Quick Take
Local grassroots group Get the Flock Out was chosen to kick off the National Week of Action Against Automated License Plate Readers in the Bay Area with a rally this Sunday. It’s meant to celebrate the City of Santa Cruz canceling its Flock Safety camera contract earlier this year, and to call attention to the nearly 50 cameras still active in Capitola and Watsonville, the group said.
Lourdes Barraza first found out about Flock Safety’s automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) and the privacy concerns surrounding them last August, when Santa Cruz resident and current mayoral candidate Ami Chen Mills told her there were over 20 of them scattered across Watsonville, where Barraza lives.
Barraza began researching them shortly after, learning that local Flock data had been accessed in the past by federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The first thing that came to my mind is, why do we have so many? We have an immigrant population,” Barraza said. Thirty-five percent of Watsonville’s population are immigrants, as of 2024.
She found out that Watsonville was going to be voting on the continued use of Flock cameras at a meeting a few weeks later, so she helped start a grassroots group that would later become Get the Flock Out (GFTO).
They were “called to action almost immediately,” she said, phoning people to let them know about the ALPR vote and encouraging them to come to a September 2025 Watsonville City Council meeting to speak against the contract being re-signed.
Despite nearly 50 people showing up to voice opposition at public comment, the city council voted 5-2 in support of renewing a two-year contract with Flock.
Flock cameras are marketed as artificial intelligence-powered readers that record vehicle license plates and feed them into a database of driver movements. Police agencies defend the readers as an effective tool for deterrence and crime-stopping, but privacy advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union argue that Flock and its users are using its technology to track, log and share individuals’ movements without a warrant, and with few regulations or oversight.
Today, nearly a year later, there are 37 license plate readers across Watsonville. But GTFO did not stop fighting. The organization grew, and after working to organize residents and lobby leaders, in January, the Santa Cruz City Council voted 6-1 to cancel the city’s contract with Flock.
Santa Cruz was the first jurisdiction in California to ban Flock readers. It also led to regional grassroots coalition organizers honoring GTFO by asking its members to host the kickoff rally for the National Week of Action Against ALPRs in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
The rally will take place this Sunday, Aug. 16, at noon on the steps of the Santa Cruz County courthouse at 701 Ocean St. The rally will feature speeches from Mills and a variety of groups, including GTFO Santa Cruz and Watsonville, the Santa Cruz Immigration Coalition, the ACLU and the Watsonville Law Center.
The rally is a chance to not only celebrate GTFO’s success in having one part of the county ban Flock’s surveillance technology, but also to educate others in the community about the dangers of ALPRs as a whole, Barraza said.
“A lot of the time, Flock cameras get sold to us as a thing that helps with safety: ‘It’s going to reduce crime, it’s going to help the police,’” she said. “But then, they don’t tell you all the negative things that come with it – like how many police officers have violated that trust by using Flock cameras for things they shouldn’t be, that they’re easily hackable, that anybody can be looking at you from anywhere without you even knowing.”
Manny, who asked to be identified by only his first name because he has a sensitive immigration status, is also going to be one of the speakers at the Sunday rally and is a part of the Santa Cruz Immigration Coalition. He explained that many people think Flock cameras have facial recognition technology, but they don’t. The cameras’ AI-powered search tools can create digital “fingerprints” and tell who you are, he continued, even if you have your face covered.
“Let’s say you walk in front of a camera with your face fully covered in San Francisco at 10:37 … then you go to Santa Cruz, and you walk in front of another Flock camera wearing the exact same clothes,” Manny said. “The two cameras will know that it’s the same person.”
His biggest advice for community members who want to avoid Flock cameras is for them to educate themselves on what the cameras look like as well as where they’re located, and avoid them.
For more information on GTFO and its Sunday rally, click here.
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