{"id":474000,"date":"2026-09-24T08:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474000\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T08:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:06:08","slug":"s-f-democratic-party-votes-to-stand-behind-flock-surveillance-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474000\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. Democratic Party votes to stand behind Flock surveillance cameras"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Francisco Democratic Party on Wednesday voted to continue its support for Flock surveillance cameras, which are in widespread use across the city but have come under scrutiny nationwide<\/a> in recent months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two major resolutions were in front of the party\u2019s 31 members (13 of whom were absent) on Wednesday: One, written by former District 4 supervisor Gordon Mar, called<\/a> for the city to impose increased guardrails for Flock\u2019s automated licence-plate readers, a type of camera that scans license plates and helps law enforcement investigations, and to consider suspension of their contract with the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other, written by committee chair Nancy Tung and District 6 supervisor<\/a> and former police spokesperson Matt Dorsey, asked<\/a> the group to affirm its trust in the city\u2019s existing use of Flock cameras.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the Bay Area, city governments have turned off their Flock cameras and taken steps to cancel<\/a> their contracts, in the wake of reports that these cameras have been repeatedly accessed<\/a> by outside federal and state agencies without local authorization. At Wednesday\u2019s San Francisco democratic committee meeting, a majority voted to reject Mar\u2019s resolution and pass Dorsey\u2019s. Dorsey\u2019s measure got 11 votes in favor, 4 votes abstaining, and only 3 against.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both sides acknowledged that the city\u2019s Flock camera data was illegally accessed<\/a> more than 1.6 million times in 2024 and 2025, with lots of those searches reaching out-of-state agencies like ICE \u2014 and that more recently the SFPD admitted<\/a> around 300 out-of-state illegal searches had happened in the last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Supporters of Mar\u2019s resolution saw threats to the city\u2019s data security. Supporters of Dorsey\u2019s said that they felt the benefits of Flock cameras outweighed the risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got some real concerns about privacy. I\u2019ve got some real concerns about surveillance. But I\u2019ve also got some concerns about crime,\u201d said committee member Patrick Boileau.<\/p>\n

Mar raised another concern: two of the committee\u2019s current members \u2014\u00a0Lily Ho and Trevor Chandler \u2014\u00a0work for Flock. Last month, the San Francisco Standard reported<\/a> that a prior version of Mar\u2019s resolution\u00a0 was removed from the party\u2019s agenda by a subcommittee chaired by Ho.<\/p>\n

Neither Ho and Chandler offered to abstain from voting on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Their committee does not have rules related to conflict-of-interest for issues like this one, Tung, who supported both Ho and Chandler, told Mar. They then proceeded to count both Ho and Chandler\u2019s votes.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Democratic Committee has little formal power. Its resolutions, at best,\u00a0 influence other party members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In February 2027, however, the Board of Supervisors, which includes committee members and Supervisors Connie Chan and Bilal Mahmood, who were absent from the meeting Wednesday, and Dorsey, may decide whether to renew the city\u2019s Flock contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Democratic Party on Wednesday voted to continue its support for Flock surveillance cameras, which are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-474000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}