Response letters due to a San Mateo County civil grand jury by Nov. 2 show cities cutting off hundreds of outside agencies and private university police, while some dispute the jury’s account and put off the contract changes it sought.
By Staff Reporter
On July 24, ten days before a San Mateo County civil grand jury published its review of police license plate cameras, the Pacifica Police Department, on its own initiative, cut the number of law enforcement agencies that could search its camera data from 283 to 80. Every agency that kept access is in the nine-county Bay Area, according to the response the city prepared for the court this month.
Pacifica is not alone. With formal answers due by Nov. 2, the Inquirer reviewed the grand jury’s report, the response letters and staff reports that cities have posted, and coverage of the council meetings where they were approved. Together they show that across the Peninsula, cities that once let hundreds of agencies search their data have been shrinking those networks, cutting off private university police departments and rewriting policies that the jury found out of date. They also show cities disputing parts of the jury’s account of what they had turned over, and putting off until future contract renewals the vendor protections the jury recommended. One of those renewals is not due until 2028.
The report, “Is Our Flock of ALPR Cameras Properly Tended?”, was released Aug. 3. It examined the automated license plate reader programs run by police across the county, where more than 580 cameras were operating as of March 30, nearly all supplied by Flock Safety. The jury, a panel of 19 residents, requested formal responses from 20 city and town councils and from Sheriff Ken Binder. Under state law, each finding must be accepted or disputed, and each recommendation must be carried out, scheduled, studied or rejected with an explanation.
The stakes reach well beyond the Peninsula. Each camera photographs passing plates and uploads a time- and location-stamped record to a cloud database that other agencies can be allowed to search. California law permits sharing only with other California public agencies. Immigration enforcement is especially sensitive, because the state’s sanctuary law restricts the use of local resources for it. The question of who can see these records has drawn rows of public speakers to council meetings from Half Moon Bay to Redwood City.
What the jury found
The jury praised real progress. It found no San Mateo County agency sharing data with out-of-state entities as of December 2025, largely because Flock disabled nationwide sharing in early 2025 and blocked new out-of-state connections that June. In a press advisory, it singled out Atherton, Belmont, Pacifica and Woodside for strong transparency and audit practices.
But the jury concluded that the county’s operators “continue to have many of the same operational deficiencies” identified by a 2020 state audit of four agencies elsewhere in California, including the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. Its central warning was structural: “compliance with California law depends not on system-enforced restrictions, but on how individual agencies configure and manage their networks.”
The Inquirer tallied the jury’s agency-by-agency tables. Among the findings:
Wide networks. Sharing ranged from three agencies in Woodside to more than 300 in several cities. Of the 16 operators for which the jury had sharing data as of April 13, 11 were sharing with more than 240 agencies. San Bruno had 335 relationships and Burlingame 357.
Private university police. Twelve of those 16 operators were sharing data with the security departments of Stanford University, the University of the Pacific or both. The jury said the records did not show that those private departments qualify as the “public agency” the law requires.
Contracts. Of 14 Flock contracts the jury reviewed, only Colma’s included an addendum binding the company to California’s plate reader laws. The jury directed that finding to 20 of its 21 respondents.
Audits. Of the 17 operators it rated, the jury judged seven audit programs strong, four partial and two weak. Four produced no audit reports. Only five published their audits or presented them in public meetings. Five operators’ stated data-retention periods did not match what their Flock settings or contracts showed, and the Sheriff’s Office policy stated no retention period at all.
Vague search reasons. In one agency’s data, 13.1 percent of 2025 searches by outside agencies listed only “Investigation” as the reason.
The jury also flagged a risk that audit logs cannot easily detect, which it called “side-sharing”: a California officer running a search on behalf of a federal or out-of-state agency and passing along the results. Because Flock’s logs record only which agency ran a query, the report said, “there is no direct way to determine whether the results were subsequently provided to an unauthorized party.”
That risk has already surfaced nearby. In June, the San Francisco Police Department disclosed that analysts working through regional intelligence networks had searched its data on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies. Menlo Park police later found that roughly 700 of 214,147 searches by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center had violated city policy, involving federal agencies investigating violent crimes, fugitives, human trafficking and crimes against children, The Almanac reported. A department spokeswoman said the audit found no searches tied to immigration enforcement. In Redwood City, Police Chief Kristina Bell disclosed in August that four entities, among them a homeowners association and Flock’s own real-time crime center, had improperly searched city data at least 99 times, according to the Redwood City Pulse.
What the cities are saying
Burlingame’s council took up its response on Sept. 21, among the earliest in the county. The response letter, from Mayor Michael Brownrigg, agrees with five findings. It partly disputes two. The jury had listed Burlingame’s audit reports and contract as “not provided,” but the city wrote that it had emailed its policy and Flock agreement to the jury on Jan. 5 and, later that week, “hand-delivered a USB drive” of audit data to the jury’s offices. It removed Stanford’s and the University of the Pacific’s public safety departments from its network and limited sharing to agencies in the nine Bay Area counties. It also created a form on which any agency seeking access must certify, among other things, that the data will not be used for immigration enforcement. On contract language, the letter says the city will act “at the next contract renewal with Flock in July 2028.”
Pacifica’s letter, prepared for City Manager Sean Charpentier’s signature and placed before the council on Oct. 12, agrees with three findings and partly disputes the fourth. The jury had found Pacifica’s audits insufficient, and the city pointed out that the jury’s own matrix rated those audits “Brief, but strong.” The city also wrote that its police chief had emailed its Flock contract to the jury “on February 11, 2026, the day it was requested,” though the report lists it as not provided. Pacifica says it ended sharing with the two university departments on May 3, after concluding that “a private university’s public safety department is not a public agency.” Its revised policy, effective Sept. 8, limits routine sharing to Bay Area agencies, allows 30-day, case-specific access elsewhere in California and requires a quarterly review of every relationship. The first audit under the new standard is to be published by Oct. 31. The city’s Flock agreement expires Dec. 24, and the city says the required legal terms will be in any renewal.
Redwood City’s council approved a response on Oct. 5 that agrees with all seven findings directed to it, the Pulse reported. Council member Chris Sturken voted no, arguing that the city should wait for community forums scheduled that month. According to the letter, as the Pulse described it, the city revised its policy on Sept. 18, ended data sharing with Stanford’s public safety department on Aug. 10 and began publishing annual reports on Sept. 30. The city’s accounts of its Flock contract have not been consistent. The response says it expires Oct. 31, while officials earlier said November, and a 2023 staff report said September 2026. Seven vendors, including Flock, bid to replace it. Asked about an independent audit, Chief Bell told the council, “Absolutely — if it’s affordable. Those are expensive,” and cited the security risk of giving an outside party access to the database.
Elsewhere, Colma’s council had its response on its Oct. 14 agenda, Belmont’s public safety committee was scheduled to review a draft on Oct. 7, and San Mateo’s council adopted its response on Oct. 5 while approving a one-year trial of a competing Axon system, according to a Citizen Portal summary of that meeting. Menlo Park did not wait for a formal response. On July 9 it revoked all of its existing sharing agreements, which had covered 242 California agencies, and by late August only five agencies had signed the city’s new terms and regained access.
Half Moon Bay walks away
Half Moon Bay went further. Its two-year pilot of 16 Flock cameras, run by the Sheriff’s Office, will end Oct. 28. A council majority voiced opposition to renewing it at a September study session, though no formal vote was taken, Coastside News reported. The cameras recorded more than 15 million plates and sheriff’s personnel ran more than 42,000 queries of the data, the paper reported. According to the city’s annual report, the technology generated 17 investigative leads, aided in the recovery of three stolen vehicles and contributed to the apprehension of 13 suspects. The paper reported that 314 California agencies were authorized to search the city’s data, and that the quarterly reports owed to the council during the first year were never delivered. City Manager Matthew Chidester took responsibility for that lapse.
The investigators who argued for keeping the cameras pointed to specific Coastside cases. Sgt. Donald Burnett said that in two past homicide investigations, “I can’t help but think we would have developed a lead faster if we had the technology available at those locations.” Council member Paul Nagengast was unpersuaded: “Trust is earned. As far as I’m concerned, Flock has lost all trust.”
The county’s largest operator
The Sheriff’s Office operates 109 cameras, the most of any agency in the county. They cover unincorporated areas and the cities that contract for its police services: Millbrae, San Carlos and Portola Valley. It also runs the Half Moon Bay and Woodside cameras under those towns’ contracts. The jury’s table notes that the office reduced its sharing in February to agencies in adjacent counties. The same table lists 300 sharing relationships as of April 13, including the two university departments. The jury rated its audits “partial” and found that its policy stated no retention period.
After the report came out, a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told The San Mateo Record that the office maintains a strict policy, with compliance verified through periodic internal audits. As an elected officer, the sheriff faced a 60-day response deadline under the law the jury cited, which fell in early October. The Inquirer could not locate a published response. The court’s grand jury webpage does not post responses, and an independent tracker, CivilGrandJury.org, lists the sheriff’s response as overdue, a status the Inquirer could not independently confirm.
The company and the state
Flock, which the jury credited with tightening its platform, has acknowledged mistakes. In a company statement, it said some California networks had been “inadvertently accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies for a period of time” in 2025 and that it “takes full accountability.” It said California agencies can no longer share data out of state or with federal agencies, that immigration-related searches are automatically blocked in California and that it has no contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “In 2025, it became clear that technology providers must play a more active role in ensuring consistent compliance across jurisdictions,” said Dan Haley, the company’s chief legal officer.
Sacramento has left the rules largely where they were set in 2015. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a 2025 bill, SB 274, writing that it did “not strike the delicate balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring public safety.” This year’s successor, SB 1013 by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, passed the Senate. It would have required plate data to be archived after 60 days and searched after that only with a warrant, required new vendor contracts to block default access to national databases and ordered random audits by the state Justice Department. The bill died on the last night of session without an Assembly floor vote, CapRadio reported. “We were concerned that this bill was going to limit the utility of ALPR data to solve crimes, find missing persons, exonerate innocent individuals,” Cory Salzillo of the California State Sheriffs’ Association told CalMatters. Cervantes said in a statement that she would keep pressing the issue next year.
Enforcement has fallen mainly to Attorney General Rob Bonta. His office has contacted 18 agencies about possible violations since June 2024, according to CalMatters, and it sued the city of El Cajon in October 2025 over out-of-state sharing. That case was still being litigated when the jury wrote its report.
What comes next
The councils’ deadline is Nov. 2. Several commitments come due within weeks: Half Moon Bay’s cameras go dark Oct. 28, Redwood City holds a second community forum Oct. 29, and Pacifica’s first expanded audit is due Oct. 31. Burlingame has promised a rewritten policy within six months.
Absent new state legislation, the San Mateo County responses point to a regional standard taking shape city by city. Burlingame, Pacifica and Redwood City now limit routine sharing to Bay Area agencies, an option the Sheriff’s Office also offered Half Moon Bay. Private university police are being dropped from the networks. Several cities are adding sign-on terms for outside users. None of this is required by state law, and each city can reverse it. The vendor contract terms the jury considered most important remain, in most cities, a promise for the next renewal.
