Quick Take
While the Santa Cruz City Council has voted to pull out of its contract with Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company still has its cameras up and operating in other parts of the county. Here’s Lookout's reporting so far on Santa Cruz’s Flock exit and why Scotts Valley and the county sheriff’s office have held off on automated license plate readers.
Santa Cruz police officers are no longer using the Flock Safety automated license plate reading system or data gleaned from Flock cameras, following the Santa Cruz City Council’s vote last week to end the city’s contract with the Atlanta-based company. The move follows multiple data breaches and sustained community pushback.
Privacy concerns and wavering confidence in Flock played a major role in the council’s vote to end Santa Cruz’s contract. However, Capitola and Watsonville still have active agreements with the company, while the County of Santa Cruz and the City of Scotts Valley never entered one to begin with. Lookout has requested public records from Capitola and Watsonville and will report further on what we learn.
FLOCK CAMERAS: Read Lookout’s news and Community Voices opinion coverage here
Santa Cruz city spokesperson Erika Smart told Lookout that the city discontinued using the Flock system and its cameras immediately after last Tuesday’s vote. She said there could be “a short administrative transition period” to close out the two-year, $48,000 contract, which was previously scheduled to end March 27, but now ends Feb. 12. The Santa Cruz Police Department is working with Flock to remove the cameras, which should happen within the next few weeks, according to Smart.
Each contract comes with a 30-day cancellation notice, meaning that if a jurisdiction decides to pull out of its contract, the deal ends 30 days after the move.
Over the past few months, concern around Flock Safety and its surveillance equipment has grown. Santa Cruz announced in November that it would stop participating in a statewide system that shares data from license plate cameras among law enforcement agencies. Santa Cruz Police Chief Bernie Escalante said Flock Safety violated a California law by allowing out-of-state law enforcement agencies to access license plate data collected by agencies in California, including Santa Cruz, through its national search tool.
In November, Capitola Police Chief Sarah Ryan confirmed that federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies accessed data collected by its cameras on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2024 and early 2025.
A Georgia police chief also searched Capitola’s Flock Safety camera data in early 2025, according to data compiled by countywide grassroots organization Get The Flock Out (GTFO), which opposes the cameras. The chief was arrested on charges that he used his city’s automated license plate recognition cameras to stalk and harass private citizens. That access occurred during the period when Flock’s national search tool allowed out-of-state agencies to access local data. GTFO also said that state agencies accessed Santa Cruz camera data thousands of times since 2024 on behalf of federal law enforcement agencies.
Santa Cruz County Undersheriff Jacob Ainsworth told Lookout that while his agency sees “a lot of value” in the program, it decided not to enter a contract, opting instead to focus on improvements to correctional and medical mental health facilities: “The idea of spending more money in areas that aren’t high on the list of priorities leads me to not even want to dive into it.”
Ainsworth said community pushback didn’t play a factor in the agency’s decision. He said that while he sees the program’s usefulness in the right circumstances, he recognizes the concerns surrounding Flock, and would take them seriously if the sheriff’s office were to ever enter a contract.
“We would do serious work on policies and procedures,” he said. “There are successes with Flock, but there have been downfalls as well. I think it’s a fantastic tool if used correctly, and it can help solve not just any crimes, but crimes that should be solved sooner rather than later to protect human life.”
In Scotts Valley, Mayor Donna Lind said the prospect of entering a contract hasn’t been raised at all in recent years because spending money on Flock Safety cameras was not seen as a priority for the city. The former police officer said her city wanted to see how the service worked in other jurisdictions first. Given the recent privacy concerns, she said that the decision to wait was a good one.
“I’m personally seeing that there’s been misuse even when the agency had no intention,” she said. “I’m glad we did step back and took our time. We couldn’t have anticipated some of the things that are coming up now.”
Lind also said the prevalence of surveillance in general already helps solve some crimes, too, including Ring cameras, which she said helped police solve some violent crimes in her city.
“I definitely see the value [in Flock cameras], but it’s good to know you have control, and I’d want to make sure that we do have that control,” she said.
Jayson Rutherford, interim chief of the Scotts Valley Police Department, said the department began to look into using Flock cameras, but soon realized that the system was too expensive to seriously consider, and decided to use available funding on things like staffing, overtime and police vehicles.
“It was more of a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘need to have,’” he said, agreeing with Lind that it’s a good thing the city held off, given the recent issues with Flock. “We’re a small city and our tax base isn’t huge, so we have to be really fiscally responsible.”
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