Police Chief’s Good News

Police Chief Paul Keith in his office

In 2025, car thefts and burglaries in the city dropped to the lowest number in 40 years, El Cerrito Police Chief Paul Keith said at this year’s City Council retreat. The number of robberies also dropped.

“We have not had these three crimes at this low a level ever – or as far back as the data goes,” Keith said.

The state Open Justice data goes back 40 years to 1985.

In an interview with Livable El Cerrito, Keith talked about police department operations.

How They Did It

Keith said the department’s use of new technology, including about 40 Flock cameras around the city, was essential. While many police departments in the county and region use the system made by Flock Safety, Keith said crime statistics from the California Open Justice website show El Cerrito has achieved bigger reductions than many neighboring jurisdictions.

“Having technology tools helps, but it also depends on having men and women out there doing the work,” Keith said.

More Traffic Enforcement

Traffic enforcement increased in 2025, partly due to the hiring of a full-time traffic officer, Patrick Choudja, who started work in January 2025.

A total of 3,400 tickets were written by all El Cerrito officers in 2025 compared to 2,500 in 2024, Keith said.

“Having a traffic officer back made a big impact, Keith said. “He wrote 944 citations last year but stopped many more cars than that. He provided corrective interventions like lectures and warnings.”

This year, efforts to keep streets safer for pedestrians will include enforcement around intersections, such as stopping at stop signs, yielding to pedestrians as required by law, and stopping bicyclists who “engage in dangerous behavior,” he said.

Striking Drop in Vehicle Thefts

The biggest drop achieved was a 42% reduction in vehicle thefts from 2024 to 2025, Keith said, showing data from Open Justice. In 2025, there were 70, compared to 115 in 2024, and 185 in 2023.

Notable drops coincided with the purchase and use of Flock video cameras. The city started using them halfway through 2023, Keith said. As of today, there are about 40 Flock cameras in the city.

A Flock camera on a street in El Cerrito

Using the Flock System

The Flock system is always running and checks every vehicle that enters El Cerrito against a state database of “wanted” license plates. In the last 30 days, he said, El Cerrito’s system detected 326,000 vehicles and found more than 7,300 matches on the state “wanted” license plate list. For each “hit,” the system provides alerts within less than a minute on where the vehicle was last seen and the time, location, and direction of travel.

Officers get the alerts on their phones or computers and respond accordingly, Keith said.

Success in reducing crime depends on department policy and officers’ use of the data, he added.

In Keith’s view, one key is that the El Cerrito Police Department policy allows officers to pursue cars and to stop the drivers. Some jurisdictions do not allow such pursuits. El Cerrito officers are well-trained and well-practiced in how to stop motorists, he said.

Understanding how to use the data is also important with so many hits coming through. Sometimes the problem is minor. Plates don’t match the make and model of cars for any number of reasons. Other times plates link to a dangerous suspect or crime.

This chart was created by Paul Keith using data from Open Justice.

Drop Follows a Surge

Keith said the striking drop in car thefts follows several years when more vehicles were stolen.

“We had this big surge right after the pandemic,” Keith said.

The pandemic and reaction to the killing of George Floyd contributed to “slumps in the classic pro-active policing,” including the number of vehicles stopped by police. A new state law that required all police officers to report race, age, and gender for stops beginning in January 2022 also contributed to a drop in stops by some departments, Keith said.

Police Department Staffing

In El Cerrito, the number of authorized police officer positions had been cut back from 45 to 37 due to a lack of city funding. Some officers who were not cut also left, he said, and the department had to recruit and rebuild over time. As of Jan. 1, 2026, 36 of 37 authorized positions were filled.

“We are going into midyear with just one vacancy,” he said. “It’s a good place to be.”

AI Facial Recognition

This year, the department subscribed to the Clearview AI facial recognition system. It was a one-year pilot, Keith said, and the results justify renewing the subscription.

He gave two examples of how the system helped officers.

Assault Case

The first was an assault on an attendant working at the Chevron station in El Cerrito.

Keith said an intoxicated man got into an unprovoked conflict with the attendant, assaulted him and broke his nose. Because the aggressor used a racial slur, it was a hate crime.

The station had surveillance footage. El Cerrito police fed it into Clearview AI, which matched the suspect’s image to a person in Illinois. Detectives doubted whether it could be the correct suspect, but follow-up showed the suspect had just been arrested in San Francisco.

Burglary Case

Earlier in 2025, there was a burglary on Potrero Avenue where a suspect came twice to the property, apparently once to case the location and again to commit burglary. A person’s camera took a picture of the person, Keith said.

Detectives put the picture into Clearview AI, which provided a link to an article from a newspaper in Maine. That article reported that a person from Richmond, Calif. had been arrested in Maine.

Detectives were then able to locate a person who knew the suspect and could name and identify him. The suspect is not yet in custody but the search continues.

Keith said the Clearview AI system allows police nationwide and even worldwide to tap into available images to locate suspects in crimes.

Bystander Training

Next, Keith hopes to set up training for El Cerrito officers in how to intervene when they happen to be bystanders in tough situations. At the Jan. 21 City Council meeting, Keith received a letter of support for participation in the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement program administered by Georgetown Law.