% male and 34% female and presents ethnicity comparisons between police personnel and the broader city population. It also notes that 72% of employees possess college degrees compared to 45% of residents. However, the report never addresses whether enforcement outcomes themselves are equitable across demographic groups.
There is no breakdown by race, ethnicity, age, or neighborhood geography regarding:
• Traffic stops
• Pedestrian stops
• Searches
• Citations
• DUI enforcement
• Use of force
• Complaints
• Arrests
• Mental health calls
• Vehicle impounds
• ALPR hits
• Repeat enforcement zones
• Officer initiated activity
This omission matters because statistics without demographic context can easily conceal disproportionate enforcement patterns. The report highlights 2,558 citations issued in 2025 but fails to explain why citations surged dramatically from 420 during January through June to 2,138 during July through December. That is not a minor fluctuation. That is a massive operational shift.
So, what changed?
Were there deployment directives?
Grant funded enforcement initiatives?
Targeted saturation patrols?
Revenue pressures?
Selective traffic corridors?
Policy changes?
Personnel reallocations?
The public is given no explanation whatsoever.
Similarly, the report emphasizes decreases in use of force incidents while failing to disclose the racial, geographic, or situational distribution of those incidents. Without demographic context, these numbers are analytically incomplete.
5. THE REPORT PRESENTS COMMUNITY POLICING CLAIMS WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY SHOWING
RESOURCE GAPS
The report claims success in “district policing” and community engagement while simultaneously acknowledging that half of COPPS positions remain vacant.
The report states:
• 2 COPPS positions filled
• 2 COPPS positions vacant
• 50 community events conducted
That raises obvious questions:
How sustainable is this model?
What is the actual staffing ratio?
What is the workload distribution?
How much overtime is supporting this appearance of capacity? What functions are not being performed because these positions remain vacant? The report emphasizes branding language rather than operational sustainability analysis.
6. THE REPORT FAILS TO PROVIDE SUFFICIENT DETAIL REGARDING COMPLAINTS, INTERNAL
AFFAIRS, OR DISCIPLINARY OUTCOMES
The report states that there were:
• 8 external complaints
• 2 internally generated investigations
• 4 sustained findings
• 3 unfounded findings
• 5 pending matters
Yet the report provides no meaningful context.
There is no explanation regarding:
• Nature of allegations
• Policy categories involved
• Whether force was implicated
• Whether dishonesty allegations existed
• Whether discipline occurred
• Whether complaints involved repeat officers
• Whether allegations originated from field operations, custody, traffic, or surveillance practices • Whether any complaints involved discriminatory policing allegations The public receives sanitized totals without substantive accountability analysis. That is insufficient for any department claiming modern transparency practices.
7. THE REPORT PRESENTS CRIME REDUCTIONS WITHOUT DISCUSSING REPORTING
CONDITIONS, CALL HANDLING, OR DATA LIMITATIONS
The report repeatedly highlights decreases in crime statistics, particularly at Union Landing.
However, it never explains:
• Whether reporting practices changed
• Whether call classifications changed
• Whether staffing levels changed
• Whether businesses altered private security practices • Whether crimes shifted geographically
• Whether reporting thresholds changed
• Whether theft underreporting increased
• Whether organized retail theft coordination affected statistics The public is simply shown directional arrows and celebratory graphics. That is not rigorous public reporting.
8. THE REPORT FUNCTIONS MORE AS A RECRUITMENT AND BRAND MANAGEMENT
PRESENTATION THAN A TRUE PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY DOCUMENT The report repeatedly emphasizes leadership culture, employee wellness, succession planning, and organizational branding. Those subjects may have internal value, but they cannot substitute for rigorous public accountability metrics. There are entire slides devoted to slogans, philosophy, and motivational concepts while some of the most controversial and consequential policing issues facing modern municipalities are omitted entirely.
No ALPR discussion.
No surveillance discussion.
No regional interoperability discussion.
No dispatch transition discussion.
No demographic enforcement analysis.
No audit data.
No constitutional risk analysis.
No transparency metrics.
No technology governance discussion.
That imbalance is impossible to ignore.
9. REQUEST FOR CORRECTIONS, SUPPLEMENTS, AND FUTURE REPORTING REQUIREMENTS Accordingly, I respectfully request that the City Council direct staff to return with a supplemental accountability report addressing the omissions identified above, including but not limited to:
• Full ALPR and Flock deployment, sharing, audit, retention, and access information • External agency access permissions and federal interoperability disclosures • Dispatch consolidation cost projections and operational risk analysis • Full demographic breakdowns of enforcement activity
• Detailed use of force breakdowns
• Complaint category analysis
• Technology governance and cybersecurity risk reporting • Regional task force participation disclosures
• Public records regarding surveillance policy audits
• Traffic enforcement surge explanation
• Staffing vacancy and overtime analysis
• CAD and call handling metrics
• Transparency and constitutional compliance benchmarks
10. CONCLUSION
A true police accountability report informs the public where power is being exercised, how surveillance tools are being used, where risks are increasing, how taxpayer obligations are evolving, and whether constitutional safeguards are actually functioning in practice. This report largely does none of those things. Instead, it presents selective statistics, visual branding, generalized optimism, and incomplete operational disclosures while omitting some of the most consequential public safety governance issues currently facing the City.
The omissions are no longer small enough to dismiss as oversight. At some point, omission itself becomes policy.
Respectfully Submitted,
Henry Soong