Ark audit: Federally linked license-plate searches continue after Tiburon safeguards

Thirty-four outside police agencies ran 8,542 searches of Tiburon’s license-plate cameras for federally entangled investigations in the seven months after the town rewrote its plate-reader policy in December and began requiring monthly audits, a new Ark audit has found.

 More than 4,800 came on or after Feb. 3, when Police Chief Michelle Jean told The Ark the town had worked with vendor Flock Safety “to allow external searches only for valid reasons” — language the town repeated in a public statement March 9. Every one of the 34 agencies ran at least one of those searches. Twenty-six still have access to the cameras, and eight of those ran searches flagged by The Ark as federally entangled as recently as July.