{"id":492655,"date":"2026-10-11T13:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T13:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492655\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T13:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T13:58:12","slug":"flock-camera-debate-heats-up-district-2-council-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492655\/","title":{"rendered":"Flock camera debate heats up District 2 council race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something that haunts District 2 Councilmember Charlene Wang is the story of local chef and supporter Eric Rivera, who was imprisoned for five years for a crime he didn\u2019t commit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said to me, if there had been cameras, he wouldn\u2019t have been wrongfully put away,\u201d Wang said.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s other innocent people in prison where if the evidence was there, the right person would have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Debates around the use of Flock Automatic License Plate Readers have animated discussions in cities around the country, and it has divided residents in City Council District 2, which Wang has represented since winning in a special election last year. <\/p>\n

She is facing a challenge in November from Nate Adams, a community organizer and former co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s East Bay chapter. They are on opposite sides of the Flock debate, with Wang supporting Oakland\u2019s use of the technology, with safeguards, and Adams pledging to eliminate it.<\/p>\n

Wang said that while she takes the community\u2019s concerns about privacy and how Flock uses data seriously, she sees advantages to the program. <\/p>\n

\u201cI get calls about people\u2019s vehicles still getting stolen, and the automated license plate reader technology is used to literally recover stolen vehicles in real time,\u201d she said. \u201cI certainly don\u2019t want to see undocumented communities or any communities harmed by this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams said he shares residents\u2019 safety concerns, but believes Flock cameras don\u2019t actually make people safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if your answer is Flock, it\u2019s not because you actually believe that\u2019s the solution, it\u2019s because of a lack of imagination,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIf we care about keeping communities safe, then we cannot be having contracts with companies like Flock that are actively working with ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakland data shared<\/p>\n

Flock cameras capture images of license plates and use proprietary technology to turn the plate image into searchable text.\u00a0That data is checked against a \u201chot list\u201d of cars that police may be looking for. The system notifies police if there\u2019s a hit. Data can be stored for up to 30 days.<\/p>\n

According to Flock data<\/a>, Oakland has 293 cameras that have captured over 1.6 million unique plates and 100,000 \u201chot list\u201d hits in the past month.<\/p>\n

The cameras were initially supplied by the state under contract with the California Highway Patrol<\/a>. In December, Wang and six other council members voted for a two-year, $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety. The city is still working to finalize and sign the contract.<\/p>\n

Concerns rose over the use of city data after the San Francisco Standard<\/a> reported in November that other California police departments has tapped into data from Oakland\u2019s system hundreds of times, including to assist the FBI and possibly Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response, the Oakland Police Department said it does not directly share data with federal agencies.<\/p>\n

\"OaklandCharlene Wang (Courtesy of her campaign)<\/p>\n

\"OutdoorNate Adams (Courtesy of his campaign)<\/p>\n

At a canvassing event on Sept. 27, protesters interrupted Wang as she was giving a speech to motivate her volunteers. Filming with their cellphones, they yelled questions at Wang, asking how she was going to protect data collected by Flock.<\/p>\n

Wang offered a conversation, spending about 20 minutes talking to a few of the protesters.<\/p>\n

In her short time on City Council, Wang, a Department of Transportation appointee in the Biden administration, has been one of its most prolific policy makers. Supporters at her canvassing event said they appreciate her pragmatic approach to governance, including her vote for Flock cameras. Among the legislation she has written was a safeguard to protect the data collected by the cameras from being shared and misused by Oakland\u2019s Police Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Andemeskel, a Wang supporter who lives in the San Antonio neighborhood, said, \u201cIf we don\u2019t have enough police officers, we need to make that up somehow, and cameras can make that up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AboutShowing support for Charlene Wang <\/p>\n

\"AJesse Rosemoore canvassing for Nate Adams (Eric Urbach)<\/p>\n

Adams said that if elected, he would try to terminate the Flock contract and work with the council to fully implement crime prevention programs that are already on the books, including the community violence reduction plan passed by voters in 2024. The measure increased parcel and parking lot taxes to hire more emergency service personnel and fund community violence prevention programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a canvassing event for Adams on Sept. 23, Jesse Rosemoore said Adams\u2019 stance on Flock was the primary reason for his support. <\/p>\n

\u201cI reached out to Charlene Wang\u2019s office in good faith with serious concerns about Flock and ICE\u2019s access to the data it collects,\u201d he said. \u201cHer chief of staff gaslit me, and her office sidelined and ignored the concerns of the community and proceeded to advocate for this clearly unsafe technology.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rosemoore has knocked on hundreds of doors to share Adams\u2019 vision for Oakland and his mission to remove the cameras from the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During one such session in the Lakeshore neighborhood last month, he sold Logan Caraway on Adams after mentioning his desire to eliminate Flock from the city. Caraway said he\u2019s concerned about increased surveillance in the city and was especially excited about Adams\u2019 history of involvement with the DSA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After dropping off food at Wang\u2019s event, Rivera, the man who believes surveillance cameras may have proven his innocence sooner, headed straight for the council member to give her a hug.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlene has always been there for me,\u201d Rivera said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When he sees a pile of garbage on his street corner, he said, \u201cI want to know who did it, and when I don\u2019t have a camera that\u00a0 gives me an indication of who did that so we can make them pay for it, then I\u2019m pissed.\u201d <\/p>\n

(Top photo: The District 2 candidates are pictured at a September debate, with moderator Precious Green standing between them, by Yuan-Hsi Chou.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Something that haunts District 2 Councilmember Charlene Wang is the story of local chef and supporter Eric Rivera,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12497,143,5365,191862,145,144],"class_list":["post-492655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-district-2","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-city-council","tag-oakland-election","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492655","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=492655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}