Fullerton is powering down its 19 Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras for the next six months, while the city holds a town hall and reviews the Police Department’s use of the system.
The pause does not end the city’s contract with Flock, which costs roughly $51,000 a year and is currently scheduled to run through at least 2028. Under the suspension, Fullerton police officers will no longer receive real-time alerts when a wanted or stolen vehicle passes a camera, and detectives will lose access to searches of where a plate has been.
Previously collected data will be deleted under the department’s 30-day retention policy, with backups purged about a week later, according to a Flock Safety representative. Images already booked into criminal cases will still be retained for evidence.
Fullerton police previously said the system has helped officers recover 274 stolen vehicles and locate 18 missing persons.
The decision came after hours of council debate and public comment on Oct. 6, with the council voting 3-1 to pause the program. Councilmember Ahmad Zahra initiated the proposal to power down the system, with Councilmembers Shana Charles and Nicholas Dunlap in support.
Councilmember Jamie Valencia voted against the pause, and Mayor Fred Jung was absent for the vote.
City staff will use the next six months to establish customer-service and audit protocols with Flock, to compare the Fullerton department’s investigations with and without the use of the cameras, and monitor pending litigation as well as actions by other cities.
After public input, the city will also review the Police Department’s automated license plate reader policy for council approval.
Dunlap said the recent decision was not about opposing police.
“‘I have nothing to hide’ — I hear that a lot, and I just think that’s the wrong way to think about it,” Dunlap said. “We’re innocent until proven guilty. Do we really need technology in place that tracks our every move? It just seems un-American to me.”
Dunlap said the technology is “undeniable” in how it helps solve cases, but called the pause a chance for “a bigger discussion” he expects the state Legislature to join.
Zahra framed the pause as a constitutional duty.
“We have to protect and provide public safety,” he said, “but we also need to protect the values that we have. From the Constitution we swore allegiance to, privacy, and the Fourth Amendment.”
Valencia said the department’s employees were “good stewards” of the system.
“I don’t feel comfortable turning off the cameras, because it’s been helping our police officers,” Valencia said. “I’m not a police officer.”
Anjali Tapadia, a 40-year-old Fullerton resident who regularly attends council meetings and advocated for the pause, said the cameras change how people live.
“People change their behavior when they know they’re being watched, and they don’t change it in a good way,” she said. “They change it in a way that restricts their ability to access their freedoms of movement, association and speech.”
She described the three-hour deliberation as an unusual display of consensus for a frequently divided council. “You hope to see your city leaders having a rational discussion and really thinking things through, because these decisions affect all of us,” she said.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, the Police Department’s management of the program faced repeated scrutiny from members of the public.
Police Chief Jon Radus told the council that system audits had been conducted annually for 19 years before being moved to quarterly review amid the recent attention. The department had not formally tracked the program’s effectiveness, though a reporting tool is under development, Radus said.
Radus cautioned that comparing crime statistics before and after the pause may be inconclusive, since the department did not track outcomes while the cameras were operating. “I’m not sure what that’s going to tell us,” he said.
He also told the council the department cannot share data with out-of-state or federal agencies. But the department’s transparency portal lists more than 200 California agencies in the Flock system that could have access to Fullerton’s data and roughly 250 organizations sharing their own data with Fullerton through the system, including in Nevada and Arizona.
No official date for the city’s town hall has been announced. The council is expected to revisit the automated license plate reader cameras program around April.
Fullerton is not the only city having these conversations about the cameras and their efficacy.
On Tuesday, the Santa Ana City Council will consider a councilmember’s proposal to have city staffers put together information on options for terminating or not renewing the city’s contracts for the license plate readers and to get an update on the system’s effectiveness.
Councilmember Jessie Lopez, in her proposal to her colleagues, quotes reporting published in August using public records that Northern California Regional Intelligence Center made more than 27,000 queries of Santa Ana’s camera network over six months. The search logs named federal agencies including the FBI and DEA, as well as the ATF and U.S. Marshals, she said.
There is state law restricting license plate data sharing to California public agencies, Lopez said in her proposal. “Santa Anaresidents deserve a clear accounting of who has accessed this data, whether that access complied with state law, and what the City’s options are.”
The Santa Ana City Council meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20.