Woodland City Council votes to renew Flock Safety contract
Residents and councilmembers raise concerns over controversial surveillance technology
By SONJA WOOLEY — city@theaggie.org
The Woodland City Council voted unanimously to renew its contract with Flock Safety on Feb. 3. Flock Safety is an American manufacturer of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras that also operate a national database of surveillance footage for law enforcement usage.
The company has recently faced scrutiny due to reports that federal and state agencies — U.S. Border Patrol, The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and certain local police departments — used Flock Safety data to search for undocumented immigrants, protestors and people seeking abortions, often without the knowledge of the cameras’ municipal operators.
Woodland has contracted with Flock since 2021 and operates over 40 cameras on public thoroughfares around the city.
Woodland Chief of Police Ryan Kinnan spoke about the ways Flock cameras have aided the Woodland Police Department during the council meeting.
“The value of ALPR technology for us is straightforward,” Kinnan said. “It helps us identify stolen vehicles, it helps us identify suspect vehicles in violent and serious offenses, it assists us in missing person investigations and reduces officer time spent on manual canvassing.”
Woodland Lieutenant Heath Parsons shared success stories with the Flock ALPR cameras. He explained how the Woodland Police Department used the cameras to locate two suicide victims in their vehicles and to call emergency medical response services.
“That’s a mother and father that would not have their child without this technology,” Parsons said.
Several public commenters attended the meeting and wrote letters to the Woodland City Council expressing their concerns about Flock’s potential violation of privacy rights.
Jessica Martinez, a Yolo County resident, spoke to the council about her perspective on Flock Safety.
“While Flock cameras are advertised as a way to make cities safer, [...] numerous security and federal overreach concerns have been raised throughout the country and throughout California,” Martinez said. “Flock’s track record repeatedly proves that they cannot secure our data.”
Martinez referenced a report from November 2025 that the ALPR camera database of the Capitola Police Department — which contracts with Flock Safety — was illegally searched 3 million times by federal and out-of-state agencies, including 190 searches on behalf of ICE. This is in violation of California Senate Bill (SB) 34, a law that prohibits California cities from sharing their license plate reader data with federal or out-of-state agencies.
This breach occurred when Capitola Police opted into Flock Safety’s National Lookup feature, according to a Flock spokesperson. This tool allows cities to search Flock’s national database for ALPR camera recordings but also exposes that city’s data to be searched by out-of-state agencies. Flock has since disabled this feature for all Californian cities, but the City of Capitola was only made aware that their data was being shared out of state due to a citizen whistleblower.
Martinez referred to a similar situation where the Santa Cruz Police Department unknowingly released their ALPR data into Flock’s national search tool. The city’s internal audit still showed ICE and Department of Homeland Security searches of Santa Cruz ALPR data, even after Flock claimed to have disabled its national lookup tool for California cities, according to Santa Cruz Councilmember Susie O’Hara. The City of Santa Cruz has since cancelled their contract with Flock Safety, in tandem with at least 30 other cities nationwide. This included the City of Mountain View, whose Flock system was set to the “National Lookup” setting against the explicit direction of the Mountain View Police Department.
Kinnan addressed the security concerns during the council meeting.
“We are allowed to share with police agencies in the state of California,” Kinnan said. “What we are not allowed to do is share with agencies outside the state of California. We have a full audit trail of who’s accessing [the ALPR data] and why, we audit that on an annual basis.”
Councilmember Mayra Vega asked Kinnan whether the Woodland Police Department is notified about the purposes of other California municipalities' searches of its ALPR database.
“We don’t know what they’re doing on their end,” Kinnan said. “It requires the governance of other agencies to make sure they’re running their program lawfully. [...] If another agency is violating state legislation, we won’t know.”
Vega cited news reports that other cities across California have been sharing their ALPR data out of state, in violation of SB 34. In 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent an open letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, identifying over 70 Californian cities that shared their ALPR data with out-of-state agencies in violation of California law.
At the end of the open forum, the Woodland City Council voted unanimously to renew its contract with Flock Safety. Councilmember Rich Lansburgh explained that his vote was motivated by the city’s lack of public safety funding.
“The tools that the chief [Kinnan] and lieutenant [Parsons] have described are useful to our community because we do not have the staffing to do everything all the time,” Lansburgh said. “So, I am all for providing the chief and lieutenant, who I trust with my life because I have to, with these tools. I have full confidence in our chief and our lieutenant, and I, as an American, have always had to give up a little bit here and there for my safety.”
Written by: Sonja Wooley — city@theaggie.org