Monterey County rejects 10-year Flock cameras deal after residents blast privacy fears
By Jacquelyn Quinones
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SALINAS, Calif. (KSBW) — Monterey County supervisors voted Tuesday not to allow the Sheriff’s Office to negotiate a new 10-year contract with Flock Safety.
The vote was 3-2, with Supervisors Luis Alejo and Chris Lopez voting to continue negotiations.
The proposed agreement would have covered the county’s existing network of 63 Flock license plate reader cameras at a cost of approximately $1.7 million.
Sheriff Tina Nieto and Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Paccioni urged supervisors to approve the contract. Before the meeting, the District Attorney’s Office addressed concerns about privacy and the risks of Flock data falling into the wrong hands.
“What we need to have is a state law that makes it a crime to misuse technology,” Berkley Brannon, chief assistant district attorney, said. “What we don’t want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater and just ban it. People misuse cars every day.”
The Sheriff’s Office had previously proposed increasing the number of cameras from 63 to 103, but the latest proposal did not include that expansion.
Despite the scaled-back plan, most public comments during the meeting opposed renewing the contract.
“I’ll be incredibly uncomfortable to live in a county that puts surveillance instead of its people first,” speaker Ise Luna-Romo said. “I would personally try to find other ways to encourage policy that would remove Flock cameras.”
Another speaker, Miles Wade, said, “Law enforcement sees judicial process as a hurdle that is inconvenient, and they don’t want to deal with that. And so they want to bypass that and be able to surveil people without a warrant.”
Supervisors also voted to develop guidelines for future automated license plate reader technology.
The board also directed staff to explore the possibility of the county owning and operating its own automated license plate reader program. Supervisors acknowledged that such a program would be expensive and said it is unlikely to move forward.
“My hope moving forward is that we can continue to have fact-based, honest dialogue about what are the factors that increase public safety in a community, what are the factors that detract from public safety in a community,” Supervisor Wendy Root Askew said before the meeting. “And fundamental to all of that, it’s clear that trust is an underlying issue.”
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