BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – With the City of Bakersfield gearing up to add more FLOCK cameras to its policing unit, some residents are pushing back against the surveillance technology.
The city currently has about 130 of the cameras deployed and scattered around Bakersfield helping the police force prevent and solve crimes.
But residents are saying the solar-powered cameras can be an invasion of privacy.
The FLOCK cameras – which are products of the American technology company Flock Safety – are high-powered, artificial intelligence-driven license plate readers that take photos of vehicle’s “fingerprints,” like plate numbers, color, state, make, model and even details like bumper stickers, dents or roof racks.
The technology can potentially track a stolen car or a criminal blocks away from where a crime happened.
Ariel Dyer is the co-founder of the Anti-Capitalist Computer Club, a grassroots group focusing on technology and digital privacy in Bakersfield.
Dyer and other members of the group independently requested and obtained dozens of records from the Bakersfield Police Department discussing implementing the cameras, the cost going into them, who approved them and more than one million rows of “raw license plate search data.”
BPD’s records division did deny one of the group’s document requests pertaining to where all 133 FLOCK cameras are located. Dyer said BPD cited “public safety” as a concern.
Dyer, a librarian with Bakersfield College, said she’s been concerned with privacy issues for a while and FLOCK cameras play a role in those worries. She said those privacy concerns were exacerbated by the nationwide ICE raids that occurred last year.
“I realized, wow, this is really crucial to know the landscape and to equip (and) empower people to be able to move through it,” Dyer said.
Dyer and other members of the Anti-Capitalist Computer Club spoke at a city council meeting on Wednesday, advocating for the implementation of FLOCK cameras to be halted or reduced throughout Bakersfield.
The club is specifically working to halt any expansion to the work and end the Flock Safety contract, for the city to publish the camera locations and usage logs, hold public hearing before any contract renewals and ensure no more surveillance technology will be used without public hearings, voter approval and annual audits, according to the group’s website.
Opposition to FLOCK cameras being used in cities has been growing over the past several months.
The surveillance use has been a topic of conversation nationwide and in the pockets of Kern County, too.
In April, the City of Shafter’s City Council approved the expansion of their FLOCK license plate reader system. Residents in Ridgecrest have shown up to city council meetings urging city leadership to oppose the camera in their town.
Out of the many reports Dyer and the club received from the city, she said the city hasn’t been conducting audits on what information the technology collects.
That “is one of the things we’re asking of the city, is to start conducting those, start publishing that information and being transparent,” she told 17 News. “Nationally we’re seeing a lot of news about misuse around this technology, it’s such a powerful and invasive technology.”
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Dyer spoke at the Bakersfield city council meeting on Wednesday. She said the last time she addressed city staff Bakersfield officials said the information captured by FLOCK cameras is not shared with ICE.
But she said because there are no audits being conducted, there isn’t a way to know that for sure.
“If our data sits in Flock’s national network – and that’s not a hypothetical if – it does sit in Flock’s national network, thousands of other police agencies can search it,” Dyer told the council. “Our individual whereabouts can reach ICE without BPD ever choosing to share them.”
She added that the decision to implement FLOCK cameras was not voted on or agreed to by the public.
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“The Anti-Capitalist Computer Club believes in abolishing the use and sharing of surveillance tech by government and private entities, but we also believe in transparency and communication, neither of which have been afforded Bakersfield residents,” Dyer said. “So, we’re asking the city to stop funding a surveillance state that we have not agreed to.”
According to the reports obtained from the city, in September 2025 the city purchased three annual subscriptions for the FLOCK camera system totaling $75,000 – $25,000 fee per year.
Later that month, the city received an invoice for $213,448.72 for a variety of purchases from Flock Safety, including nearly 200 “advance search” and solar kits, FLOCK camera platforms, the video cameras themselves and other supplies from the company.
“You hold the most personally invasive privacy disrespecting information in your hands and you lack the ability or even the inclination to safeguard it currently,” Dyer said to the city council. “I can’t think of a rational reason for that uncritical adoption and maintenance of a technology that I don’t think anyone should have access to.”
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