WE ARE CALLING ON THE CITY OF ELK GROVE TO END ITS USE OF AUTOMATED LICENSE PLATE READERS (ALPRs) BY TERMINATING ITS CONTRACT WITH FLOCK SAFETY AND NOT SEEKING ANOTHER ALPR VENDOR.

Petition will be delivered to: Elk Grove City Council, Mayor, and City Manager.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

In Elk Grove, there are approximately 90 automated license plate readers (ALPRs), with cameras positioned all over town. The cameras, provided by a company called Flock Group Inc. (dba “Flock Safety”) record the license plate number, the vehicle’s make and model, dents and bumper stickers, and when and where the vehicle was seen. Flock records this information into a searchable nationwide database, whether or not the car is part of an active police investigation. Merely passing by one of these cameras is cause for your data to be recorded, and police search these records without a warrant.

DeFlock Elk Grove, a group of Elk Grove residents dedicated to removing ALPR mass surveillance from our community, recently conducted an audit of the City of Elk Grove’s (“the City”) use of the Flock system based on records from the City itself, that we obtained through Public Records Act requests.

WHAT WE FOUND

We were shocked to learn that only three percent of searches involving data recorded in Elk Grove were made by the Elk Grove Police Department (EGPD). The other 8 million results were searches from 3,600 other cities, counties, other states, federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations —including an entity that appears to be U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The contract the City has with Flock Safety is for more than $1.6 million dollars. Our tax dollars are funding a system that is primarily used to track us from outside Elk Grove.

California law (SB 34) only allows ALPR data to be shared with public agencies within the state of California. Yet, EGPD shared our data more than 1.3 million times with out-of-state, federal, and non-governmental entities. These searches can carry a penalty of $2,500 or more per search, if litigated.

It does not appear EGPD can control who is searching our data. EGPD told residents that certain agencies do not have access to our data, but those specific agencies were found to have searched Elk Grove’s ALPR records hundreds of thousands of times.

If Elk Grove’s ALPRs were being used exclusively to solve crimes in Elk Grove, we might expect EGPD to proudly explain that the searches they performed through the Flock system were all made in the course of active police investigations. Instead, in the records released to DeFlock Elk Grove, the EGPD had redacted (erased) the reasons for every single search, providing no accountability or transparency to residents.

We were able to match some Elk Grove search IDs to Flock records from the City of Woodland and discovered that EGPD and other entities used immigration enforcement, immigration agency assistance, and federal agency assistance as reasons for searches in Elk Grove, in apparent violation of an additional California law (SB 54).

All findings from the community audit are available at: https://deflockelkgrove.org/community-audit

DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

People may say they have “nothing to hide,” and being surveilled does not matter to them because they are not breaking the law. Still, what is worth hiding can change. In 2022, a Supreme Court decision ended a half-century of legal abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade. Overnight, abortion became illegal in the 13 states with “trigger laws” that were waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling. On June 24, 2022, people seeking abortions had “nothing to hide,” but on June 25, essential reproductive care was now a crime.

In fact, in May of last year, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas conducted a nationwide search of the Flock ALPR network “to look for a woman who self-administered an abortion” as part of an investigation “into the death of the fetus” to determine “whether they could charge the woman with a crime.”

WHAT ABOUT SWITCHING TO AXON OR ANOTHER ALPR VENDOR?

Many cities are switching to Axon, Genetec, Motorola Vigilant, Leonardo, and other ALPR vendors. The City of Elk Grove should NOT do this. ALPR systems are being used to carry out warrantless searches, violating our 4th Amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Networks of ALPR cameras create a dragnet of indiscriminate tracking and surveillance, and it seems clear that searches of the data collected about our movements constitute 4th Amendment searches. Without obtaining a warrant for these searches, the Elk Grove Police Department and other agencies are violating our 4th Amendment rights. We believe the Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. United States (2018) combined with the recent ruling in Chatrie v. United States (2026) affirm this.

WE ARE CALLING ON THE CITY OF ELK GROVE TO:

• Cancel the Flock Safety contract and do NOT seek a replacement ALPR vendor. Our city should not continue to contract with a company that has facilitated illegal sharing of our data more than 1.3 million times, putting our safety and privacy at risk. Additionally, our community members should not be subject to warrantless mass surveillance by an alternate vendor.
• Publicly release Elk Grove’s Flock audit data from 2021 to current day, including search reasons. This will allow all community members to see how and why our data are being searched and shared.
• Submit a formal request to the California State Auditor asking them to do a comprehensive audit of all of the searches of Elk Grove’s ALPR camera data from the start of the program in 2021 through current day. If the Flock ALPR contract has not already been canceled, pause the contract until the results of the audit are complete. Cover the cameras in the City with opaque bags to prevent use during the pause. Then hold accountable any individuals that are found by California State Auditor to have used the system in violation of state laws.
• Hold a full public hearing on ALL surveillance technology policies in Elk Grove, giving residents the opportunity to ask questions and share concerns. This data is our data, and it’s important that all of us have a say in its acquisition and use. The City of Elk Grove needs to be as open and transparent as possible about what happens with surveillance in our community.