{"id":474096,"date":"2026-09-24T10:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474096\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T10:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:34:11","slug":"san-jose-pushes-for-tighter-controls-on-flock-camera-data-after-police-officer-abuse-santa-cruz-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474096\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose pushes for tighter controls on Flock camera data after police officer abuse \u2013 Santa Cruz Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2014 After a San Jose police officer was fired earlier this year<\/a> for abusing his access to the city\u2019s Flock automated license-plate reader camera database, city leaders are pushing for tighter controls to curb unauthorized use.<\/p>\n

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Vice Mayor Pam Foley and councilmembers Domingo Candelas and George Casey are seeking City Council approval for controls on the data, including creating policies prohibiting city employees from using personal devices to access ALPR or other law enforcement databases, echoing a directive that Police Chief Paul Joseph implemented at the San Jose Police Department earlier this month after revealing the ex-officer\u2019s breach.<\/p>\n

They are also calling for City Manager Jennifer Maguire to work with police to increase the frequency of random audits of individual database access to more readily flag suspicious searches that lack a legitimate law enforcement purpose or potentially violate city policy, or come from non-department devices. City officials say the police department currently performs seven to 10 random audits of individual officer access each week on top of monthly audits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we had here was a disgusting abuse of power and really a perversion of technology that has been deployed to protect people,\u201d Mahan said in an interview Tuesday. \u201cThat\u2019s why I want to strengthen these elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, the initiative \u2014 set to go before the city\u2019s Rules and Open Government Committee on Sept. 30 \u2014 also advocates for the state Legislature to close a loophole in a law that makes it illegal for officers to access legacy law enforcement databases without a legitimate reason, but currently does not expressly cover newer databases like the ones maintained for camera systems such as Flock, the country\u2019s preeminent ALPR vendor.<\/p>\n

That dovetails with previous statements from Joseph, who voiced disappointment earlier this month that the statutory gap prevented the offending officer from facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n

According to SJPD, the terminated officer\u2019s actions surfaced in February 2025 when a woman reported to police that a man she was accusing of domestic violence implied to her that he was tracking her.<\/p>\n

Knowing that the man\u2019s cousin was a police officer, she reported the interaction to police, who ran her license plate through their Flock database and discovered improper access by the officer. The actions were logged in an audit trail. The cousin was later arrested but not criminally charged.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was appalled that a member of our police force would use the information in such a horrible way,\u201d Foley said. \u201cThat situation could have ended tragically.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former officer, who had worked for SJPD for two years, was fired in April following an internal investigation. The department has referred him to the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training for decertification in order to bar him from getting another police job in the state. Mahan said that still falls short.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there should be criminal charges when you misuse sensitive data like this,\u201d Mahan said. \u201cHe should face more than job loss for abusing his power to protect people, to instead put someone in harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foley said advocating for clear criminal penalties for this kind of data misuse, \u201cof all of these pieces, may be the most important one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bay Area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of immigrant-rights organization SIREN and the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are suing San Jose in Santa Clara County Superior Court, arguing that the current state of unfettered searches<\/a> through the database constitute unconstitutional tracking of law-abiding citizens. They are seeking a court order requiring police agencies to obtain warrants before combing through the data.<\/p>\n

The Virginia-based Institute for Justice is similarly suing the city, in federal court, on behalf of residents who have objected to being surveilled<\/a> without any meaningful judicial oversight. The organization established a national database charting problems including unauthorized access by officers using the tracking data to stalk former romantic partners, and instances of people being errantly stopped and held at gunpoint because of incorrect plate reads.<\/p>\n

Adam Schwartz, EFF\u2019s director of privacy litigation, said Wednesday that the energy being spent on shorter reins misses the larger concerns about the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cALPRs are a threat to our privacy and safety. This threat cannot be solved by department protocols set by city officials,\u201d Schwartz said in a statement to this news organization. \u201cAt minimum, officers should be required to get a warrant issued by a judge before searching the stored location data. Even better, cities should not use ALPRs at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

SIREN echoed that stance, saying in a statement that the officer scandal is \u201ca stark reminder that we need to get surveillance out of our neighborhoods and cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot accept the false premise that mass surveillance brings safety when the reality is that it creates new threats to privacy, civil liberties, and community trust,\u201d the organization said.<\/p>\n

In San Jose, there are nearly 500 license-plate readers installed. The systems have strong support from Mahan and the City Council, who favor robust controls on the technology but extoll its alleged crime-fighting benefits that they credit with milestones like a years-long 100% annual homicide solve rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think our job is to regulate and strike the right balance between the public safety value of the tools we give officers and the public risk, whether that risk is privacy or otherwise,\u201d Mahan said. \u201cI think it would be a mistake to make this a binary choice between using or not using such a powerful tool that has helped us solve every homicide nearly four years running, solve kidnappings, and generally reduce crime in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, in step with Chief Joseph, the City Council unanimously approved a clawback policy<\/a> that reduced SJPD\u2019s retention for plate data from one year to 30 days, and prohibits cameras from recording vehicles entering and leaving houses of worship, reproductive health clinics, or consulate offices.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s position contrasts with other Bay Area jurisdictions \u2013 such as Mountain View<\/a>, El Cerrito<\/a>, Santa Cruz<\/a>, Cupertino<\/a>, Saratoga and Stanford University<\/a> \u2013 that have either dropped or severely restricted use of Flock cameras, often in response to revelations that federal authorities accessed camera data in possible violation of California law,<\/a> isolating state police agencies from immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

San Jose has faced similar accusations<\/a> with its Flock database. Foley said she is sensitive to those concerns, but believes the city can forge an agreeable path.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the provisions that we\u2019re putting in place will, over time, bring back the trust of the community,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want this information to get into the hands of federal law enforcement or into the hands of ICE, nor do we want it to get into the hands of police officers who will be misusing the information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 After a San Jose police officer was fired earlier this year for abusing his access…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[387,7,8,1471,723,138,181,23,100,266,88,90,89,198,1970],"class_list":["post-474096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-business","tag-california","tag-california-news","tag-central-coast","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northern-california","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474096","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=474096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}