Santa Ana councilmembers want to review the costs of the city’s two automated license plate reader contracts next month and could decide to modify or shut them down — making the city the latest Orange County community to reconsider the technology.
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Last week Fullerton officials voted to temporarily shut off their cameras for six months to further review their use.
Santa Ana councilmembers told the city manager and staff Tuesday night, Oct. 20, that they want a report within 30 days addressing the full costs of the city’s contracts with Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions, along with a one-year update on the systems’ use and effectiveness — an update, some noted, that was due this past May but never presented.
It was Councilmember Jessie Lopez who proposed to her colleagues that they ask for the updates, saying she was prompted by reporting from the news site Inadvertent that said there were searches of the information collected by the license-plate reading cameras in Santa Ana’s system by other agencies and on behalf of federal agencies.
“A year ago, back in May, when I warned that this technology could expose our community to federal surveillance and immigration enforcement, I was told, in effect, that these concerns would not materialize,” Lopez told the council Tuesday. “We have to take seriously the implications of collecting and searching records of people’s movements, particularly when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.”
The city currently has a three-year contract with Flock for up to $211,560 covering 24 fixed cameras, and a five-year agreement with Motorola Solutions Inc. worth up to $494,099 for 24 fixed cameras plus mobile units on four patrol vehicles.
State law limits the sharing of automated license plate reader data to California public agencies, and the state attorney general has advised that federal and out-of-state agencies are not included.
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Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez told the council his department only shares data with other California agencies, and that the 27,000 searches that were reported flowed through a second state agency that passed access onward — effectively by proxy. Rodriguez said the city severed that agency’s access once the sharing was discovered and has received assurances it was corrected.
City Attorney Sonia Carvalho told the council Santa Ana loses control of data once it is lawfully shared. A risk, she said, that had not been apparent to her when the contracts were approved in May 2025.
Last month, Councilmember Benjamin Vasquez and Lopez joined advocates in a press conference outside City Hall demanding the city cancel both contracts and release the overdue one-year staff update on the systems’ installation, use and effectiveness.
Councilmember David Penaloza, who voted to approve the contracts last year, said Tuesday night that the technology’s benefits do not outweigh the privacy concerns and other issues that have risen since. He said if it’s true that federal data sharing is occurring, “we should look into pulling the plug and canceling this contract.”
Penaloza said use of automated license plate readers has been multiplying, with cameras now being installed in private businesses and plazas with no public agency controlling who can access that footage.
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