City Council - Regular Meeting

I would like to call the August 26th, 2026, August 26th, 2026 meeting of the Camarillo City Council, the CSD, the CLB, and the SA to order. Would the city clerk conduct a roll call?

Council Member Santangelo? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez-Bravo? Here. Council Member Kildee?

Here.

Mayor Tennyson?

Here.

Council Member Trembley is absent. A quorum is present.

Thank you. And the Vice Mayor is going to lead us in a flag salute.

Please stand. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Would the City Attorney read the closed session items A and B, please?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. We have two items on closed session. One under Government Code Section 54956.9D1 related to the OPV Coalition versus Fox Canyon. We also have real property negotiations pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.8. for the property located at 2222 Ventura Boulevard. And if there's any reportable action, I will make that report.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Do we have any public comments on closed session?

No, sir.

No comments. We will now recess to closed session.

It has been listed as one of the Barnes & Noble best books of the year. This year, the library will host additional camera reads program that relate to themes of the book, including a navigating grief workshop, a pressed flower memory jar activity, and a gelato night and book discussion. We are also excited to offer a group tour at the Adamson House in Santa Monica. The Camarillo Reads Author Talk will be on Sunday, September 27th at 2 p.m. in the community room. Free tickets will be available at the second floor reference desk beginning September 1st. All of our Camarillo Reads programming is through the generous sponsorship of the Friends of the Camarillo Library. And I'm excited to now showcase the City of Camarillo Public Library Annual Report, and here are some of our highlights from last fiscal year. Just to note that our library annual report is web-based and I have taken screen grabs of the website that highlight our community engagement learning partnership and support. So the library provides an enriched environment where people can live, work, and play. We were honored to be selected as Community Partner of the Year by Autism Society of Ventura County. We also made many technology improvements including a new 12 bay laptop dispenser located on the second floor of the library. The library takes pride in community connection and promoting lifelong learning through our various programs. We conducted a library survey this past January and comments from our patrons include that they enjoy our camera reads event, our seed bank and our community exchange display. This year, as you know, we also launched the Teen Civic Engagement Club to create better opportunities for future leaders. A total of 97 teens participated and the program encouraged teens to speak at city council meetings about issues that were important to them. The library provides an environment that encourages learning for all ages. We were proud to honor five career online high school graduates this past spring. In addition, our Russell Fisher Business Collection offered many career workshops, including an Ask an HR Expert panel that covered topics such as finding jobs in Ventura County. They offered resume advice and how to negotiate salary and benefits. I'm gonna do a fiscal year comparison. We saw many collection gains this fiscal year compared to last year. So there was an increase of over 56,000 checkouts in our physical items and an increase of 21,000 with our electronic materials, which include Hoopla, Kanopy, and Libby. And the library issued 1,689 more library cards this year than last year. When it comes to programming, we also exceeded our numbers from last fiscal year. 229 library programs were added and over 5,000 more attendees showed up. The library also saw an increase of 21,000 more visitors coming through our doors. I'm grateful to city leadership, staff, and our amazing community for their dedication and support of the library. I encourage you to view the entire annual report online, which is located on our library's website. And after tonight, we'll post a link of the annual report to our social media channels. The QR code is on display in our library lobby for patrons to view, and I'll be submitting this report to our California State Librarian. And that concludes my report, and I'm happy to address any questions.

Any questions for Mandy?

just comments okay no questions comments vice mayor Mandy thank you very much for your presentation thank you for your work and the critical work that is being done at the library you have done an exceptional job with the leadership I am so proud to have Our city residents enjoy so many programs. I've been there when you've had little toddlers and folks who are elderly show up for just different events. And I know that it extends beyond just Camarillo residents. We have the Somis Farmworker Housing right next door and I've seen some more families really taking advantage and joining the efforts and the resources that are being offered and truly sharing their appreciation for that too. So just again, it brings such life to the city of Camarillo, and I'm very, very thankful for that.

Thank you.

No. Kevin? Yeah, Manny, you know, just got off a real busy season. I know that the summer months are extremely busy, but good job.

Thank you.

We're all just so proud of our library, and ditto to what we have. Our tradition here is ditto, and ditto what my colleague Martita just said. It's great. Thank you.

Mandy, I want to thank you for taking a city council strategy and bringing it to life with our teen civic engagement. Hopefully other council members will have an opportunity to engage with these bright young teenagers, high school, and I think maybe some middle school. Yes. Or are they all high school?

13 to 18, yes.

Okay. And I found them very engaging. They showed up several months ago and spoke during public comments, and they were remarkable, poised, articulate, and well-prepared for it. I ALSO PARTICULARLY ENJOY THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ TO TODDLERS. I KNOW THAT THE VICE MAYOR DID IT, I DID IT, I DON'T READ, I ACT IT OUT, AND IT'S JUST SUCH A JOY TO ENGAGE WITH THE TEENS, EVEN MORE OF A JOY TO ENGAGE WITH THE TODDLERS, MAYBE BECAUSE ONE OF THEM WAS MY TWO AND A HALF YEAR OLD GRANDDAUGHTER, BUT IT'S JUST SOMETHING THAT I THINK BRINGS, THE TODDLER EVENT WAS PACKED, MOSTLY WITH GRANDPARENTS AND KIDS, BUT FANTASTIC JOB. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE.

THANK YOU, MAYOR.

NEXT UP, WE HAVE A PRESENTATION WITH JESSICA WALLETTE. AND IF I MISPRONOUNCED YOUR NAME, I APOLOGIZE. IT'S THE COASTAL CLEANUP DAY. TAKE IT AWAY.

Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson and city council members. I am Jessica Ouellette, the Camarillo Stormwater Program Manager, and I will be sharing information about this year's Coastal Cleanup Day event. Oh, our slide's not on. The annual event will be held on Saturday September 19th 2026 from 9 a.m. To 12 noon Coastal cleanup day is an international event and cleaning local beaches isn't the only aim of coastal cleanup day Another important goal is to document and study the type of trash collected during the event to gather information on where it could have come from and how long it would take to disintegrate Ever since its inception more than 40 years ago, International Coastal Cleanup Day has seen over 6 million people volunteer over 90 countries. Last year in Camarillo's two locations, a total of 176 volunteers removed 1,324 pounds of trash and recyclables. Food wrappers and plastic waste were the largest quantity of trash collected. We are grateful to the volunteers who volunteered their time to help keep Camarillo beautiful. Last year in Ventura County, over 900 volunteers removed 7,687 pounds of trash and recyclables from 18 inland and coastal sites. The Ocean Conservancy has not released the results of the 2025 International Coastal Cleanup Day event, so these are the results from the 2024 event. Statewide in 2024, over 46,000 volunteers removed almost 497,000 pounds of trash and recyclables. As can be seen in this table, the top item collected in California was again the cigarette butt, with over 79,000 collected statewide at last year's event. In the United States, over 144,000 volunteers worked together to collect and remove over 2 million pounds of trash and recyclables. Globally, over 486,000 volunteers removed almost 7.5 million pounds of trash and recyclables, with the top item collected worldwide being food wrappers. CAMRIO WILL AGAIN BE HOSTING TWO LOCATIONS FOR THIS YEAR'S EVENT. ONE CLEANUP SITE IS IN THE MISSION OAKS PARANCA LOCATED IN THE MISSION OAKS PARK AT MISSION OAKS BOULEVARD AND OAK CANYON ROAD. VOLUNTEERS PLEASE MEET IN THE GRASS AREA NEXT TO THE TENNIS COURTS. THE SECOND LOCATION IS IN CAYAGAS CREEK. VOLUNTEERS PLEASE MEET IN THE CREEK AT THE INTERSECTION OF PASEO DEL CAMPO AND CREEKSIDE ROAD. Since we are trying to make this a zero waste event, we encourage volunteers to bring their own bags, reusable water bottles, and gloves. We will supply a data card to record statistics on what the volunteers are removing from the waterway. This information is put into the Ocean Conservancy's international database. It may be a warm day and we do encourage volunteers to wear appropriate attire, so please no flip-flops. The terrain in Cuyahoga's Creek is not suitable for strollers or small children, so we do encourage volunteers with small children to go to the Mission Oaks Park. As a token of our appreciation, we will have a limited number of tote bags and stickers to give the volunteers who come and help clean up our waterways. Part of the annual event is to collect data on the trash collected, which is then compiled into a worldwide database by the Ocean Conservancy. Although we will provide data cards at the event, we do encourage volunteers to download and use the Clean Swell Data Collection app to record their finds and be counted towards the volunteer and trash totals for Camarillo. This year's event will be held on Saturday, September 19th, 2026 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Thank you for supporting this important initiative in Camarillo. This concludes my presentation and I am available to answer any questions. Thank you.

Any questions for Jessica?

comments make it mr. Kildee yeah if I try to go to this every unfortunately I had another commitment last year but if anybody's out there and if you want to really do something that really in my opinion makes you feel really good try to go out there and clean up some of the trash it's a it's really gratifying and fulfilling to do that you feel like you really or helping the world we only have one earth here and we need to protect it as best we can and this is kind of our way in a very very small way to maybe do our part to try to do that so um thanks for you know spearing this up and heading this up and i'm sure we'll have a lot of volunteers out there and be another successful event i hope so susan

I wanted to thank you for being here and for your presentation. I try to get out there every year, but sometimes my work schedule gets in the way. But thank you, and to the general public, I hope you all can enjoy this day as well. If you can't get out to this place, maybe pick up trash around your neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Mayor. That's a good call to action. Thank you for the presentation. I try to go every year and I take my entire family. It becomes a little scavenger hunt type of activity that we really enjoy. So thank you to all the volunteers who have participated in the past and I also encourage each and every one of you to go. The only question that I do have is I typically see a lot of like the Girl Scout troops or other groups going. Are we getting this information out to local schools to help participate as well?

So we do do the social media posts and I can make sure that I reach out to the schools directly to give them like a poster to make sure that they can provide that to their students and make sure that the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are well aware of the event.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Great job. I guess the one thing I would say is put your trash in a trash container. I know up at Mission Oaks Park, they're all over the place, and it's so easy to do. But I'm glad we have citizen volunteers that are willing to go out and pick up other people's trash. So thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Okay, Council comments. Mr. Kildee, would you go first?

Yes. I attended Monday, August 24th, the Investment Committee meeting. Hang on here. And yesterday... I have a rabbi friend of mine and it's Rabbi Lang and he had an individual that gave a talk at Rancho Campana and he was in captivity by Hamas for 738 days and Sorry, it's a little emotional talking about this. The gentleman in question was 23 years old. And he was at a concert. And... he was taken along with a number of his friends. And on the way out, he made the conscious decision to go back and help some of his friends who were under great, great duress there. And he was taken from there and he was taken into Gaza. I'm trying to queue it up here again. It was 738 days. He's 23 years old. He didn't have any contact with his family for two years and finally he was released. And his name is Yosef Haim Ohana. And it was very interesting to listen to his thoughts on that. And they asked him, how did you survive... that long in those kind of condition. And he said he never lost his faith. He never lost his faith in himself. He never lost his faith in his religion that he preaches. He never lost faith in his country. And he never lost faith in his friends. And that kept him alive for all of this times. And he didn't get into a lot of the nuts and bolts in the weeds about what happened to him when he was captive. But we can only imagine what his life must have been there. He came out with a great, great appreciation of life. And I thought, wow, here's a very young guy, 23 years old, that lost basically two years of his life, and he came out with a story of promise and a story of gratitude for his family and nation and his religion to help him kind of go to the next level and live the rest of his life. And it wasn't like an uplifting story per se, but there was a lot of uplifting parts with this. And I thought, wow, we all can really learn a lot from that. So I want to thank the rabbi for having him here. It was up at Rancho Campana. And if you get an opportunity to really kind of talk and kind of, you know, I think it would be something I think it would be something that would you know be an inspiration that would you know be an inspiration to all of us so that's all I have.

Thank you for sharing that, Councilmember Kildee. I truly appreciate it. On Wednesday, July 29th, I actually forgot to mention this last time when my colleagues presented this part, but I was also at the shots fired event, One Officer's Journey Back. This was an event that, thank you, Chief Tennyson, for helping to organize and to bring Officer Michael Martinez here. Officer Michael Martinez, he gave a testimony and shared his personal story of the trauma resulting from multiple officer-involved shootings. And it was a very powerful testimony that provided us just, or at least for me, because I'm not a police officer, but it provided me with a glimpse into the the significant impacts that these experiences have on our police officers regarding trauma and mental health and physical well-being as well. Our officers are human beings too and I'm very thankful for their sacrifice out on the field every single day. on august 20th i attended the information and technologies technologies facilities committee meeting with mayor tennyson and on august 20th i attended the economic development and collaborative meeting that's all i have thank you council member santangelo

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, on August 17th, I attended the Healthy Camarillo Ad Hoc Committee. That was with Councilmember Trembley. On August 20th, I attended the CPA Executive Committee, and then later that day, I attended the the new Leadership Ventura County, which is the former VCLA. And on August 24th, I attended the Investment Committee and earlier today, the CPA Finance Committee. And that's all I have.

Thank you. The Vice Mayor already reported the Information and Technologies and Facilities Committee meeting. Also that day I attended the Ventura Council of Governments Administrative Committee meeting. VCOG is an organization that tries to bring all of the entities together in Ventura County. There's a county supervisor and an elected official from all 10 cities, and we try and address things that cross jurisdictional boundaries. It's well worth it, and I'm glad to be of service on that. I also wanted to bring up, and I wish I'd have mentioned it when our library director was here, the United States and the world lost a champion of literacy yesterday when Dolly Parton, an icon of country music, passed away. She created an organization 30-ish years ago called Imagination Library. And I know the County Board of Supervisors recognized it about a month, month and a half ago, and she presented books there. to needy children, kids that wouldn't otherwise have access to books. Her organization has given out nearly 400,000 books, not just in the United States, but internationally as well. And fortunately, Imagination Library will live on past Dolly's mortal life. So I'm sad. I saw her when I was 14 or 15 years old at a concert in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And she was striking back then, and she was striking until the end of her life. So rest in peace, Dolly. You'll not be forgotten because your music will live on. And with that, I will be quiet. Well, no, I won't. Madam Clerk, do we have any public comments on items on the consent calendar, items E through R?

No.

Hearing none, any questions from counsel on consent?

I can move consent.

Pardon me? Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Council Member Santangelo? Yes. Vice Mayor Martinez-Bravo? Yes. Council Member Kildee?

Yes.

Mayor Tennyson?

Yes.

That passes four to zero with Council Member Trembley absent.

Thank you. Now we will head to item S on the agenda. And I'm going to assume most of the public present is extremely interested in this. So Commander Eric Tennyson, if you would take it away, please.

Excellent. Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff and residents of the city who are here in attendance tonight. I appreciate the opportunity that Council has given me tonight to address real and legitimate concerns that are being asked about our use of technology that we use to help keep our city safe. Specifically, I appreciate the chance to explain why the Cambria Police Department and the Ventura County Sheriff's Office continue to believe that balancing privacy rights, accountability and public safety is always in our best interest. An important piece to this presentation is to understand that we don't believe the public should simply support us because we say so. It should be up to everyone here to look at the facts, to look at reasonable controls we have set in place, and look at our agency's history of transparency and accountability as we work to continue earning the public's trust. I spent a lot of time interacting with members of the public at events, working patrol here at the dais, here at the council chambers, and I've had many, many conversations with people about flock ALPRs. I've heard the concerns that this community has and read reports from all over the county and country about flock ALPRs. The concerns are legitimate, and in some circumstances, abuse of this system has resulted in a loss of trust in the technology and even the police in some areas. With that said, there has been misinformation in public as well, and I hope to clear some of that up during this presentation. On this slide you see some of the concerns that we've heard about from the public, and these will all be addressed in this presentation. First and foremost, I'd like to focus for just a minute on case law that supports the use of ALPRs without a search warrant. Without this legal foundation, the case for using ALPRs completely crumbles. In March of this year, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on the constitutionality of ALPR use in the U.S. v. Porter. This case involved a wanted subject who was stopped after his license plate generated an ALPR alert. After stopping him and arresting him for his warrant, he was found in possession of a loaded handgun with an automatic converter switch. He was found guilty in the local courts and he appealed his conviction up to the Fifth Circuit Court. In their ruling, the court made clear that a person does not surrender all of their Fourth Amendment protections when they go into public, but it also recognized that someone traveling in their car on a public roadway has no reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements from one place to another. The court also very clearly ruled that the use of an ALPR system does not constitute a search pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, so no warrant is required to use this system. Another very recent case I wanna highlight comes from a civil rights action in Virginia called Schmidt versus Norfolk. In this case, Schmidt and others sued the city of Norfolk claiming their Fourth Amendment rights were being violated by the use of ALPR systems. The ruling was interesting and a bit more nuanced than the Porter ruling. In essence, it recognized that federal and state courts have almost uniformly recognized that neither taking pictures of a car's license plate nor maintaining and querying a database with those images constitutes a search that requires a search warrant. The interesting part of their ruling was that they concluded that ALPR systems could become too intrusive at some point, but based on what they had in existence in Norfolk, that wasn't at that point. So the table on the right adds a little context to that ruling, and it shows a comparison between land area, population, and LPR density between Camarillo and Norfolk. You see that Norfolk is about three times the size of Camarillo from a square mile standpoint. It's about three times the population size of Camarillo as well, yet they have about six times the number of license plate reader cameras that we have. So I think it's reasonable to conclude that if Norfolk wasn't too dense or intense in the placement of their cameras, the same could likely be said about Camarillo. So I want to talk about what flock ALPR basics are, what it does. The mechanics of how a flock license plate reader works are really quite simple. A camera is attached to a pole at a fixed location. It's set at a specific height with the camera at a specific angle in order to achieve the best results in terms of read accuracy and number of reads. When a vehicle travels by the camera, it triggers motion on the camera and it looks for a license plate and snaps an image. It converts what it sees in that image to a license plate read along with the date, time, and location of that read. The LPR also captures other vehicle attributes like make, color of vehicle, and vehicle type, and it can also detect the existence of roof racks or bumper stickers. The images from the LPR read are encrypted from end to end and stored in Amazon Web Services cloud-based storage. These images present law enforcement with the ability to conduct investigations when suspect vehicle description or a license plate is provided by the victim of a crime. Searched in the immediate moments after a crime occurs, images can help us identify a suspect vehicle. They can also tell us when a suspect vehicle's image is captured by a stationary LPR, allowing our deputies to quickly respond to that area and search for a suspect vehicle. When used in an investigation of a crime that is reported well after it occurs, the images can help us tell if a suspect came into our area in advance of a crime to scout out a specific victim or target. It can help us to identify if a suspect vehicle had accomplices who were following in a secondary vehicle. And it can help us identify the suspect vehicle being involved in serial crimes like retail theft, mail theft, catalytic converter thefts, and many other crimes that occur over a period of time. What also makes an LPR system effective is the ability to compare the images to a hot list. We receive hot lists from the state of California throughout the day telling us what vehicles throughout the state have been reported stolen, when vehicles, sorry, when subjects associated with specific vehicles are missing, when the vehicles have been reported to be associated with specific crimes like kidnapping or murder. We have our own hot lists for subject vehicles we are looking for because they've been involved in criminal activity. The LPR system compares the image it captures to the license plates on the hot list, and if there is a hit, it provides our Arctic operator or deputy in the field with a notification. Whether that Arctic operator or field deputy receives a hit, the license plate and alert are quickly confirmed by deputies, and they are sent to the area to check for a vehicle. Consequently, if an image is compared to a hot list and there is no hit, nothing happens. The image goes into the secure database and no action takes place. After one year, those images are hard deleted from the secure cloud storage and we no longer have access to them. The process is pretty simple. It is equally important to know what the systems do not do because there's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the public on this. Our ALPR systems do not identify the driver of the vehicle. They do not run the license plate to try to identify the registered owner of the vehicle. There is no facial recognition associated with the license plate reader. They are not pointed at schools, churches, medical offices, or anywhere else like that in order to collect information. They do not tell us why someone is driving, where they are going, or who they are going to visit. They do not follow cars or people. They are not placed outside every neighborhood in Camarillo. They are a stationary camera that takes a picture of a vehicle when it drives by, and any information to the contrary is simply not true. I'd like to explain for just a moment how we use our LPR system. First, our policy dictates our use and restrictions is policy 429, and it is and has been available for many years on the Sheriff's website. It only allows specifically trained users to access the system and then only for official law enforcement purposes. Each person who uses it must sign in with their login, password, and a multi-factor authentication. Every search requires the user enter an offense type indicating what type of crime or case is being investigated along with the case number for that investigation and the reason for the search. This ensures that we can cross check to make sure it's being accessed for appropriate and official purposes only. One thing that has come up in the discussion on LPRs is how people are seeing false hits that result in innocent people being detained or arrested. Many people have pointed to news reports that have recently indicated that the Los Angeles Police Department had 161 such false detentions or arrests because of misreads and use that as a suggestion that we stop using flock ALPR cameras. I want to be very clear about how a good and effective policy counteracts imperfect technology. First, our policy requires that upon receiving an ALPR hit, our deputy first shall visually verify the LPR read is actually the plate they are looking at. Second, our policy says the deputy shall call dispatch with the reported hit to ensure that it is still an active hit. Only then can the deputy take enforcement action. To date, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office has not had any reported detentions or arrests of a subject based on false reads. The reason I brought up the LAPD was that their policy says that officers should attempt to verify a license plate prior to enforcement action. That's a big distinction that can have major consequences and agency policy plays a very important role in ensuring the responsible use of technology. As I mentioned earlier, our images are stored in secure cloud storage for one year and then hard deleted. Another topic I've seen come up is how we place LPRs and where we place them. I've said this before in other presentations that our agency is a very data-driven agency, and we make law enforcement decisions based on data and on our experiences. Our cameras are placed in areas where we experience crimes in great numbers or that are of great impact to our community. I've mentioned many times the theft corridor in Camarillo and that is where we have the greatest density of camera placement in the city. We placed ALPRs on the roadways around the outlets, Target and Home Depot because they are the biggest driver of property crimes in the city. That doesn't mean we don't have ALPRs elsewhere. We have a few neighborhoods in our city that have frequently been targets for residential burglaries, either by foreign-based criminal crews or Los Angeles-based criminal crews. One crime you've been reading about in the news lately is the crime of bank jugging. where crews come in from out of town, watch our banks, look for elderly or unsuspecting victims who might be withdrawing cash, follow them home, and then steal their cash. Another crime category that's been impacting our residents significantly is the area of mail theft. All of these crime categories have great impact upon residents of our city and require different ALPR placement strategies. You see here that I noted we try to cover most ingress and egress locations for our city. I also specifically mentioned that ALPR placement along the theft quarter. It's very important to know that of all arrests we make in Camarillo, 63% of those arrested are people who live outside of our city limits. Taking that analysis a step further, of all the arrests we make at the outlets, Target, and Home Depot, 87% of those arrested reside outside the city of Camarillo. We are not placing ALPRs here because we want to know where our residents are shopping. We place them here because these criminals come to our city to victimize our businesses, our neighbors, yours and mine. Those crimes left unchecked have consequences on our city. We place ALPRs at ingress and egress points in the city because the data shows us that the overwhelming majority of crooks come here from outside our city to victimize our residents and our visitors. That decision is data driven and it's just common sense. Last, there are private entities like homeowners associations and even some businesses that have experienced high crime that are purchasing and installing their own ALPRs at their entrances. Many of them want to share their ALPR data with us because they know these are effective in helping prevent and detect crime, and that it is important for us to work together to reduce crime in the city. I mentioned a strong policy having strong accountability component. Our agency, like every other law enforcement agency in the state, relies heavily upon databases that contain protected criminal justice information like the California Law Enforcement Telecommunication System, or what is known as CLETS, and the National Crime Information Center, which is known as NCIC. For decades, these databases have been part of the foundation of law enforcement and contain a significant amount of protected information. Because we use those federal and state databases, we are subject to federal and state DOJ audits to ensure the information is used only on a need-to-know and right-to-know basis. The DOJ standard for these audits is once every three years. For at least the last decade, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office has passed that DOJ audit, and we have not had to report a misuse of law enforcement databases in at least five years. I believe the number is higher, but we could only get information on the most recent five years for that. So while federal and state DOJ standard is an audit once every three years, we conduct flock ALPR audits more often. After we discovered our flock data was open for search back in February and March of 2025 for one month, we initially institute daily audits to ensure our data was secure from searches for any law enforcement agency outside the state of California. After about two months, our agency moved to weekly audits of the data, which still remains in effect today. Those weekly audits consist of a review of every single day for the prior week to ensure that no searches are done against our database from agencies outside the state of California. In addition to those daily and now weekly audits, our crime analysis team conducts user audits annually. The audit includes checking searches from authorized users to ensure the search was done properly with legal justification and a case number that can be cross-checked. Since we have been using flock AOPRs, I'm not aware of a single reported misuse by a member of our agency. However, our personnel are humans, and sometimes humans make bad decisions. As an agency, we've demonstrated over the years that when we discover wrongdoing by a member of our agency, we've been swift in conducting investigations and holding our people accountable when the situation warrants it. We believe accountability is critical to building and keeping the public's trust. Another very important expectation of flock AOPRs is that the reads be accurate. Flock has reported third-party studies of their system showing accuracy in the high 90% range. There have been recent reports in the news about error rates on alerts that are very concerning. An article on Roseville Police Department LPRs showed a 71% error reading on alerts. We haven't seen any other reports from any other law enforcement agencies showing error rates this high. I personally called Roseville PD and spoke to them about this report, and a follow-up by the SACB added some important context to the initial report. First, the time period of those reported errors was in 2023 and 2024, and Flock has made a number of technological improvements to their system in those two to three years. They continue to work with Roseville PD and are awaiting more recent information from Roseville on the more recent alert rates. Additionally, Flock has very specific installation guidelines for mounting their cameras at specific heights and specific angles to achieve maximum read accuracy. Our agency has followed those recommendations with all of our installations, only making some changes recently as we've seen vandals and thieves attempting to manipulate our cameras. It's also very important to note, and I'll reiterate something I already talked about, that an agency's policy on how it responds to alerts matters greatly. In the two years between 2023 and 2024, the Roseville Police Department received about 1,500 alerts, and about 1,100 of those they reported were misreads. In all of those misreads, the Roseville Police Department did not make one single detention or arrest off of a misread because their policy is just like ours. It requires multiple steps of human intervention and verification prior to taking any law enforcement action. Consequently, you see a mention up here about an LAPD report. A report by the officer of Inspector General at LAPD made a determination that 161 detentions or arrests were based on misreads in a two-month period, based on reads from the department's nearly 2,000 license plate readers, and on more than 210 million reads that were captured during that time period. The major takeaway from this report for me was that LAPD's policy on alerts requires that their officers only attempt to verify the hit records prior to conducting a stop. This distinction between our policy and LAPD's policy is important to note. On another note, many point to LAPD canceling their flock contract as a reason for Camarillo to consider the same. While they did pause their use of flock, LAPD has indicated that they were working with flock to come to an agreement on contract language so they can begin using those LPRS again. Additionally, LAPD has at least 1500 non flock LPRS still capturing reads in their city. While the context above matters, the most important thing I want counsel and the public to understand is that technology is not infallible, and the accuracy that comes from technology is not perfect. With that said, it is made exponentially better with human intervention and human verification that is written into our policy, and that is why the Sheriff's Office has not seen any detentions or arrests based on misreads. Another important takeaway from this presentation and frequent area of information in the public is who accesses our data. I've been very clear, and our sheriff has been very transparent in acknowledging that for a one-month period from mid-February of 2025 to mid-March of 2025, our data was open to search from agencies outside of our state because of a system error by flock. Since mid-March of 2025, our data has not been accessible to any agency outside the state, and our own weekly audits verify that. We are fully compliant with SB 54 and SB 34, and we do not share LPR data with ICE, with Border Patrol, with the Department of Homeland Security, or with any agency outside the state of California. Repeated claims that we do are not the truth. We are only sharing ALPR data with 58 California law enforcement agencies, and we have an MOU in place with each agency we share with. That brings me to current deployment in the city of Camarillo. As you see here, the city pays roughly $87,250 every year for 25 flock ALPR cameras in the city. 20 of those are fixed location and five are temporary mobile cameras that we can put in areas where crime trends are occurring. We also received another 12 flock ALPRs from the Organized Retail Theft Task Force at no cost to the city. Contrary to some claims that I've read, the city council did not reallocate any funding away from any other law enforcement programs to fund the lease of these cameras. This was a public safety enhancement that I requested on top of our prior budgets. I want everybody to see this slide because I think it's important. It shows you exactly what AOPR reads look like. These reads are from three different cameras that we have and what they show is important. but what they don't show is equally important. I've seen letters submitted to this council claiming that our cameras capture children on school playgrounds or playing in public parks. I've seen claims that flock ALPR cameras capture people visiting friends' houses, going to church, or attending medical appointments. Each of our flock ALPRs in Camarillo is narrowly focused and is pointed down to the roadway in order to capture a license plate and not anywhere else. With that said, you can see from the image on the far right that if a vehicle's motion triggered the camera while a person was on the sidewalk, they could be captured in the image. But again, there is no facial recognition built into this, and there's no analytical value to the person walking on the sidewalk, which is why the cameras aren't designed to capture these images. I'd like to take just a few moments to provide this council in public with actual data and specific instances on how flock ALPRs make our city safer. The first thing you see here is hard data on the number of stolen vehicles recovered because of an alert by flock ALPRs. This data is not just for Camarillo, but also includes our other four contract cities and the unincorporated area of Ventura County where there might be ALPRs. I've reported this stolen vehicle data at other presentations and once had someone tell me these stolen vehicle recovers aren't as meaningful because it's just a property crime. You see, in 2024, we recovered 38 stolen vehicles. In 2025, 46 stolen vehicles. In year to date, in 2026, 30 stolen vehicles. I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of a victim of a stolen vehicle. Imagine a mom or a dad who has only one car and goes outside to take their children to school before they head off to work, only to discover their car's been stolen. They worry about how to get their kids to school. They wonder how they're going to get to work to earn money to put food on the table. For that family and every other victim who has their vehicle stolen, this isn't just a property crime. It adds real stresses to already stressful lives. And for those who would suggest that the rest of the stories that I'm going to read through on here are just a handful of success stories, we have many, many more that we could talk about. I'd like to talk first about the one on the left side where our license plate readers identified a suspect vehicle in a Camarillo gun store burglary from about a year and a half to two years ago where 63 firearms were stolen. The suspects were identified in several similar crimes throughout Southern California where they stole more than 300 firearms. We arrested six suspects because of the ALPRs helping us to identify these suspects. Additionally, during a shooting in Nyland Acres about a year and a half ago, a vehicle license plate was provided by the victim, one of the witnesses there, and that vehicle license plate was entered into our ALPR system. An alert on that vehicle occurred a very short time later right here in Camarillo, and the car was stopped by one of our Camarillo patrol deputies. Several subjects were arrested in that car, and we located a modified AR-15-style rifle in the vehicle. You may have heard about a case about two years ago where ALPRs helped us track stolen semi-truck trailers that were taken from Harbor Freight. We were able to use ALPRs to help lead us to where those stolen trailers were stored. We made several arrests and recovered over a million and a half dollars in stolen property. Just recently in the spring of this year, we had a homicide that occurred on the Boulevard in Camarillo. Within about an hour of the homicide occurring, we were reviewing our ALPR reads in conjunction with some other evidence that we'd captured from interviewing witnesses. Our ALPR read actually captured the suspect vehicle parked next to the victim vehicle, helped to identify him and leading to his arrest within just hours of the crime. This last June, we had a shooting that occurred down on Berry Street here in Camarillo. We had a resident nearby who had a ring camera that actually captured the model and make of that car along with the color. It also showed as the vehicle was pulling away a very unique sticker in the back window. Within a short time, about an hour, we searched our ALPR system for that make and color of vehicles and we were able to identify the suspect vehicle that was responsible for that shooting. We just did a press release on that about two hours ago. We also had a resident about a year ago who reported subjects attempting to steal mail from a postal drop box in Camarillo and provided a license plate and a vehicle description. Our advanced real-time crime center very quickly entered that plate into our ALPR system and we received an alert on that vehicle in Ventura a short time later. Our deputies arrested the subject and found more than 50 victims stolen mail in that suspect's possession. We had a gang member about a month and a half ago who was driving in Camarillo and one of our patrol deputies received an ALPR alert indicating that the driver of that car was on probation. The deputy called down to dispatch, verified that the probation terms were still active, and stopped that gang member. The subject was found in possession of a loaded firearm with a high capacity magazine. Our special enforcement unit authorized, authored a search warrant for that person's resident and went back and found another gun at that gang member's resident and seized that gun as well. And that subject was arrested and taken into custody. Just last week, we had another case of an LPR success story. In July, two unknown suspects stole from Target and fled in a car. Video surveillance showed the license plate, but investigators were unable to link the license plate with the people that they saw in the videos. They entered the license plate onto a hot list. And just last Friday, that vehicle returned to Camarillo and alerted our detectives that it was back in town. They coordinated with loss prevention at Target and with our patrol deputies and located that vehicle as it was fleeing Target after committing another theft. The same suspects from the July theft were in that car and were arrested with another $1,500 in stolen merchandise. We had another Camarillo resident who withdrew a significant amount of cash from the bank before going to another store. An unknown subject followed that victim, broke into the victim's car, and stole several thousand dollars in cash. License plate reader records helped to identify the suspect vehicle, which ultimately led to their identification and arrest. And the last one, a Camarillo resident reported her vehicle being stolen. Our Arctic operator found an LPR hit on the stolen vehicle in Thousand Oaks and sent deputies to the area to look for that stolen vehicle. Deputies located the stolen vehicle and arrested two Oxnard residents within one hour of the vehicle being reported stolen to us. I can tell you, I could spend an hour going over the success stories that we've had because of license plate readers here in Camarillo. For those who have been victims of these crimes, they've been eternally grateful when we use tools that are legally available to us to bring them some sense of justice. I want this council and our residents to know that we hear them when they bring their concerns to us. We investigate, we speak to other agencies, and we research. We take action, just like the Sheriff's Office did when we proactively discovered the data issued from 2025 and reported it to the public and to this council. We take action just like we did by implementing audit controls, first daily and now weekly, to ensure that our data is secure. We look at the issues that are brought to our attention and we base our requests and recommendation on facts and on evidence. As we continue to look for responsible technologies that will assist us, we base our strategies on the five principles that you see here. They are the foundation to decisions being made on technology that is changing rapidly. As we've discussed before in other presentations I've made on LPRs, our agency has used mobile ALPR technology in our patrol vehicles for well over a decade now, and we still use that with our use of Axon's Fleet 3 in-car video system. We are also monitoring the market and looking at flocks competitors to see if another product is available that meets our strict requirements, and we will practice good governance in considering making changes to another vendor. I've taken a lot more time than normal tonight because I believe our community and this council deserve accurate information about this technology, the concerns that surround it, and exactly how the Ventura County Sheriff's Office uses it. We've listened to those concerned, we've examined the facts, and we've put safeguards in place to ensure this technology is used lawfully, responsibly, and with accountability. But ultimately, this comes back to why we use it. We use ALPRs because they help us find stolen vehicles, they help us locate vulnerable missing people, they help us identify and arrest people committing crimes in our community, and they bring justice to victims. We can protect privacy and protect our community at the same time. And I believe the facts and results I've shared with you tonight demonstrate that the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and the Camarillo Police Department are doing exactly that. Trust isn't something we ask for. It's something we earn and we intend to keep earning it. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Commander. Council, any questions? Mr. Kildee.

Yeah, Eric, as far as Ventura County, how long do we keep the data in our system here?

We keep our data for one year and then it's permanently deleted.

Is it... One, is it a sliding year? In other words, if let's say you get a hit April 24th, do you wait for next April 24th or is it a calendar year?

It's for the read itself. So if I take a read today, that read in one year will be out of our system. Another read, if it's captured tomorrow, that read will be a year and that'll be out of the system. If any ALPR images that we collect are identified as evidence in a case, we tag those as evidence and we keep those for longer, as long as it takes for the case to be adjudicated in any appeals process to have occurred. So some data can stay longer, but only when it becomes evidentiary.

And that data is not shared with any other federal agency. That's true. Talk about that retail theft task force, if you will. Is that funded by a grant or is that included in the amount of money that we spend on the cameras that we've installed?

That is the organized retail theft task force is funded by a grant. I think it was obtained about three years ago now. In addition to funding people to be on the task force that have put in a lot of time and effort in Camarillo, specifically out at our outlets, that grant funded the license plate readers that I mentioned, the 12 other license plate readers that are here and around Camarillo.

And that grant came from, did it come from the state, a private entity? Who did that grant? Who funded that grant? It came from the state of California. And how long is that grant going to be in place?

The grant, the positions from the grant end this year. So at the end of the year, those positions will be gone. They will pay for our license plate readers for one more year.

Okay. So we basically have the end of this year and perhaps one more year of funding that task force, if you will. Well, not so much the task force, but the cameras.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

question councilmember Santangelo thank you actually I had a whole long list of questions and you've answered most of them in the presentation I had questions about policies I had questions about well I'll ask this one um does the flock system allow users to search anyone they want

So we don't search for people. So it doesn't allow us to search for any people. It allows us to search for a specific license plate. It allowed us to search for a partial license plate. It allows us to search for a make. color or a vehicle type along with if the vehicle has a bike rack on it a roof rack or sticker in the sticker in the window or on the bumper but it does not allow us to search for people doesn't have that capability okay thank you and you said that any officer that is allowed to use the ALPR database has specific training yes okay

How long have ALPRs been in use? You said over a decade?

For our agency, we started using mobile ALPRs in 2013. Obviously, Flock is not in the business of mobile ALPRs, so we had a different company, but we as an agency have been using them since 2013. Prior to that, we used kind of a rudimentary way of doing it by using game cameras that had infrared sensors lenses on them that captured images as well. But they didn't go into a database and it was incredibly inefficient and ineffective and the license plate reader technology is much better now.

Okay. And who conducts the audits?

Our crime analysis unit conducts the audits and they fall under our special services division.

Okay.

And they're done weekly now?

They are done weekly.

Okay. And you said we're looking at other vendors. Into how much depth, how?

So we have, there's quite a few license plate reader vendors out there. We were previously a customer of Vigilant, which is owned by Motorola. We went away from them because we found the technology, they had fallen behind in some of the technology and capabilities. Axon also offers license plate readers, and we are testing some of their license plate readers. They are new to the license plate reader class, I would say, and so they're developing their license plate readers, and we haven't made any decisions yet on whether we want to go a different direction. We still have a contract, as you know, with Flock through September of next year.

all right um that's all the questions i have for you thank you again for your presentation um i do have a question for the city attorney if that's okay um would it be possible for the city council to write a policy a city policy that has any authority over flock and the sheriff's organization so if the policy would

would govern how Ventura County Sheriff's Department utilizes the flock system, we do not have employee authorization over that entity. We contract with them to provide us services, but we would not be able to require them to follow additional policies. Okay, thank you. That's all the questions I have.

Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Chief Tennyson, thank you very much for your presentation, which was very much in-depth. I have in-depth questions, too. I have quite a bit. So, the first question is, we've received several comments, emails, indicating that or regarding the City of Oxnard Police Department and LAPD's flaw camera suspension of ALPRs. You touched a little bit on LAPD. Can you speak to both and if you have any context to add regarding both departments?

Yes, I can. I know that the Oxnard Police Department did not cancel their contract. They were at the end of their contract. And so they were practicing good governance and they were looking at other LPR vendors and they're still doing that. I also know that Oxnard Police Department did add LPRs to all of their patrol vehicles. So I think that context is important in this. And again, the Los Angeles Police Department also did not cancel a contract. They were at the end of their contract and they are working on NEW CONTRACT LANGUAGE AND ADDITIONAL CONTRACT LANGUAGE AND BOTH FLOC AND LAPD HAVE INDICATED THAT THEY ARE LOOKING TO CONTINUE WITH THEIR RELATIONSHIP.

AND FOR THE CITY OF OXNARD THE LPR IS ADDED TO ALL THE VEHICLES THAT WAS AFTER YOU ACTUALLY ARE THE ONE WHO FOUND THE ERROR, CORRECT?

I REQUESTED THE AUDIT THAT UNCOVERED THE ERROR, YES. AND THEIR ADDITION OF LICENSE PLATE READERS HAS JUST BEEN WITHIN THE LAST FEW MONTHS.

OK, thank you for that information and clarification. And then the next one is regarding an article that I had shared with you earlier today. There was an article that was shared with me by multiple people regarding the city of Oshkosh. kind of like, I guess, like the store, but not the store, the city, and their termination of the FLOC contract, but continuation of ALPRs. The termination appeared to be due to what the chief perceived as inaccurate information from FLOC regarding heat maps. What do you know in terms of heat maps as they relate to FLOC?

I don't know what that chief, I read the same article that you shared with me. I don't know what he was talking about with a heat map, but I will look into it and get back to you.

Okay, that would be great. Thank you. And then the next question is regarding the... The error that occurred would you be able to because I believe there were three options right as to what the possibilities were Would you be able to inform us as to the update that you most have?

Yeah, so when we discovered that our data was open for searches, and we talked extensively with Flock about it, there were three explanations, three possible explanations. One was that a member of our agency toggled a switch that allowed us to share all of our data nationally. One was that somebody within Flock did that, and another possible explanation was that there was a system bug. All I can say definitively is that nobody from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office toggled a switch that opened up our data. So it was either a FLOC employee that did it or it was a system bug. And at the time, FLOC was doing some updates to their system. And so it seems like that's probably the most logical explanation.

That it was most likely a system bug.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. The next question is, and Chief Tennyson, you touched on that a bit on your presentation regarding the Fourth Amendment, and I wanted to ask a question about that and legal liability. And Rachel, I actually wanted to get your input on that. What Fourth Amendment lawsuits or legal challenges have involved fault cameras or similar ALPR reader systems, and given that I guess the second piece of the question is, given that the city of Camarillo's agreement is with the sheriff's department, is the city indemnified against any lawsuits, potential lawsuits in the future? And what liabilities remain within the city versus the county or the sheriff's?

So I can't answer how many, I haven't researched that, how many cases are out there. But as the commander noted, And I did review those cases. The general law is that the Fourth Amendment is not implicated by the use of this technology. As far as indemnification, that's correct. The city has a contract for sheriff services, and for the services that they provide, they are to indemnify us for their services.

Okay.

So what that means is that we are not liable. So if a claim comes in related to how this information was

access by the ventura county sheriff's department we would tender that lawsuit to the sheriff's department to defend the city okay and that's all written in our agreement for indian that would be correct for any of the services they're providing us okay thank you um and then this is a broader question but then i wanted to narrow it down to that system bug error so it's partially for you and then Chief Tennyson feel free to answer it as well ultimately who is accountable when flock technology is misused or when a security breach occurs or the use of a system results in a violation of state law or what protections does the city have in those circumstances and then the additional question that I have is more related to the system bug was that a violation of state law and if so who is accountable so either

I can answer to the part about who's accountable when the system is misused. If we discover or it's reported to us and we discover that one of our personnel misused it, we will conduct an internal investigation. And if discipline is warranted, discipline will be given. The breach, as it's been called, or the opening of our data for searching, we didn't violate SB 54. The sheriff's office didn't. We're not the ones who shared that data with anybody else. So we're not in violation of SB 34, SB 54. And so there's no crime for us to investigate in that. But from individual uses or individual misuses, Our personnel who are responsible for that are held accountable through our internal investigative process.

Okay. So for the system error itself, that's that in terms of what happened, then there's no one to hold accountable. I guess that's the part I'm not.

Well, I think the accountability aspect in that comes from a review of our contract. And if we feel that for some reason, our contract has been breached by that system bug, the accountability factor could be that we work to cancel our contract with flock and move to a potentially move to a different vendor.

Okay. Thank you. Just to clarify, so I understood there are 25 flock cameras, if we can go back to that, or that one slide, or how many flock cameras are currently operational?

We have 25 flock cameras that are operational in Camarillo that are paid for by the city. Okay. And we have 12 that are funded through the ORT task force.

Okay, and then this question is actually for Public Works, for you, Dave, actually. So many times, I get questions about like those cameras that are used more like in the streets to study street issues. So for example, when I was a part of the infrastructure and safety of that committee, we had concerns over some pedestrian issues and I had asked to have, for example, Village at the Park or over there by Pitts Ranch, on Flynn Road studied, and it's my understanding that some of those cameras went up. Can you just talk about what those look like and what they do and who owns all of that?

Sure, yes, the city owns that. Within Public Works, our traffic division, when we are collecting vehicle data for studies of certain road segments or intersections, one of the tools that we have is a temporary placement of a video camera that captures images and basically records when a shape of the vehicle crosses the image and records the number so we're collecting data for volumes numbers of vehicles and and it can sense which direction the vehicle is traveling so those are purely temporary placements for collecting traffic data okay and are these cameras connected to or accessible through the flock system at all no no they're totally independent installation

Okay, thank you very much. And then the next question, Councilmember Santangelo, you touched a little bit on the audits and oversight. So now the audits are happening on a weekly basis, is my understanding?

Yes.

And then in terms of who conducts the audits, is the VCOE who's experts on that?

Our Director of Crime Analysis conducts the audit.

Okay. And what exactly is measured or reviewed during each audit?

So we look through every single day's worth of searches and we are working to ensure that there are no or we're looking to ensure that there are no searches by agencies outside the state of California. No federal agencies and no other state or local agencies outside the state of California.

OK, I know that there is a transparency like portal or section in on the sheriff's web page. Are those audit findings available to the public? Is that something that's listed?

It's not listed on the on the transparency dashboard, but it's a public records requestable document, I guess so.

Okay. I'm just wondering, is that something that could be added? I mean, you're not finding anything, I guess.

It doesn't. The search, the audit itself, I don't believe creates a record. All we know is that the audit was done. I don't believe it creates an independent record that is something that we could post or release.

oh I see okay and then the next question was about alternatives if you can provide an update as to the alternatives but I think you already did that councilmember Santangelo asked that and then the next part is I actually had shared a a link with you, and for those at home, if you'd like to follow it, it's the Institute for Justice. It's their own database of ALPR abuse, and there's a way to kind of search how many incidents there have been. I understand there's over 18,000 police departments in the country, approximately. Is that about? That's probably right. Okay. And in California, you said how many? 57?

Well, we have 58 county sheriff's offices in California, but there's a lot of local municipalities as well. And I don't know what that number is.

Okay. So when looking on that link, it shows a total of eight incidents. And so what I wanted to do is read maybe some of these scenarios of incidents that happened and then your response in terms of how would that compare to the policy that we have in place or to that experience that we have in place here. Okay. So the first one is in February of 2026, a San Francisco officer violated the department's conflict of interest policy by obtaining flock images of a relative's stolen car and posting them to Instagram.

That would be a violation of our policy, policy 429, and we'd conduct an internal investigation.

Okay. And then in terms of the policy, what's set in there that would protect?

We are only to use ALPR systems for official law enforcement purposes.

Okay. And then through your audits, you would find that if somebody's searching?

Either an audit or somebody would report to us. If their license plate were posted on social media, most likely it would come from an external report to us.

OK. And then in November 2025, based on flock capture, officers mistook an innocent driver's car for one that was at the scene of an attempted carjacking. The driver was jailed for nearly one month. This was San Diego, California.

Yeah, so that, to me, that lacks context because there could be a whole host of reasons why that license plate was recorded as stolen. Perhaps it wasn't removed from the state's stolen vehicle system yet. Perhaps it was because it hadn't been recalled in a timely manner. Perhaps it was because the officers didn't have a policy that required them to check the alert. But I think as you read it to me, that it said it was reported stolen. So to me, there could be a number of explanations that don't necessarily mean the officers did anything wrong on that one.

Okay. And then this one. is from 2024, Riverside County, California. After being arrested for kidnapping his ex-fiancee deputy, this deputy allegedly used the department's flock system to track one of her friends in December of 2025. He was convicted.

So I guess similar to the... Yeah, that sounds like a pretty obvious policy violation.

Okay. All right. Let me see here. Well, I think those are all the questions that I had. Those are all the questions that I had. Thank you.

You're welcome. One quick question since all of the rest have been asked. You said that the SO has an MOU with 57 other sheriff's departments in California.

No, with 58 other law enforcement agencies within California.

Does that give them unfettered access to our LPR data, or do they still have to make a request that your agency would authorize?

No, that MOU gives them the ability to search our database as long as they follow the rules of entering a case number, a criminal offense code, and a reason for the search.

And an agency that you don't have an MOU with could still make a request to the sheriff's office.

They absolutely could.

And that is verified and approved by a human being. They can't just go in and search.

That's correct.

And the breach that you talked about that allowed nationwide unfettered access of the LPR data for the sheriff's office, That ability has been completely negated for all California law enforcement on ALPRs. Is that correct with FLOC?

That's correct. FLOC wrote into their programming code now the inability for any agency outside the state to be searching California law enforcement agencies' data.

Okay. Thank you. We are going to take a quick 10-minute recess before we open up the public comment portion. City attorney and staff so we will reconvene the City Council meeting Madam clerk. Do we have any public speakers on this item?

Yes mayor. We have about 20. I'm sorry 12 People wanting to speak each speaker will have three minutes when your time expires You will be muted and we will move on to the next speaker Remote participation will be called after all in speakers have completed The first speaker is Blanca

Welcome again.

I did want to bring something up I felt really important. It's going to go into my planned comment. But if you don't want the accusations that cameras are facing children or churches, then don't have them face children in churches. There are two that I'm aware of because it's in close proximity to my home. On the corner of Las Posas and Crestview is a camera facing the parking lot exit of St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church with a peripheral view, in my opinion, of Nancy Bush Park. There's also another camera just south of Las Poces where it is directly placed where Las Poces Elementary School is to the right-hand side. You could very easily take that camera more south away from the children at that school. So don't give the perception of them tracking children and churchgoers. This City Council chose willful ignorance over due diligence when you expanded the City's flock cameras last year, despite constituent after constituent coming before you to express serious concerns that you chose to ignore. After persistence from the community, Commander Tennyson reached out to flock to verify safeguards that had been promised to the city and to inquire how to best respond to the criticism this council continued to receive. It was only then that someone, anyone in Ventura County apparently thought to independently audit the data. And what did the data reveal? That safeguards officials believed were in place were not working as assumed. A feature believed to have been disabled had been re-enabled, allowing hundreds of thousands of searches, by out-of-state agencies, including searches connected to immigration enforcement. So who falls on the sword of this incompetence? Commander Tennyson, Sheriff Fryhoff, Flock, or this sitting council? The people who chose to expand the surveillance system while ignoring the very warnings your constituents brought before you. There is now a class action lawsuit involving Flock Surveillance Network that specifically points to the Ventura County incident. According to allegations in that lawsuit, Flock reportedly could not determine exactly what caused the feature to be re-enabled. Possible explanations reported included Flock employee, a system bug, or someone within the sheriff's office. Think about that. We entrusted the surveillance of our community for a for-profit company, and when a critical safeguard failed, we apparently cannot even say with certainty who turned it back on or how it happened. It is not a coincidence that soon after this breach of our data occurred, immigration enforcement escalated here in our community and has since directly harmed hundreds of those very people you took an oath to protect and serve. Shame on all of you. Commander Tennyson, you came before this council and this community on March 11th and assured us that FLOC will be the best option still and that the sheriff's office is now conducting daily audits. Today, I learned it's now weekly. When was that communicated to us or this council that we were no longer doing daily audits? And what do all these other cities see that Camarillo has chosen to ignore when they have decided to discontinue their contracts with FLOC?

Thank you.

I see negligence.

Larry Gasson.

Good afternoon, council.

Welcome.

We've heard a lot about data being sequestered and then trapped and then deleted locally, but not a word about the data that's gone to the outside providers and how long they keep it. As we all know, data is precious, storage is cheap, and that data will be used at some point in time for reasons it wasn't initially stated. Those are my concerns, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Michael Cordell, followed by Lynn Dines.

Welcome, sir. Thank you.

Appreciate you really looking into this whole issue. It really is concerning to a lot of people. I appreciate that presentation. It was really eye-opening and clarifying a lot of different things in my mind. I appreciate that we are doing due diligence and that our police department is actually looking at these things really hard and answering the questions that people are having and concerns that people are having. So I want to just commend you for that, and thank you. I've been a resident of Camarillo for about 40 years, and I'm really proud of what our city does, and particularly our police department. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Lynn Dines. I've been a resident of Camarillo for over 40 years. I'm here today to express my alarm at the growing use of flock cameras in our community. We're told they keep us safe, but there are increasing concerns that these cameras are being used to create a nationwide mass surveillance network. sometimes illegally connecting agencies outside of our area with our local police agencies, including the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Recent searches from outside California have targeted immigration information about Ventura County residents. and searches in the San Bernardino area not only targeted immigrants, but immigration protests. Concerns about targeted searches into personal information and targeting women seeking reproductive care outside of their state are also increasing. The ACLU considers flock cameras a major civil liberties threat that enables unwarranted mass surveillance of the public, infringing on our Fourth Amendment rights. Flock cameras detail data on every car that passes by, not just your license plate, but everything from the scratches on the front end to the bumper sticker on the back. And they do it regardless of whether you are suspected of a crime or not. Then they upload the data to a national database that is accessible to law enforcement agencies with a Flock contract, sorry. and the system uses AI to catalog and match data for everyone passing by one of their cameras, potentially revealing personal details that have nothing to do with a crime, including religious affiliation, political activities, and other associations. For these reasons, I urge you to cancel the flock contracts currently in place and remove the cameras from our city. Thank you.

Thank you.

Matthew O'Neill.

Welcome.

Thank you. All right. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. My name is Matt O'Neill. I've been a longtime resident of Ventura County, 26 years altogether throughout the county, the last two years being a Camarillo. First off, I want to thank Chief for giving a pretty robust presentation on the benefits of ALPR and all the good things they've done for the city. And I don't think anyone here who opposes ALPRs would disagree, right? I think everyone kind of has an understanding that these devices can be used for immense good. There's two things, though, I wanted to really focus on tonight. The first of which being the 2025 data breach, which we've talked about kind of ad nauseum tonight, so I'm not going to hash out all the facts again. But I wanted to bring up a really important point regarding that data breach in particular. And Vice Mayor, you kind of were hitting at it in regards to kind of accountability. When we talk about ALPRs, a word that constantly gets brought up is transparency. Now, I did a FOIA request about a month back, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Office was very forthcoming. provided me with all the data that I requested, and the data that they couldn't provide, they provided a reason for that. Now, the problem is, is I don't trust the partner agency. And I think everybody in this room would admit that the partner agency probably hasn't displayed the best track record of being transparent. And in regards to the 2025 data breach, It took almost 10 months for us to independently audit that data and come to the conclusion that there was unlawfully shared data. Why wasn't Flock coming to us? They understood in March of 2025 that that data had been compromised. They understood that that data was illegally shared. And instead of reaching out to the partner agencies, alerting us that that had happened, they sat on it. They hit it. They didn't tell us anything. Now, I can only assume the reason for that. But that assumption is that they understood that admitting a data breach of that size would impact profit. They understood that a data breach that size would impact public trust. So I really, really want to put that on display for all of you, that some of us just don't trust Flock. And I think that's understandable. I think that's okay. We don't trust the vendor we're with. And I also think if we continue to go with this vendor that we don't trust.

Your time's up, sir. Thank you.

Alina Vane, followed by Bruce Little.

Good evening and welcome.

Good evening. Oh, I'm short. Okay. I just wanted to come up here and speak on how I'm extremely against all flock and ALPRs that have been put up in our community extremely quickly. And I think it should be concerning to everyone here that these cameras have been slowly and surely popping up everywhere in Camarillo and how easily it was for mass surveillance in our community to become so prevalent. Across our country, we are seeing dozens of cases of misuse of these cameras. The information they store on these cameras in their system to stalk minorities, especially women. Flock specifically has been used to investigate random citizens without just cause. Just look at all these people finding out their license plates were scanned through Flock on haveibeenflocked.com, for example. there's no evidence that these cameras are making our community safer. There's studies that Flock approach us with that say that Flock and ALPRs create community, like they're, making sure that there's less crime in our communities. But all of these studies are paid for by flock. So it's going to have a lot of bias in both their research methods and conclusions. If the surveillance made our community safer, we would see less Amber Alerts, more human trafficking victims would be saved, and more carjackings and robberies would be solved in no time. Mass surveillance doesn't make our community safer. It only strips away our privacy and our autonomy as individuals. These cameras are not just taking photos of your license plates, and I truly believe that even after hearing the presentation earlier. They are feeding their AI models. Flock cameras are specifically gathering information about you and your vehicle to create a unique fingerprint about you in their system. Do you have Bluetooth turned on on your mobile device that you go in your car with? Some ALPRs are starting to add Bluetooth readers to their devices to now associate you with your car and Bluetooth device. This means if you aren't in your car and you're strolling past the camera, either by foot or in another car, they know that you're there. Flock has also recently introduced AI models into their Flock system. I don't think Camry is using it yet, but I don't like that as a company they're introducing it. The media outlet Wired recently got code to this AI, and it says, And I quote, the code describes 45 tools at the AI's disposal, giving it access to plate scans, camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, commercial databases that contain social security numbers, date of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and the data goes on. This AI can also be prompted to find people within a given area during a length of time using physical descriptions alone. And I just want you to know that this was a Wire article that was...

Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you.

Bruce Little, followed by Chris Espinosa.

Welcome, sir.

Thank you. Most of what I have to say has already been said, so I'm going to eliminate it. And, Chief... I did a count today, and I think I counted between Central Avenue and Santa Rosa Valley, almost 50 cameras. So maybe some are outside of the city limits, but there's a number of cameras here that are higher than what you said. My name is Bruce Little. I live in Camarillo. I'm going to eliminate most of this. We all want safe neighborhoods. Public safety does not require us to surrender our basic right to live without being continuously cataloged, searched, and tracked. Most information from a license plate camera may seem narrow, and you've accurately described what it collects. So I'm not going to go over that again. But I am going to hit the part that the lady just before me started to bring up, and that's that flood cameras as they exist now won't stay the same. They're going to change. And they're not going to need the solar panel. And the camera will change. It will become an R radio frequency technology. And the RS systems can detect signals emitted by cell phones, vehicles, toll tags, Bluetooth devices, Wi-Fi devices, and other connected equipment. Individually, these signals may appear anonymous. Combined with cameras, location record, and software, they can become a powerful identity trail which devices travel together, which locations they repeatedly visit, which patterns suggest work, worship, medical appointments, political meetings, family relationships, private associations, etc., The danger is not only what the government intends to do today, the danger is what the government possible, what the government is going to do tomorrow with the stores of personal data that they will have existed by then. As Cambria considers existing our new surveillance technology It must require a clear demonstrated need, independent public oversight, strict limits on data collection and retention, not a year, more like a few weeks. A warrant requirement for searches that reconstructs a person's movements, a ban on using RI identities to build personal level tracking, databases used for tracking immigration, you can't do that either, for protests or political surveillance, public audits, and there need to be consequences for any violations. But the better choice is to reject systems designed for mass collection in the first place. We should invest in proven people-centered safety. Let us choose safety. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you.

Chris Espinosa, followed by Joel Lassen.

Hello again, Mr. Espinoza. Welcome this time.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. I'm here to speak on behalf of the community with the very serious concerns around flock cameras. I think that was an excellent presentation by the Chief, but I think it's lacking in a number of ways. You know, threats to our civil liberties only come inches at a time. And the chief talked about how important trust is to law enforcement. And I agree with him on that. Trust is important and sacrosanct. I think the issue at hand here is not whether or not the sheriff's office can maintain that trust. It's trust in other agencies. We have documented cases of DHS using back doors, using side doors to access information from flock cameras in Washington state and here in California, in Mountain View. The ACLU has documented this. 404 Media has documented this. So the risks to our community are real, despite the sheriff's office assertions. He talked about the civil liberties implications with the Fourth Amendment, and he mentioned the Fifth Circuit case. What he did not mention is Chatterjee versus the United States, which was just ruled upon in the Supreme Court at the end of June of this year. And it holds that individuals retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the aggregate records of their physical movements. Now that case was just ruled on. There will be plenty of cases to come that are going to test the limits of that. And I think the risks to our community are serious. particularly the most vulnerable among us. We need to take these concerns seriously. I don't think that we need flock infrastructure. I do agree with some of the other speakers that we're creating and contributing to a national surveillance infrastructure that is ultimately going to put us all at risk. I think the chief is underselling his department. He presented four slides worth of limited data and anecdotal stories of how beneficial flock cameras are. But who's to say that those cases would not have been resolved by good old-fashioned police work? So I think I would urge the council to seriously reconsider this arrangement and the infrastructure that's being created here. Thank you. Thank you.

JOEL LASSEN FOLLOWED BY SPENCER RITCHIE.

WELCOME. THANK YOU.

SO I'M HERE TO ALSO EXPRESS MY DISAPPROVAL IN THE ADOPTION OF FAULT CAMERAS IN THE CITY OF CAMERA RIO. AND AS IT WAS ADDRESSED AND YOU All the other speakers have really hit on my concerns with it as well, and I appreciate the presentation that was given. I think that the statement that this is not a Fourth Amendment violation is incorrect. At best, it is not entirely clear, but there have been other cases as well that have called into question the use of aggregate data to be able to retrace someone's movement throughout it. The Supreme Court ruled on Carpenter versus the United States. And the only other part that I will add to this is that I don't approve of a nationwide architecture of cameras capturing and collecting and storing this data. Thank you. Thank you.

Spencer Ritchie, followed by Bruce Little.

Welcome, Spencer.

Welcome. Hi. Good evening. I am Spencer Ritchie, and I have a few comments to make on our Flock Alper cameras, which, by the way, I absolutely oppose their presence and, in fact, the presence of many Alper cameras in our town. But... That was kind of a given considering what I've said before. But I will add to this. So that presentation that you gave, or actually Sheriff Tennyson just gave, explaining the examples of why we do actually need all four cameras in our town, like this many all four cameras, especially after all. Yeah, that was actually pathetic, like how ignorant you thought we'd be and just how, you know, able to just accept that. what you just said as, as you know, anything besides, you know, like blatant propaganda and lies and half truths and just overall denial of reality. And you know what that actually reminds me of? It reminds me of like propaganda and stuff and the former Soviet union and Eastern block. It really does. And, um, And you know what else about the former Soviet Union in Eastern Bloc, this whole building like flock mass surveillance all per this situation is clearly building up to? The fact that the mass surveillance states of the Soviet Union in Eastern Bloc, they took advantage of what they had as far as mass surveillance went, and they went after people who spoke out against what the regime was doing. And And, you know, while, you know, it worked for, you know, 40 years or so, but ultimately what happened was they could not entirely fully suppress that, you know, their own people did not like the regime. And, you know, in 1989 for the Eastern Bloc and then, you know, by the end of 1991 for the Soviet Union, All those governments, those regimes that had put that in place, they were gone. And at least the Eastern Bloc's case, it was because the people had had enough of the regime. So you're not actually being slick or clever in pushing this mass surveillance and stuff. Thank you. Good evening.

Thank you.

John Parson is next, please.

Good evening, welcome. Thank you, counsel.

And thanks to our law enforcement officer here tonight. Could you pull this? There you go. Yeah, there we go. Thank you. So I just want to say quickly here, I've lived in Camarillo most of my adult life, and I trust the best intentions of our city council and our law enforcement here. I'm also a tech guy. I have a bachelor of degree in science, and I've held key positions in multiple tech companies here in California that are household names. Just now, with all due respect, hearing your remarks about unresearched hunches and most likely bugs and things like that isn't just familiar in massive network systems like I've been in on, maybe responsible for in some cases. It's the norm. In tech and big data, we don't need to see your face. We already know where you are within three feet. And in a car, probably even without a phone, we know where you are. So we want to catch the bad guys, right? We also want to preserve our rights and freedoms, including our privacy here. And as working class people, make the best use of our money, shop deals, check the ingredients, get rid of those overpriced subscriptions. I'm not against food. I'm also not in favor of McDonald's being the only source of food in the community, and certainly not being forced to have a single subscription to eat every meal there. My point is that since we don't control this system, we shouldn't lean heavily into flock. The problem is regardless of what we do here in Camarillo or Ventura County and aim to do with this data or what we believe we're being sold, with flock it's not under our control and they are opaque. When a crime occurs in a public setting, we'd like to have a witness. In fact, if you've got more witnesses, the better. But what if all the witnesses worked for one person and their accounts and all of the events belonged to that person who kept the information and made a business out of selling it to the very law enforcement that needed it in the first place? Selling it and parts of it and derived parts of it, we don't even know who gets it. There's lots of breaches. So just what I want to say is I urge the council to not be lured into reliance on one provider if you're going to use surveillance systems. We know the model of big tech is to take things with terms that we don't like to hear and give them nice names like acronyms or to call teens who spend their lives on Instagram all day not addiction but user engagement. And then it's too late and the damage is done. So I think all agreements for surveillance systems should be publicly available with absolutely no redactions. All data and metadata from the equipment and systems in Camarillo should be exclusive property of Camarillo as a requirement in the contract. So the citizens of Camarillo IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE DATA IS USED. THE DATA IS USED. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

Hello. This is actually the first council meeting I've ever been to, and I think that's just going to speak on the importance that I view for this topic. I do not believe that you have any personal malice against us or against Camarillo. However, As stated before, I don't think anyone here has a distrust necessarily with license plate readers or our cops who are serving us, but it is this larger entity that we don't have any control over. As stated previously, they're going to be able to flock is going to be able to update their systems whenever they choose to on any of their conditions. And we won't have any power to actually address how they access this information. And. Even though that there's been no records of our department or our county misusing these systems, there's definitely a plethora of abuse of these systems being used in other areas and other parts of our state and other parts of our country. And this mass surveillance state essentially is just a ticking time bomb that I would rather not... be on the other side when this explodes. I do not think these AI-powered systems should be in our cities should be near our schools. There are three on Santa Rosa that are right next to Adolfo Camarillo High School, and two of them are pointing towards the school. I know it was noted about angles, talking about maximizing the proficiency to read the license plates. However, they are still angled towards the school, and even if Kids aren't the goal of these cameras. They are still in the backgrounds of these photos, and we may not be able to look up the specifics of people. We might only have the ability to look up. the vehicle's information, but that doesn't mean that other entities and other people have that power to focus on individuals and still use these cameras and systems to track people. So even though it is packaged in safety, many things are going to be packaged as a good thing for us. Underneath that very thin blanket of safety is just a plethora of A LOT OF NEGATIVE THINGS FOR US, THE PEOPLE, SOUNDS VERY OVERWHELMINGLY THAT WE DO NOT APPROVE OF FLOT CAMERAS BEING USED IN OUR CITY OR IN GENERAL, SO I WOULD REALLY PUSH YOU TO REALLY CONSIDER OUR THOUGHTS AND CONSIDER WHAT WE THINK WILL MAKE OUR CITY SAFER. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

Good evening. Hello, Mayor. Hi. Thank you for your presentation. I do have a couple of questions. Number one, does Camarillo also have the intersection cameras that photo vehicles and drivers that fail to stop at red lights and stop signs? And if we do, would that information be cross-posted with FLOC, at least locally? Also, how is the data kept unhackable and who's responsible for that? Is that flock or is that our local police department? And my last question is about three or four slides from the end of the presentation. There was a note about a burglary in June and And that said the ALPR helped find the car and identified the suspect. If they're not taking pictures of the people, how did it help identify the suspect? And those are my questions. Also, I thank you for the information about the library programs. I thought that was wonderful. And I loved the little Renaissance Fair. Okay, that's it.

Thank you.

We will now move on to remote public comment. For those waiting to speak, please press star nine to raise your hand. When your name is called, press star six to unmute yourself and begin your comment. The first name is Holly.

Holly, go ahead. Holly, can you hear us? Okay, Madam Clerk, let's go on to the next one.

F. Samuel Heredia.

What was the name again?

F. Samuel Heredia. Please press star six and begin your comment.

Welcome. Can you hear us? Okay, the next one, Madam Clerk?

There are no other callers.

Are they still online? They're not showing up on my screen.

Let me just repeat one more time. Please press star nine, Holly. Holly and Samuel Heredia, you need to press star nine.

Okay, thank you very much. With that, for the rest of my fellow council members in the audience, this is a receiving file item. But if the council has any more comments or questions, go ahead and ask them now. Vice Mayor, go ahead. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

All right. Give me just a second here. All right, so I have a statement to make. I understand the concerns raised by the public. I have read emails, I've talked to residents, I've listened carefully tonight, and I've listened to other previous nights. I acknowledge that there are valid and legitimate concerns about the misuse of ALPRs, about surveillance, about privacy, about transparency. and about sharing of data across agencies. These are real problems and as a leader in this community, I take them all seriously. I appreciate Commander Tennyson's presentation. I think it's extremely important that we as a council and as a community continue to have updates. Additionally, this council needs to remain open to critique so that we are able to remain agile and not complacent in our decision making. and that's exactly what I intend to do. I will be open to new ideas and information, continue to review pertinent data and reports, and remain vigilant with VCSO and especially the use of flock cameras. I appreciate the public being here tonight and previous nights, and I hope that you continue to show up and hold us all accountable. Please know that I am listening. I take your perspectives and concerns to heart and into consideration. As one of five council members, I will do everything in my power to keep asking questions, keep being responsive, and push for a better way forward where residents feel heard and represented. As a council member, my oversight is my responsibility and I take it very seriously. I am especially concerned about Flock as our ALPR vendor. We should acknowledge that there are very real examples of its misuse across the nation. And because of that, I would like to ask my fellow council members for support in taking actions to address these concerns in three ways. I would formally like to ask that VCSO seriously explore other vendors of ALPRs so that if we should decide to move away from flock, we are prepared to act quickly. If this is already happening, I would like to have a presentation on the options. Number two, as our city attorney has explained, a city policy would have no authority over the use of flock cameras or over ALPRs. My original idea was for us to explore writing such a policy. Instead, I would ask that our policy committee review the flock contract for any language that needs to be changed or added for oversight. I believe that it is our responsibility to understand that contract. And last, in the interest of transparency and due diligence, I would like us to consider establishing a citizen's committee for this issue that would get regular updates, have continued open dialogue about public concerns with Commander Tennyson. This would allow such a committee to provide presentations and input to the council on this issue, which gives us two sources of information rather than one. There is a clear engagement and concern from the community on this issue, and we as a council should welcome and encourage their input. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Santangelo, and thank you to each and every one of you who came tonight, who sent your letters, who reached out, who I've spoken with. Thank you for sharing your concerns. AND I UNDERSTAND THAT TODAY IS AND I UNDERSTAND THAT TODAY IS A RECEIVE AND FILE REPORT. A RECEIVE AND FILE REPORT. AT THE SAME TIME, I DO WANT TO AT THE SAME TIME, I DO WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE VERY REAL CONCERNS ACKNOWLEDGE THE VERY REAL CONCERNS THAT HAVE BEEN RAISED BY THAT HAVE BEEN RAISED BY MEMBERS OF OUR CAMARILLO I believe that we can support public safety while also being thoughtful and deliberate about privacy, transparency, accountability, and appropriate oversight. I do believe that ALPRs, or automated license plate readers, can be an important tool for public safety and law enforcement. At the same time, I share concerns now, as we all did at the last meeting when this was discussed, regarding FLOC itself as a vendor. And I believe at this time I would support that, which is I think it is appropriate for us to take a closer look at the alternative vendors and the safeguards surrounding the technology of its use. So I would support that, Councilmember Santangelo as well. On a personal level, as someone who was a victim of a violent crime as a child My goal is also to find the right balance, protecting our community while also protecting the privacy and trust of the people that we serve. I am open to efforts to determine whether additional language to the agreement or safeguards are needed to strengthen oversight, accountability, transparency, privacy protections, and compliance with state law. So bringing that to the policy committee I would be in agreement with. I WOULD ALSO, I ACTUALLY ALSO I WOULD ALSO, I ACTUALLY ALSO THINK IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO THINK IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO MEET FOLKS WHERE THEY ARE. MEET FOLKS WHERE THEY ARE. AND IN ADDITION TO THAT IS AND IN ADDITION TO THAT IS ADDING MORE TRANSPARENCY. ADDING MORE TRANSPARENCY. I KNOW THERE'S LIKE THE SHERIFF'S I KNOW THERE'S LIKE THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT, THEY HAVE THEIR OWN DEPARTMENT, THEY HAVE THEIR OWN FAQ ON THE CITY WEBSITE. FAQ ON THE CITY WEBSITE. I'D REALLY LIKE THIS TO BE ADDED I'D REALLY LIKE THIS TO BE ADDED TO THE HOT TOPICS. PORTION AND ACTUALLY WE CAN LINK THAT TO THE VIDEO THAT FROM CHIEF TENNESON TODAY I THINK THAT WILL BE VERY HELPFUL AS WELL. I THINK THAT ADDING THAT AND HOW THAT INFORMATION IS COLLECTED AND ALL THOSE FAQ'S I THINK WOULD BE HELPFUL. IN ADDITION WHEN I TALK ABOUT MEETING PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE I THINK YOU KNOW WHEN SOMEBODY REACHES OUT to me or i know chief tennyson you've done a lot of work in in responding and meeting people uh for coffee and just trying to talk about what what this is and what this isn't um and we can continue doing that but it's not as efficient as if we were to have maybe a town hall or more of a community q a on this topic and so I REALLY WOULD LIKE US TO, I'D LIKE TO GET SUPPORT TO CONTINUE THIS DIALOGUE IN A FORMAT THAT IS MORE ACCESSIBLE AND WELCOMING TO BROADER GROUPS OF RESIDENTS. I THINK HAVING IT AT A PLACE LIKE THE CAMARILLO LIBRARY WOULD BE A MORE WELCOMING LOCATION FOR MANY AND THEN RESIDENTS CAN REALLY FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS AND HEAR CLEAR ANSWERS FROM STAFF AND I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO EXPAND THAT OUTREACH TO PARENTS EXPAND THAT OUTREACH TO PARENTS AND FAMILIES THROUGH OUR LOCAL AND FAMILIES THROUGH OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS AND ALSO EXPLORE THAT SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES THROUGH OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS AND ALSO EXPLORE THAT POSSIBILITY IN THE POTENTIAL SCHOOLS SCHOOLS AND CITY COMMITTEE THAT I HAD AND CITY COMMITTEE THAT I HAD ALSO BROUGHT UP TO BE FORMED um so that being said i really do appreciate the passion and the thoughtfulness that residents have brought to this discussion um i think that people can have different perspectives on the use of alpr technology and still share these same fundamental goals which is keeping our community safe protecting our individual privacy and maintaining public trust I do believe and I am very hopeful that I think we can do all three. My hope is that we can continue this conversation in a constructive way and then take these additional steps that are necessary to ensure that these policies reflect both our commitment to public safety and our responsibility to the community that we serve. In terms of the, I really like that quote from the presentation. CHIEF TENNESON, WHEN YOU INDICATED TRUST ISN'T SOMETHING WE ASK FOR, IT'S SOMETHING WE EARN. AND I THINK THAT CAN BE A GUIDING PRINCIPLE AS WE THINK ABOUT HOW TO CONTINUE COMMUNITY OUTREACH, HOW WE CAN DECIDE ON DIFFERENT ALTERNATIVES AND MOVE FORWARD WITH ALWAYS THAT MISSION IN MIND. SO THAT BEING SAID, THANK YOU SO MUCH. AND JUST TWO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE. THERE WAS A COMMENT ABOUT that agreements should be available to the public. My understanding is they are, or are they not?

Every agreement is part of the agenda packet that was presented to council.

Okay, so any agreements, if they're updated, that would still be available to the public? Yes. Okay. And then the other one is, there was a comment about if the systems get updated, they can be done so without the approval of the sheriffs, if FLOC updates their systems.

I don't have any information on that. I'd have to check with FLOC how that works.

Okay. So, yeah, that being said, that's where I kind of stand on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kildee.

I'll try to make my comments relatively brief. Been up here a while and I'm not here to sway anybody's opinion on this. Most if not all of us are adults in this room and everybody can make up their own mind on this. However, I do want to talk about the facts here, and they're the facts that I see, and they're the facts with the Ventura County Sheriff, and they're the facts with Camarillo specifically. I was elected as a Camarillo City Council member. That is my purvey, that is my goal and objective, and that's who I will continue to serve. Fact number one, courts have rendered that these are legal to use. Fact number two is that they're at fixed locations, they read your license plate and they read the color of your car and they could read the type of car that you're driving. Fact number three is Ventura County has been way out in the forefront of this and realized that there could be some misgivings in this and that is why they put in real significant guardrails on this. fact number four there's been no false arrests in ventura county that i'm aware of fact number five is that this data is collected and it's deleted after one year fact number six they do help crime i'm going to paraphrase a little bit of commander tennyson bank juggling mail theft residential burglary, a lot of it comes from outside individuals here. Fact number six, there's weekly and daily audits on this. Fact number seven, we do use technology in this city. The fact is that it can be breached. That is specifically why we have guardrails on this, to try to proceed and make sure that they don't happen, and if they do, there's consequences. Fact number eight. We do not share any of this information with federal agencies. Fact number nine. I voted on this five years ago. Previous council members and current council members voted on this for one very simple reason. They fight crime. That's all they do here is we approve this under the purvey of fighting crime. Another fact is we pay about $87,000 for this. It's $250,000 to put another sheriff and a car on our streets here. I think we get a lot of value on this. I'm fully aware that there could be some misgivings on this. I don't take that lightly. And that is why, once again, that we put guardrails in place on this. Commander Tennyson has explained and the Ventura County Sheriff's Office has explained that there's four very important things with all of this. Transparency, safeguard, accountability and results. I think that we have gotten a lot of real good data, a lot of good information and they've been very effective. Having said all that, I am not married to flock. If there's another organization or business that comes out here that can accentuate what we do to protect our residents of the city, count me in. Thank you.

Thank you. Just a couple of quick follow-ups for the chief. We had a question from a member of the audience. Do we have red light cameras at any of our intersections or from our public works director? We do not. And she had one more question, and I'm going to forget what it was because I didn't write it down. I guess I'd also ask that through the city manager, Commander Tennyson, look into the two cameras that Blanca specifically talked about. And also somebody mentioned another, also the high school area. Look at those cameras and just report back to us through the city manager. And I think with that, Mr. City Manager, you've heard the request of two of our council members. And so we'd expect some follow-up at some point. So again, this is received in file. Thank you very much for your attendance, Madam City Attorney.

This is on closed session?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, we did conduct closed session earlier this evening on two matters, and there was no reportable action taken.

Thank you. Thank you, and with that, this council meeting is adjourned.