IN A DEVELOPMENT that caught some by surprise, the Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee has failed to pass the Oakland Police Department’s proposal to expand and consolidate its network of surveillance cameras.
The deadlocked motion, which required a majority to pass, could only secure two yes votes from Councilmembers Ken Houston and Charlene Wang, while Councilmembers Carroll Fife and Rowena Brown voted no on Tuesday.
The $2.25 million proposal has drawn strong support and fierce opposition from citizen groups. Supporters include business owners and residents who believe the expansion will help reduce crime and protect the city’s businesses. Meanwhile, activists and privacy watchdog organizations oppose the proposal, concerned that federal agencies could access and use the data to target certain individuals or groups.
In October, Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission voted 4-2 against the proposal because of the associated privacy risk. Soon after, two members of the Privacy Advisory Commission, Brian Hofer and Sean Everhart resigned, citing the Commission and City Council’s increasing emphasis on mass surveillance as the reason.
With the Privacy Advisory Commission’s non-endorsement and the Public Safety Committee’s failure to pass the motion, the divisive proposal is expected to be reintroduced in a City Council meeting next month, likely with amendments.
The proposal
OPD’s proposal has four main components, the first being automated license plate reader cameras. These cameras record license plate numbers, and sometimes the make and appearance of vehicles, and store the data for law enforcement agencies to use in criminal investigations. Oakland started using these cameras — also called Flock cameras after manufacturer Flock Safety — in 2024 and currently operates 290 of them. As things stand, these cameras are owned by the California Highway Patrol, which has a contract with Flock Safety, and OPD has a memorandum of understanding to operate and use these cameras.
Now, as CHP’s contract with Flock Safety is coming to an end, OPD wants to enter into a two-year contract of its own with Flock Safety to govern the use of the Flock cameras.
The second component is the acquisition of 40 new pan-tilt-zoom cameras, which will be installed in areas like downtown Oakland, Chinatown and Jack London Square. These cameras will not record license plate numbers, but the OPD can use their footage in conjunction with Flock camera data to assist in investigations.
The third major component is the integration of privately owned security cameras into the OPD surveillance network. Under this arrangement, residents and business owners can volunteer their Ring and CCTV camera feeds to OPD, which can then access real-time feeds if required in investigations. While OPD can access the feeds, the business owners will retain ownership of the cameras and the footage.
The fourth and most controversial component is the consolidation of data collected from all three components into a cloud database called Flock Operating System for a period of 30 days. The Flock OS database will be maintained for OPD by Flock Safety.
Activists are worried that federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection might access this database to track and target vulnerable individuals like immigrants, and out-of-state individuals seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care in California. On the other hand, OPD sees the consolidation as a step towards increased public safety and streamlining of its criminal investigations.
The case for expansion
According to a presentation shared by the OPD, the number of carjackings has gone from 40 a month before July 2024, to 24 a month since the installation of the Flock cameras. Similarly, the number of homicides dropped from 104 in 2023 to 55 in 2025. A press release issued by Flock Safety says that the deployment of their cameras in Oakland contributed to an 11% increase in violent-crime clearance rates between August 2024 and February 2025.
Interventions like the Ceasefire program, which relies on effectively identifying and providing resources to individuals involved in violence, might also be contributing to the dip in violent crimes, but nonetheless, OPD believes that Flock cameras are an effective deterrent for crime in the city, especially carjackings.
“How we are measuring success is basically a change in behavior,” said Oakland Police Lt. Gabriel Urquiza. “So if we’re seeing less carjackings — and being that that was what we were directly targeting with this technology — we believe that is the actual measure of its success.”
While activists are concerned about the consolidation of bulk surveillance data in one database, Urquiza explained that OPD chose Flock over other manufacturers because of the integrated system; to them, FlockOS is not a bug, it’s a feature.
OPD has found support from groups like the Coalition for Community Engagement, a group of residents, business owners, and community organizations. The group’s founder Edward Escobar pointed out that the expansion is even more important given that OPD is currently understaffed. A study released by the City Council in April recommended that OPD requires a baseline of 877 sworn officers, but a presentation shared by OPD revealed that there are only 509 sworn officers currently.
“They need help, and the only way we see help for them right now is Flock cameras,” said Escobar when speaking at a demonstration outside City Hall on Oct. 28. “We need to get out ahead of this crime wave, so we don’t have the need for federal intervention.”
Privacy concerns; Flock Safety’s checkered record
The flip side of the purported crime-deterring benefits of the technology are the concerns around who has access to the data and what it might be used for. California state law and Oakland city law prohibit OPD from sharing license plate reader data with federal agencies. However, OPD shares its Flock camera data with 80 other California law enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Patrol.
In July, a Bay Area news organization reported that OPD data was used to fulfill information requests by the FBI as well as ICE. Urquiza with OPD called the report “either misleading, or just patently false,” and clarified that a CHP officer — who lawfully had access to the data — had fulfilled the information request in contravention to state law.
“My understanding is that the CHP has handled that situation, and that the officer has been disciplined. We haven’t seen something like that ever since,” said Urquiza. “There has never been any direct sharing between the OPD and any immigration enforcement agency.”
He also noted that OPD is screening the local law enforcement agencies that it shares its data with to minimize breaches.
But the greater threat is Flock Safety, said Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director for Oakland Privacy, a citizen’s coalition that focuses on privacy issues and safeguards surrounding surveillance.
She said that the Atlanta-based security company has a checkered track record when it comes to protecting license plate reader camera data from federal agencies.
Urquiza emphasized that the OPD’s contract with Flock Safety would automatically terminate if the firm signed a data-sharing contract with any federal agency, but Rosenberg is not convinced that Flock Safety can be trusted.
“The track record is looking worse and worse,” she said. “I don’t think anyone can say that things won’t get to federal immigration enforcement. They clearly can, they clearly have, and they clearly might again.”
‘A temporary Band-Aid’
Despite her reservations — and the Privacy Advisory Commission’s recommendation — Rosenberg had expected the Public Safety Committee to approve the motion because of the business community’s support for it.
“I think there’s a little bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome in the sense that crime rates are actually going down in Oakland substantially, but there is still a kind of leftover feeling of having gone through something really difficult [the pandemic] and wanting everything to be done to make the problem better,” she said.
Houston, District 7 councilmember and member of the Public Safety committee, said in an interview before Tuesday’s meeting that he views the expansion as a “temporary Band-Aid” and is more interested in finding more permanent solutions. But he said that he would vote in favor of the proposal because his constituents want it.
Let’s try it out for 24 months as a Band-Aid, and if the bleeding stops, we can remove it.
Councilmember Ken Houston
“I spoke to a diverse group of individuals: business owners, residents, from the hills to the flats, and they want it. It’s because they don’t see the change happening fast enough, so they want to put the Band-Aids on it, which I understand,” he said. “Let’s try it out for 24 months as a Band-Aid, and if the bleeding stops, we can remove it.”
Houston confirmed Wednesday that he intends to reintroduce an amended version of the proposal in the full City Council meeting on Dec. 16.
Unlike Houston, Rosenberg thinks that the expansion will instead open the doors further for other forms of mass surveillance.
Urquiza also confirmed that OPD is not looking at this as a two-year pilot but will continually assess the city’s surveillance technology needs in that period if the proposal goes through. Down the line, he said that OPD is also considering the integration of drone cameras and drone first-responder systems into FlockOS.
An OPD memo from 2020 states that less than 0.1% of the license plates scanned by license plate readers in Oakland were matched with vehicles of interest in investigations. Then why, Rosenberg asks, does the city need to capture so much bulk surveillance data and store it in a cloud database for 30 days?
“The federal government is hunting people, plain and simple,” she said. “We know that Flock has been screwing up, so this not when you throw open the door and say, ‘Hey, Flock, let’s do more business.’”