Elected officials in two Orange County cities are expected to consider if they want to stop using automated license plate readers amid growing privacy concerns from residents around the technology that police officials say help stop crimes.
The proliferation of the cameras in the region has also sparked concerns of the license plate readers tracking innocent people, being misused by police and worries the data and footage collected could be shared with federal agencies.
Those concerns were prevalent when Santa Ana City Council members approved spending up to over $700,000 combined on two automated license plate reader contracts in May 2025, while directing police officials to give a public update a year later.
Five months since police officials were expected to return this year with that update, residents in the heart of OC are still waiting to have that public hearing on the efficiency of the city’s Flock cameras and just how the data and footage they capture is being used.
The wait may soon be over.
On Tuesday, Santa Ana City Council members are expected to discuss directing the city manager to come back within a month’s time with the overdue one year update, a report on their options to end their contracts with Flock and Motorola for the license plate readers as well as a report on what outside agencies are accessing their ALPR system.
In her request for the discussion, Councilwoman Jessie Lopez – who is running for State Assembly – noted the delay in the update and recent report by the Inadvertent that a northern california fusion center accessed the city’s system on behalf of federal agencies.
“This council promised our community an audit after one year. Instead, we’ve gotten silenced. We’ve gotten deflection, and along with 27,000 searches by the fusion center, funneling our residents’ data to the federal government. This isn’t a hypothetical civil liberties debate anymore,” she said at a news conference last month.
“The council needs to cancel this contract, not renew it, not study it, but remove it from our communities.”
Lopez did not respond to requests for comment Friday and Monday.
Santa Ana officials aren’t the only ones looking to review their Flock contracts or update residents on their impacts.
In Brea, officials are also expected to receive an update on their integrated crime center and a presentation on their automated license plate readers program at their Tuesday 7 p.m. city council meeting.
That same night, officials in neighboring Fullerton are also slated to discuss automated license plate readers during the 5:30 p.m. city council meeting – including if city council members want to continue using this type of surveillance in the college town.
Meanwhile, Costa Mesa officials this summer decided to keep their Flock contract and called on staff to renegotiate their contract regarding data accessibility and collection after a Costa Mesa police officer used the devices to stalk women, including his wife, an ex-girlfriend and romantic rivals.
Santa Ana Flock Cameras
Councilman David Penaloza, who is running for State Assembly against Lopez, said while the contracts for the license plate readers were approved in May 2025 the cameras weren’t installed until the tail end of September 2025 – pushing back on comments that review is late.
“If things were up and running the day after we approved things, government would be a lot more efficient. But guess what? It’s not,” he said in a Monday phone interview.
“The year mark hasn’t been five months ago. It was recently. It was a couple weeks ago, so I’m happy that we’re now going to have that conversation tomorrow. I’m hoping for a lot of questions that we have being answered, and this is actually how you make real policy.”
Penaloza said it’s valid to have a conversation about ending the contract for the cameras and if there has been security breaches to the system they should “pull the plug” on the contracts.
“But when it’s just again these orgs that their core mission is to just dismantle any type of public safety tool. You have to question that,” he said. “If there is data being shared with the federal agencies that is a concern because that was something that we believed and we hoped would not happen.”
Councilman Johnathan Hernandez said he was in support of ending the contracts for the license plate readers, that the fusion center sharing data from the city’s system to federal agencies was a violation of state law and raised concerns about mass surveillance.
“I’m concerned that there’s this growing practice across this country that Americans are becoming essentially desensitized to living in a mass surveillance police state, and that is not okay,” he said in a Monday phone interview.
“Flock does not make it any safer for us. The police want Flock to mass surveillance the community so that they don’t have to do their job.”
Councilman Ben Vazquez, who is running for reelection, said use of the license plate readers can be abused, calling the system inherently “fascist” for spying on residents.
“I’m worried about what we’re creating across this country, and I’m so happy that other cities are saying no more – to weaken the network but we can’t be part of it either. We can’t be complicit,” he said in a Monday phone interview.
Mayor Valerie Amezcua, Councilmembers Phil Bacerra and Thai Viet Phan did not respond to requests for comment Friday and Monday.
Police Chief Robert Rodriguez did not respond to emailed questions last month about the automated license plate readers and why his department has yet to publicly provide the update on the effectiveness of the cameras.
Rodriguez along with City Manager Alvaro Nuñez and City Spokesman Paul Eakins also did not respond to a follow up email on those questions Thursday.
Instead, Natalie Garcia, a spokeswoman for the department, pointed to the police department’s social media page in response to questions Monday.
Meanwhile, city council candidates shared their own stances on Flock cameras last week, with several voicing opposition to them.
According to Flock’s transparency page, there were nearly 1.3 million unique vehicles detected in the past month but the page does not state how many of those vehicles had been flagged.
The OC Register reported last week that the Santa Ana Police Department used their license plate readers to identify and arrest a woman who ran over her puppy with her minivan.
Fullerton Flock Cameras
Fullerton officials are also expected to discuss whether they want to continue their contract with Flock cameras Tuesday and their license plate reader policy at the request of Councilman Ahmad Zahra.
The college town has 19 Flock cameras that have cost the city nearly a quarter of million dollars since 2021.
According to the city’s policy on the cameras, the department prohibits sharing data with out of state or federal agencies, cameras can only be used for a criminal investigation or routine patrol, all authorized users will receive training on the license plate readers and there are quarterly audits on how its being used.
The cameras in Fullerton have detected over a million unique vehicles in the past month and have detected nearly 6,000 flagged vehicles, according to Flock’s transparency webpage.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org.
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