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The Redwood City Council will discuss San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury findings on the city’s automated license plate reader Monday, Oct. 5, ahead of a potential new contract to continue the program.
City Manager Patrick Heisinger announced at the Sept. 28 council meeting that the city will also hold two community forums in October about Redwood City’s license plate reader program.
“The public seems much more aware of the devil’s bargain being struck,” said Redwood City resident Lawrence Huang at the Sept. 28 meeting. “You have a moral obligation to solicit public input and incorporate it into the response.”
Seven vendors submitted proposals to the city: Flock Safety, Assure MSP, Axon, IREX, Motorola Solutions, SoundThinking and Ubicquia, according to the city’s communications contractor Jeanne Sullivan Billeci.
Civil Grand Jury findings
The grand jury report, released Aug. 3, reviewed all 17 county law enforcement agencies operating ALPR systems. The report found that while “meaningful progress” has been made in eliminating out-of-state data sharing, agencies still have “continuing deficiencies in policy maintenance, audit practices and oversight of in-state data-sharing relationships,” a press advisory from the jury said.
In Redwood City, the report called the city’s ALPR policy “outdated” because it still described its operations as being mediated by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. The San Francisco Police Department said in June that NCRIC conducted improper data searches on behalf of agencies outside California, according to a police press release.
The grand jury also said that the Redwood City Police Department shared ALPR information with private university security entities without establishing that the receiving entities qualified as public agencies under state law.
In August, Police Chief Kristina Bell said the Redwood City Police Department found in its ALPR audit that city license plate reader data was improperly searched at least 99 times by four entities, namely Grand Oaks Homeowners Association, Flock Real-Time Crime Center, Veterans Affairs Loma Linda Healthcare police and Beverly Hills Unified School District police.
Flock Safety, the surveillance company that provides the license plate reader technology, acknowledged in March that some networks across California were “inadvertently accessible” to out-of-state agencies, potentially violating state law. The company said it “takes full accountability for this situation” and has since added settings, logging and standardized data-sharing controls.
The grand jury report also found that the audit reports produced by ALPR operators, including Redwood City, were “insufficient to substantiate compliance with applicable California law and the operator’s published ALPR policy.”
Among the recommendations outlined in the report are that the department incorporate contractual language requiring vendor compliance with applicable California laws and prohibiting vendors from disclosing ALPR data to unauthorized third parties.
Calls for a public forum
The city will host two community outreach meetings on Wednesday, Oct. 7, and Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Fair Oaks Community Center, 2600 Middlefield Road. Sign up to attend here.
Fourteen public commenters at the Sept. 28 meeting raised concerns about the city’s use of automated license plate reader technology, including privacy, immigrant safety and civil liberties concerns. Many speakers cited the civil grand jury report and urged the city to hold town halls to gather more community input before proceeding with a new plate reader vendor contract.
The contract with Flock will expire in November, according to Bell’s presentation before the Police Advisory Committee in August and a subsequent confirmation to the Pulse by Billeci. However, when the council approved ALPR technology at its Sept. 11, 2023 meeting, the staff report said the vendor contract would run until September 2026.
The city has notified Flock that it will not automatically renew the agreement, though the company was eligible to submit a new proposal and did, according to Billeci. Initially, Bell and Billeci said the names of the vendors who submitted proposals were not public while the city conducted its internal review process. The city later released the names after the Pulse asked it to identify the legal basis for withholding them.
“Redwood City is committed to protecting public safety while upholding the privacy of residents,” Mayor Elmer Martínez Saballos said. “These additional community meetings are ways we aim to broaden participation and give community members we haven’t heard from yet a chance to learn and weigh in.”
Redwood City to review license plate reader program report, host public forums October 5, 2026 11:34 am
