The Fullerton City Council, having heard from residents leery of losing their privacy to surveillance technology, voted this week to turn off more than a dozen Flock Safety license plate readers for a six-month period.
Fullerton, on Tuesday’s 3-1 vote of the council, became the first city in Orange County to suspend its use of Flock cameras. The panel’s majority favored the moratorium and pledged to host a community meeting on the policing tool while assessing any impacts going dark would have on crime-solving statistics.
“Let’s see how effective they are,” Councilmember Ahmad Zahra said of the cameras. “Let’s see if, in the next six months, we [are] achieving the same results without them or not.”
Fullerton has used automated license plate reader technology since 2007. The city first contracted with Flock five years ago. The surveillance system, which includes 17 stationary and two mobile cameras, does not record audio or video. It does take still photographs of vehicles and their license plates.
Data is stored for 30 days, while backup data takes a week longer before deletion.
In a presentation to the council, Fullerton Police Chief Jon Radus argued the cameras have helped his detectives solve an array of crimes, from burglaries to attempted murder.
“It is simply a tool that provides a lead,” he said. “No arrests are based simply on a photograph.”
Radus added that data gathered by the Flock camera system cannot be shared for federal immigration enforcement under state law. His department also tightened its auditing timeline of the system from annually to quarterly reviews.
Despite his assurances, the discussion in Fullerton came as the surveillance technology has sparked controversy nationwide in cases where officers have accessed Flock camera data to stalk women. In April, a former Costa Mesa police officer pleaded guilty to using Flock data to track his wife, an ex-girlfriend and another person.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also called for a “Get the Flock Out” movement in calling the cameras a “creepy” building block of a mass surveillance state without little to no transparency, oversight or regulation.
In Orange County, activists have sounded calls to cancel Flock contracts amid similar concerns in city halls from Costa Mesa to Santa Ana. Costa Mesa kept its Flock camera system but retooled its data retention and sharing terms.
The Santa Ana City Council, which was orginally expected to discuss the matter at its meeting Tuesday, will instead revisit its own Flock and Motorola Solutions agreements at a future council date.
Oftentimes at bitter odds, a cross-section of Fullerton liberals and libertarians found common cause in opposing Flock cameras. More than a dozen speakers criticized the camera system, with some favoring their removal from the city altogether.
Councilmember Shana Charles wanted to be responsive to the community’s concerns but stopped shy of calling for an immediate contract cancellation.
“I don’t think we should just rip out the cameras right now,” she said. “I do think we should turn them off and we should have a community meeting.”
Fullerton is under contract with Flock through 2028. Radus reported that the city pays $51,000 annually for its 19 cameras.
Councilmember Jamie Valencia sounded the lone voice in favor of keeping the camera system intact without a moratorium.
“I don’t feel comfortable turning off the cameras, because it’s been helping our police officers,” she said.
Valencia later tried to persuade her council colleagues to cut the moratorium down to two or three months, instead.
Councilmember Nick Dunlap proved to be the swing vote for a full six-month pause.
“You start to think about what it means to be an American and to live in a free society, where you have this database with active surveillance taking place and they’re tracking you in different locations,” he said. “The technology is doing one thing today but how will it be positioned in the future and what will that do in terms of surveilling us?”
Councilmembers voted 3-1 for the moratorium with Valencia dissenting and Mayor Fred Jung absent.
At the end of the six-month period, the council will look at crime-solving data trends, work with Flock on audit protocols and review its policies.
Fullerton’s moratorium does not impact Cal State Fullerton, which has 46 Axion license plate reader cameras that are not under the city’s jurisdiction.