Quick Take
Data compiled by countywide grassroots coalition Get The Flock Out shows that a former Georgia police chief searched Capitola data in early 2025. Capitola Police Chief Sarah Ryan said she was not aware of these searches, but given the recent issues with Flock Safety is not surprised. The city stopped sharing data with more than 300 law enforcement agencies in November and implemented a waiver system for any access requests. Ryan said she is working with Flock to amend the city’s contract with the company.
A police chief in Braselton, Georgia, arrested on charges that he used that city’s automated license plate recognition cameras to stalk and harass private citizens, searched Capitola’s Flock Safety camera data earlier this year, according to data compiled by the countywide grassroots coalition Get The Flock Out (GTFO), which opposes the cameras.
The chief, Michael Steffman, had worked in the police department in the suburban Atlanta town since 2005, according to an Associated Press report. He resigned one day before his Nov. 20 arrest, when he was charged with stalking, sending harassing communications, misuse of automated license plate recognition systems and violating his oath as a public officer.
Steffman searched Capitola’s data in early 2025, according to GTFO. Members of the grassroots group compiled data from the Braselton Police Department’s Flock audit trails through Muckrock public records requests, and found the top three license plates that the ex-chief had searched. Those searches spanned from October 2024 through September 2025. The group then got Capitola Police Department Flock network data via public records request, and found that Steffman had searched Capitola’s data three times from Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, for the most-searched license plate of the three.
GTFO members and supporters say Steffman’s searches are yet another example of why the Flock camera technology is untrustworthy and should not be used.
“If someone so high up in a police department can abuse the [Flock] data this way, what are the fail-safes to prevent future abuse?” said Manny Nevarez, chair of the Santa Cruz County Latino Affairs Commission and a GTFO member. ”The only fail-safe is getting rid of these cameras and not collecting the data at all.”
“Our personal data is not safe by even minimal standards, and our cities are now responsible for safeguarding this data,” said Ami Chen Mills, a GTFO leader and former county supervisor candidate. She pointed to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been investigating reports that Flock data is being sold on the dark web as a result of the fact that the cameras are easily hackable and the data is not encrypted. Lookout Eugene-Springfield reported that Wyden wrote in a public letter in October that Flock “cannot live up to its commitment to protect the privacy and security of Oregonians.”
The already controversial use of Atlanta-based Flock Safety’s artificial intelligence-powered surveillance cameras in Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville has come under even greater scrutiny over the past month after federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies accessed data collected by license plate readers in Capitola and Santa Cruz earlier this year.
Santa Cruz Police Chief Bernie Escalante told the Santa Cruz City Council at a November meeting that Flock Safety had broken state law by allowing out-of-state law enforcement agencies to use a national search tool to access license plate data that California agencies collected. Capitola data was collected on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but Escalante said there’s no indication that Santa Cruz’s data was shared with federal immigration agents.
Santa Cruz and Capitola said in November that they will allow other state law enforcement agencies to access data only on a case-by-case basis. Capitola Police Chief Sarah Ryan told Lookout that while she did not know of Steffman’s searches specifically, given that they fell in the same time period that federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to access local data, it does not come as a huge surprise.
Ryan added that the national search tool is disabled now, and her department is requiring that other California law enforcement agencies sign a waiver that they are complying with state law before sharing data with them.
Ryan said the Flock cameras have been “a tremendous asset,” but that she is working to adjust the city’s contract with the company, including requests that it does not alter or change any of the cameras’ operations or functions without explicit permission from the department.
“It’s still a pretty juvenile company, so we need to clean up the scope of the contract,” she said. “The goal is to have these requests responded to and ratified by the end of the week.”
In Santa Cruz, the city council expects to bring back proposed changes to its own contract with Flock Safety at its first meeting in January.
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