|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Redwood City police are reviewing their use of automated license plate readers after other neighboring departments in Menlo Park and Mountain View acknowledged that outside agencies had unauthorized access to their systems.
Unlike those cities, the Redwood City Police Department has not disclosed any improper data sharing. In a statement released on Feb. 13, the department said that it operates under state and local safeguards. The city’s Communications Manager Nick Mathiowdis said Tuesday that the city has “seen no evidence of unauthorized law enforcement agencies accessing Redwood City’s ALPR technology.”
In Menlo Park, police acknowledged that agencies in Houston and Sauk Village, Illinois, conducted tens of thousands of searches of the city’s license plate data, a violation of state law. In Mountain View, police discovered that “national” and “statewide” lookup settings allowed hundreds of agencies to search its data for more than a year. Police Chief Mike Canfield announced on Feb. 2 that all of the city’s license plate cameras would be dismantled immediately.
According to the city’s ALPR policy, license plate reader data may not be shared with out-of-state or federal agencies without a court order or warrant issued by a California court.
State law prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration enforcement. The California Attorney General’s Office said license plate reader data cannot be shared with federal or out-of-state agencies, and that it must be deleted after 30 days, except for use as criminal evidence.
To date, Redwood City has 25 active license plate readers and other cameras scattered around the city, even though the ALPR Transparency Portal lists 26, including one duplicate that city staff is working to remove. RCPD has conducted 367 searches using these devices in the last 30 days. In these searches, nearly 686,000 vehicles were detected, though fewer than 1% were hot-list hits.
According to Redwood City’s ALPR policy, immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment, intimidation, personal use, and use based solely on a protected class like race, sex and religion are prohibited. The policy also states that facial recognition, people, gender and race are not detected by these devices.
Redwood City’s contract with Flock expires in September 2026. This timing, the RCPD stated in the Feb. 13 press release, “uniquely positions the city” to gather feedback from the Police Advisory Committee and other stakeholders before reconfirming vendors and technology.
The Redwood City Council approved the $243,750 contract with Flock Safety in September 2023 to install 25 automated license plate readers around Redwood City. All but one council member voted for the cameras; Council member Chris Sturken was the lone dissenter, alleging that the ALPR policy lacked adequate privacy safeguards.
The city’s approval of automated license plate readers followed a presentation by the Redwood City Police Department that revealed that only about a third of the 426 violent crimes from 2020 to 2021 were solved by police due to a lack of evidence and investigative leads, with the majority of cases involving vehicles.
Since then, the police department said this month that ALPR has “proven to be a valuable investigative tool” in helping officers recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people, and identify criminal suspects. On Thursday evening, Flock cameras aided a San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputy in identifying the vehicle driven by a 19-year-old attempted murder suspect and two minors, charged with similar crimes.
Redwood City was among a growing list of San Mateo County cities to install the readers, bringing the total to around 300 cameras across the county in 2023. This number has fallen to 123 readers as of Monday.
This news organization filed a public records request with the Redwood City Police Department on Feb. 18 to provide a log of all ALPR queries made by outside organizations. The department’s results were not available in time for publication.
