Ventura's City Council voted 5-2 Thursday to terminate the city's contract with license-plate reader company Flock, and directed staff to draft a possible ban on future automated license plate reader installations across the city — though parking lot cameras would be exempt from any such ban.
The vote ends the Ventura Police Department's contract covering 23 Flock cameras, which the department had operated at an annual cost of $69,000, according to the Santa Barbara News-Press. But a staff report presented to the council estimated that ending camera use would require maintaining a fifth patrol beat and hiring 14 additional officers to make up for the lost surveillance coverage, at a cost of more than $4 million a year. Police Chief David Dickey and City Manager Bill Ayub prepared that staff report.
Council members Liz Campos and Ryyn Schumancher pressed police for a specific removal date, but the department said it would first need to contact Flock before it could provide one, the News-Press reported. Dickey, for his part, told the council he was willing to do anything to keep the city safe through the system, even as the council moved to cut it loose.
Split Council, Competing Views On Safety And Privacy
Mayor Jeannette Sánchez-Palacios framed the termination as a matter of consent, saying it gave the community an opportunity to control data it publicly shares and arguing residents had lost that choice once the cameras were installed. Deputy Mayor Doug Halter said the issue involved a major threat to many parts of the community and argued that local action by cities like Ventura could push state and federal lawmakers to act on the broader ALPR debate.
Not everyone on the dais agreed. Councilmember Jim Duran opposed moving immediately to terminate the contract, saying the council should instead wait to see whether state or federal legislation on Flock and ALPRs emerges first. Councilmember Alex Mangone, who cast one of the two dissenting votes alongside Duran, questioned whether ending Flock use would actually make vulnerable populations feel any safer. Councilmember Bill McReynolds backed the termination but warned he would push back hard on anyone who later tried to blame police if crime statistics ticked upward.
Unauthorized Queries Triggered The Review
Ventura's move to reconsider Flock followed a controversy over outside access to its camera data. The city's own public safety webpage states that a vendor configuration error incorrectly allowed two out-of-state agencies to query Ventura's system without authorization. A separate News-Press report from two months earlier, however, said 3,000 out-of-state agencies queried Ventura's camera data over a two-month span, generating tens of thousands of unauthorized queries — a discrepancy the available record does not reconcile. That same report noted Ventura continued sharing ALPR access with 343 California policing agencies, generating roughly 500,000 queries of its system every month, and that the city's Flock contract had been set to expire December 18 with a required 30 days' notice of cancellation.
A Regional Pattern Of Cutting Ties With Flock
Ventura isn't alone in walking away from the surveillance vendor. The News-Press noted that Santa Barbara voted in August to terminate its own Flock contract, after which all of its cameras were removed from the city. Coverage from the Santa Barbara Independent shows that city's contract with Flock Safety officially ended August 23, after which the council delayed a proposed replacement deal with Verkada so staff could review its entire automated camera policy — leaving Santa Barbara with no automated cameras during the interim. According to KEYT, the City Council was told in early September that its 12-camera system would be gone within two weeks of the contract lapsing.
The pattern extends beyond California. More than 50 jurisdictions nationwide have ended their Flock contracts, per the News-Press's earlier report. But cutting a contract doesn't always mean cameras disappear quickly: WGME found that Auburn, Maine, canceled its Flock contract in mid-August, yet some cameras stayed in place for months afterward. York, Maine, ended up covering its cameras with plastic trash bags over concerns they could still collect data even after the contract ended. York voters have since approved an outright ban on the cameras, and Auburn residents are set to vote on a similar measure in March, while Maine state Rep. David Boyer has said he plans to introduce a bill in January further restricting the technology.
In Ventura, the next step rests with staff, who were directed to bring back an informational item exploring a ban on future ALPR installations, carving out an exception for cameras in parking lots. Public commenters weighed in on the issue during Thursday's meeting, but the scope and final wording of any ban — and when, exactly, Ventura's own 23 cameras might actually come down — remain open questions the council has yet to resolve.
