Canceled

A Flock camera in El Cerrito

The City Council voted very early Wednesday not to renew its contract with Flock Safety for license plate reading cameras.

As a result of the decision, all 40 cameras in the city are expected to be turned off on June 7, 2026, according to a police department email.

After a marathon meeting on May 5, the City Council voted 3-2 not to renew its $105,000 per year contract with Flock Safety.

Voting not to renew were council members Lisa Motoyama, Rebecca Saltzman and William Ktsanes. Voting against that motion were Mayor Gabe Quinto and council member Carolyn Wysinger.

Speakers who argued against the contract renewal said they were relieved.

“Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!” said one.

A 3-Hour Talk at a 7-Hour Meeting

The vote came at the end of a marathon City Council meeting that lasted more than six hours, with nearly three hours spent discussing the Flock contract. Reports were given by Police Chief Paul Keith, Flock representative Max Weinstein, and Sarah Hamid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

After that, City Clerk Holly Charlety announced that 47 people had signed up to speak about it. While most were El Cerrito residents, speakers also came from other East Bay cities. Opponents of the Flock contract outnumbered supporters.

Benefits vs. Risks

The central debate was about whether the camera system’s value to police working to catch criminals outweighed concerns that Flock Safety could not be trusted to safeguard data collected in El Cerrito, particularly from the federal government.

What a Flock Search Gives Officers

Police Chief Paul Keith led off, showing a sample of what information the Flock data system gives an ECPD officer in response to a sample license plate search. (An ECPD officer’s car was used.)

The LPR read the plate correctly and identified the car as a black Ford SUV. It told the location, time and date the car passed by and gave the coordinates of the camera as well as who owns the camera.

“When we get our license plate hits back we can rarely make out the occupants in either the target car or approaching vehicles,” Keith said. “They’re just set up to focus on the vehicle itself.”

Keith reiterated that the crimes of vehicle theft and burglary are at 40-year lows, and robbery is at its second lowest. He described several cases where leads from the Flock LPR data helped police identify and locate suspects in crimes.

“Crime is down in California and the nation, and I have to think that LPR systems played a role,” he said. “Of 480 cities in California, approximately 70% have LPR systems.”

Vendor Control of Data

Hamid, Director of Strategic Campaigns for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said the Flock system generates more data than what users in the police department see in response to their searches for particular vehicles.

“Flock itself can retain and reuse the patterns it learns from El Cerrito’s data as its own property,” she said.

“The models, the heat maps, and analytical outputs that describe where people drive, where they sleep, which protests they attend, which clinics they visit, where they go for worship. In other words, the city may not see a continuous feed of any one person but the vendor can build and refine continuous tracking tools on top of a resident’s movements. The proposed contract gives the city absolutely no right to inspect or control those analytics.”

Flock representative Max Weinstein said the federal government has not received any request for El Cerrito’s data but if it did, “We’re going to push back.” He said the data belongs to El Cerrito, not to Flock, and the company’s first response to any federal demand would be to tell the federal government to ask the city.

The council heard from about 40 speakers on both sides of the issue, with a majority opposing contract renewal.

Risks to Specific Groups

Several Flock opponents said they fear possible federal access to the Flock data because they are trans.

“At some point the federal government will come for me,” one speaker said.

Other speakers said the current administration might decide to use Flock data to track children of immigrants entering schools, raising the fear of separating families; women entering Planned Parenthood clinics, and people attending protests.

 Eric Lawrence Shenk, an El Cerrito resident, said: “The Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained and analyzed 12 million Flock Safety searches logged by 3,900 law enforcement agencies. Among those searches, they found hundreds explicitly linked to political demonstrations. Officers logged searches with reasons referencing No Kings protests and the hands-off rallies.”

Several speakers said working with Flock could make the city vulnerable to extra costs, including lawsuits and public records requests for the data.

Support for Keeping Flock Cameras

Speaking in favor of renewing the Flock contract were four members of the city’s Community Safety Committee, which voted unanimously to support the Flock contract renewal. Jim Dolgonas said the committee heard success stories and security concerns. On balance, he said, members decided the contract was worthwhile. The police officers' union also supported it.

Bay Area Business Organizations

Also speaking in favor were a representative of the Bay Area Council, an organization with about 350 of the largest employers, and Oscar Garcia, president of the 23^rd Street Merchants Association, Richmond.

“What you decide today has regional implications,” Garcia said. “When Richmond turned off its cameras, it saw a 100% increase in shootings and a 33% increase in car thefts. Is this the direction El Cerrito wants to go?”

Later in the meeting, Mayor Quinto read emails in support of police use of Flock cameras from representatives of Pastime Hardware, El Cerrito Honda, and the NUG and STIIIZY marijuana dispensaries.

Other Supporters

Other advocates were El Cerrito residents John Stashik, Denise Sangster, Andrei Bassler, and Lisa Johnson.

“Everybody has a right to public safety,” Johnson said. “If you shut off these cameras, you’ll be isolated.”

Richmond Will Turn Cameras Back On

Johnson said that, after turning off its cameras for months during negotiations with Flock, the city is turning them back on.

Another speaker, opposing the contract, said: “Cameras don’t make me feel safe. They make me feel watched.”

“It’s OK to Change Your Mind”

At least two dozen speakers urged the council not to renew the contract, and one, Tovah Feldminster, led the group in singing, “It’s okay to change your mind.”

“There are lots of things you can’t do to protect us from the federal government but turning off Flock cameras is one thing you can do,” said Joanna Lawrence Schenk.

Bill Barish noted that a majority of speakers were El Cerrito residents urging the council not to renew.

“Listen to your constituents,” he said.

Saltzmann’s View

Council member Rebecca Saltzman responded to the hours of input by saying she understands that Flock cameras have helped the police solve crimes, but she was expecting a better outcome from city contract negotiations with Flock.

“It doesn’t seem that the company has been negotiating in good faith,” she said.

Saltzman acknowledged that crime is down in El Cerrito and clearance rates of cases are up since 2022. She said one reason might be that the police department was at a lower staffing level in 2022, but now it is just one officer short of being fully staffed.

She said she would vote against renewing the contract.

“Ultimately my concern is that the federal government could access the date,” she said. “Trump and the Supreme Court could change the law and compel Flock to turn over the data. Nothing in the contract protects El Cerrito from that.”

Saltzman said the state of California is being compelled right now to turn over driver’s license information to the federal government. She said the Trump administration is unpredictable and could change rules any time.

Responding to speakers who urged the council to spend money on preventing problems like homelessness, Saltzman said that earlier that evening, the council voted to allocate $25,000 for the Contra Costa CORE program and another $25,000 to a housing services fund to prevent people from becoming unhoused.

Motoyama’s View

At 12:25 a.m., council member Lisa Motoyama thanked the audience for still being present. “You guys have really shown that you care,” she said.

Motoyama said she would vote against the contract renewal.

“I have absolute confidence in Chief Keith and our El Cerrito police department,” she said. “I am not comfortable with Flock – with a company that even in 2026 was sued by our attorney general for a breach. They released data through a city – El Cajon – to give that information to ICE. There is a law in California yet this continues to happen. So I don’t think that our data is safe this way. Once it goes to the Cloud it belongs to Flock. So I don’t think we should do this contract.”

Motoyama added that perhaps the $105,000 not spent on a yearly contract with Flock could be used in another way “to protect local businesses and our residents.”

Ktsanes’ Question

Council member Ktsanes, who initially pushed for the council to hear from the American Civil Liberties Union, was the last to be called on and did not make a statement because it was so late. Earlier, he questioned the Flock representative about whether the proposed contract would protect El Cerrito if the federal government asked Flock to share data “as required by law, court order, and warrant.”

“Is it your interpretation that it would allow Flock to respond to such a warrant?” Ktsanes asked.

Weinstein replied that the company has never received this type of FISA warrant request and would redirect any such request to the city. He’s not a lawyer, but his opinion was that supplying warrant-requested data would justify canceling the contract.

Quinto’s View

Mayor Gabe Quinto acknowledged that people are concerned about protecting immigrants, but said that communities of color also are very often victims of crime.

“I think about so many of our small businesses here who have put their heart and soul and savings into opening businesses here,” he said.  “We have people that are moving here from larger cities because they have been victims of crime and they know that El Cerrito is a safe city and we do what it takes to keep our city safe.”

“We need to do the right thing and stay away from politics,” Quinto said.

There was laughter from the audience.

“I don’t think this is funny,” Quinto said. “My neighbor was killed. So how dare you laugh about that? This is not a laughing matter. This is about life and death. I’m going to stand by my police chief and the police department. And the businesses that call El Cerrito home.”

Wysinger’s View

Council member Carolyn Wysinger said she too was disappointed in the outcome of negotiations with Flock, and wished there was time to negotiate for a better contract.

The deadline to not renew the contract was May 6.

“I cannot, in good conscience, let these cameras go off,” Wysinger said. “I know what happens when Richmond has cameras, and Oakland has cameras, and El Cerrito does not. Because that’s the way these types of things work…You go to where there are no cameras.”

Wysinger added, “I am heartened by the fact that so many people have so much faith in our El Cerrito police department because historically that has not been the case.”

Audience members at the May 5 City Council meeting