GUEST OPINION
A Flock camera in Pasadena (Photo – DeFlock Pasadena)
As cities across California cancel contracts with Flock Safety over mounting privacy and immigration-enforcement concerns, Pasadena officials are preparing to debate whether the city should continue operating one of the region’s largest automated license plate reader networks.
By Bill Kelly & Nicholas Rabb
This comes as dozens of cities across the nation, including Santa Cruz and South Pasadena, are cancelling their Flock contracts in response to growing concerns about the misuse of Flock data.
ICE has accessed Flock databases in California despite sanctuary state prohibitions. Police have used the Flock network to personally stalk people, to track down women traveling from states where abortions are banned, to surveil No Kings protesters, and to surveil children in public spaces.
Since September of 2023, the Pasadena Police Department (PPD) has purchased and installed 61 Flock cameras at a cost nearing $1 million, and it has obtained funds to install 11 additional cameras. Each month, these cameras capture an average of a million images of Pasadena drivers..
According to the Pasadena-based community organization Grupo Auto Defensa, “There’s already an over-representation of Flock cameras in District 3 and 5 where ICE has ripped several families apart. There are no trustworthy safeguards around how this data is used or shared, especially with outside agencies like ICE.”
Throughout 2025, Flock was the subject of scandals in California. Last summer, 404 Media found that 71 California police agencies were sharing ALPR data with ICE despite state law SB 54 prohibiting sharing. In response, Flock disabled out-of-state agencies’ ability to search California agencies’ Flock Network databases. PPD subsequently began citing these safeguards to argue resident privacy is secured.
These assurances are misleading. A 2019 California state audit found PPD failed to protect the privacy of California drivers; reporting found PPD historically shared ALPR information with ICE. Currently, PPD shares ALPR data with the Northern Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a fusion center that shares data between law enforcement agencies at the regional, state and federal level. Moreover, the ACLU of Massachusetts found that Flock’s default user agreement with police “gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for ‘investigative purposes,’ even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers.”
“The collection and retention of massive amounts of surveillance data on the movements of residents who are not criminal suspects is an unjustified invasion of our privacy,” said Ed Washatka, retired member of the Coalition for Increased Civilian Oversight of the Pasadena Police (CICOPP) and Pasadenans Organizing for Progress (POP).
During a March community meeting on the collaboration between PPD and ICE, community members raised concerns about Flock. The Public Safety Committee meeting on April 15 received dozens of resident emails advocating for the cancellation of Flock — a meeting which was cancelled at the last minute.
Map of Flock cameras in Pasadena (Photo – Deflock.org)
Despite all this, Pasadena continues to use Flock ALPRs throughout the City. In response, residents have launched DeFlock Pasadena, a campaign under the community organization Pasadena Privacy, to fight back against Flock ALPRs and other surveillance technologies.
DeFlock Pasadena demands that the City:
- Disable and remove all Flock Safety’s ALPRs in and around Pasadena;
- Commit to canceling the contract with Flock;
- Not replace Flock with another ALPR vendor; and
- Commit to using the money instead to fund community-based safety initiatives
The question before Pasadena is no longer whether this technology works. It is whether mass surveillance of ordinary residents is a price the city is willing to accept.
> To write to the city council and to receive updates concerning Flock scan the QR code above or go to this link.
Bill Kelley is a journalist who helped push South Pasadena to cancel one of its two Flock contracts, reduce the number of ALPR cameras in use, and strengthen transparency and data-access policies governing the police department’s remaining ALPR program.
Nicholas Rabb is a postdoctoral researcher at Cal State LA studying the impacts of AI on education. He earned a PhD in computer and cognitive science from Tufts University and is an organizer with DeFlock Pasadena.
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