City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, thank you. We have reconvened from our closed session and by a five to zero vote, the city council authorized and directed the city attorney's office to defend the case of Nassar V. Hanna and all as identified by the case number on the city council meeting agenda. With that, I will adjourn the special meeting at 6.28 p.m. And now it will turn over to our regular meeting. At this time, I would like to call to order the Elk Grove City Council regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, and the time is 6.29 p.m. Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. This meeting of the Elk Grove City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cablecast on Metro Cable Channel 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and DirecTV U-verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.saccounty.gov. Tonight's meeting replays will be on Monday, September 14th at 1 p.m. and Wednesday, September 16th at 9 a.m. and on Metro Channel 14. Once posted, the recordings of this and previous meetings can be viewed on demand at the www.elkgrove.gov or youtube.com slash MetroCable14. For members of the participating audience who may have personal electronic devices, please place them on silent mode during the meeting or on mute when you are not speaking. Hillgrove City Council welcomes, appreciates, and encourages participation in the City Council meeting. City Council requests that you limit your presentation to three minutes per person per item so that all present will have time to participate. City Council reserves the right to reasonably limit the total time for public comment on any particular notice agenda item as it may deem necessary. Pursuant to resolution number 2026-099, no individual speaker concerning public comment may address the City Council for more than three minutes per item. If you wish to address the Council during the meeting, Please complete a blue speaker card, which can be found at the back of the chamber and provided to Assistant City Clerk Brenda Haggard prior to consideration of the agenda item. And for our folks that are participating in our Zoom environment, you would use that raise hand feature as we move through our agenda and we will have prompts for when we are to the particular parts of the agenda where we have public comment opportunities. And so that raise hand feature is what will put you in the queue for our folks that are attending online. Speaking of folks attending online, for this evening we have by remote participation, Vice Mayor Darren Suen. And just wanted to make sure, Vice Mayor, if you want to unmute yourself and just give us a sound check just to make sure we got you dialed in.

Yeah, thanks, Jason. Darren Soon here, Vice Mayor. There's no one in the room or around me period. Thank you.

Thank you for that. And that's part of our government regulation is just for the vice mayor to verify that there are no individuals over the age of 18 with him from where he's participating from. And he is participating as part of just cause for travel with affiliated with a business matters with a local agency that he serves on. So with that, I will be moving forward into our roll call for this evening. And for the roll call, I will start with Council Member Robles. Present. Council Member Spese. Present. Council Member Brewer. Present. Vice Mayor Suen. Here. And Mayor Sing-Allen. We have a quorum.

All right, thank you. Next up is our land acknowledgement. Would Council Member Robles please read the land acknowledgement this evening?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We honor, respect, and acknowledge Elk Grove's first inhabitants, the Plain Miwoks, who lived as sovereign caretakers of this land in these waters since time immemorial. We commemorate and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Sacramento County who endured because of the bravery, resilience, determination of their ancestors, tribal members, and leaders.

Thank you. Next up is our Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Spieth, please lead us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. At this time, please join us for a brief moment of silence. All right. Next up is our approval of the agenda. May I get a motion? Second. So moved. Oh, we got to take roll call.

And we will have a roll call vote as we have a participant teleconferencing. So for the roll call vote for the approval of the agenda, we'll be starting with Council Member Robles. Yes. Yes. No. Yeah. There we go. Aye and nay. Council Member Spees. Aye. Council Member Brewer. Aye. Vice Mayor Suin. Aye. And Mayor Sing-Allen. Aye. We have an agenda.

All right, thank you. Next up, we have a presentation, presentation of a recognition to Elk Grove youth's baseball 10-year-old and under all-star team for outstanding performance in the 2026 Regional and World Series Championship. So let's call forward. And reading the recognition will be Council Member Brewer. All right. Hi. All right, Council Member Brewer.

How are you guys doing? Good. Coach Bowden, thank you for having us here. Thank you for bringing the guys here. Definitely quite an accomplishment. You guys had a great summer. You had made great memories. You made some good friends along the way. And you played a fun sport. all summer long, and thank goodness that we had nice weather to make it all the much more worth it. But we definitely want to say congratulations and to say how proud we are of you, of what you've done this year, because believe it or not, you're the first Elk Grove baseball team to actually make it to the World Series. And so for Elk Grove 10U Blue, great job. It's like, not only did you guys perform really well in the Pacific Southwest tournament here in Elk Grove, Went out to the World Series. Major Mark won the first three games. The game that really impressed me the most is the game where you won the international game. That was really cool to see. I was able to see that live stream. And so you can imagine me sitting in my office watching you guys play while I had my own crazy stuff going on. But that's a whole different story. But it was really fun watching you guys play and having a good time and really putting your mark out there. So I'm so happy for you guys, especially knowing that you guys had to raise money, sold a lot of candy. I even sat out there and hung out with you guys one day. And so it was definitely worth of all the memories that we all take with us from this summer going forward. And so on that note, I wanna present you with the Certificate of Achievement. presented to Elk Grove Youth Baseball's All-Stars 10-year-old team, our 10U 2026 Pacific Southwest Regional Champions. On behalf of the City of Elk Grove City Council, we are pleased to congratulate Elk Grove's 10U Elk Grove youth baseball's all-stars, the first 10-year-old and under all-star team to make and compete in the Cal Ripken World Series, playing August 6th through 15th, 2026, finishing fifth out of 28 teams, representing the best teams in the country and from around the world. We're very proud of the hard work and dedication displayed by the coaches, team players, and parents. Signed on this ninth day of September, 2026, congratulations.

All right. Your city is proud of you. We're gonna come down and present you with the recognition. Congratulations to you all.

Let's line it up. Let's get you all here. And the adults in the back. Are we good? We got it? Can I get some of you?

Rob, you want to come on? And who has the certificate?

Perfect. There you go, buddy.

Here we go. You guys ready?

Okay, look at me. One, two, three. We'll do another one. One, two, three, and stay there.

All right, let's hear it. Let's hear it. I don't know what I've been told.

I don't know what I've been told.

Elk Grove came to win the gold.

Elk Grove came to win the gold.

We are mighty. We are strong. We hit fingers all day long. We hit fingers all day long.

Round off.

One, two. Round off. Three, four.

Break it all down. One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Congratulations.

All right, next up is our public comment for non-agenda items. I'm gonna go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for in-person first. We will start with Lindsay Halsell, followed by Sappy. That's correct. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Lindsay Halsell, and I'm an Elk Grove resident and a member of Deflock Elk Grove, a citizen-led advocacy group dedicated to getting automated license plate readers, also called ALPRs, like Flock and Axon, out of our city. On August 3rd, we published an audit of the city's use of the flock based on information obtained from Public Records Act requests. Since then, we have repeatedly attempted to meet with city officials and ask the city to hold a town hall to discuss the findings. However, the mayor and city council have not accepted our invitations. We have additionally submitted requests to the California State Auditor and the Attorney General to investigate Elk Grove's use of ALPRs and how they may have violated state laws. Tonight, the police will give a presentation on its use of Flock and ALPRs. They will likely focus on their most emotional success stories, like getting a 10-year-old child home safe, solving a Moss burglary, and holding a driver accountable for a fatality. They might even mention that Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper said yesterday in an interview that Flock helped them capture someone who, quote, executed a woman. We are always glad when crimes are solved and people make it home safe. No one disputes that. But we have to ask, how much of this success is really due to ALPRs? The Elk Grove police have stated that they credit these wins to coordination with the real-time information center, information from fixed traffic cameras and follow-up investigations, in addition to Flock. In the case of the crime Sheriff Cooper mentioned, there were witnesses on the scene and someone had identified the suspect's license plate. Those aren't Flock's successes. The police were able to find the suspect quickly because people were on the scene and saw the crime. Flock may have helped the police make an arrest faster. That's it. Even with ALPRs, the police still need to talk to people, identify suspects, and investigate the crime. If ALPRs are such strong tools, then the police should be able to tell us exactly how many cases were cleared because of Flock. If all they do tonight is share emotional anecdotes, we don't know if the system is as important as they claim it is. But we will know that they are trying to manipulate us into supporting them. We also know from reporting out of the Atlanta Metro, which has over 5,000 flock cameras, that crime clearance rates have not improved since the cameras were installed. If the LPRs were that essential to solving crimes, we would expect to see much higher clearance rates, especially in Flock's hometown. FOC has published materials to help law enforcement convince cities that FOC is worth the risk. They advise police departments to provide a carefully scripted presentation and control the narrative. All the police will do tonight is attempt to win the war for the narrative. This is not a meaningful effort to hear our concerns. This is damage control after 21 people came to the last city council meeting to say we don't want ALPRs in Elk Grove. Flock's materials advise police not to, quote, avoid the concept of mass surveillance because you're not going to convince opponents that it's not, end quote. Flock never claims it's not conducting mass surveillance, and they can't truthfully claim that, which is why they have to focus on encouraging police to make emotional pleas rather than stick to the facts. This is math surveillance, and we don't want it here. Thank you.

Your time is up. I invite for, I, excuse me. If you are here to speak on ALPRs, flock cameras, I invite you to fill out a comment slip for item 9.1, which is where we will be discussing that. This public comment opportunity is for those on, for non-agenda items. So thank you.

You'll hear from me on that one too.

Thank you. Next up is Sappy, followed by Constance Conley.

I do have a follow-up in regards to the ALPRs. Would you like to save that for the actual item? I did sign up for that. I was just hoping to speak during both.

I'll allow you to sign up.

I appreciate it. Thank you. So hello, I am speaking to you as the daughter of a former sheriff's deputy, as well as the great granddaughter of the former governor of California. I am strongly against any sort of mass surveillance technology, and this includes ALPRs. No matter how hard law enforcement attempts to minimize and reduce the negative effect of ALPRs, we must understand that flocks, Axon, and other ALPRs are a dystopian violation of our rights. This inverts the very nature of how police are supposed to function. In a traditional investigation, a crime is supposed to happen first. From then, detectives are supposed to identify a list of plausible suspects before placing them under an investigation. Under mass surveillance, we are all under mass investigation every day. We are all under investigation at all times and for all crimes. When a crime actually does occur, police have a list of pre-investigated suspects. That's me. That's you. That's everybody in this room. Our Fourth Amendment right is flagrantly violated every single day as a result of this mass surveillance. And police will spew this propagandic rhetoric claiming, well, if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. But this rhetoric attempts to guilt people into accepting and normalizing mass surveillance. They're using fear by claiming flock prevents crimes. This is a misnomer. Flock does not prevent crimes, and it doesn't actually investigate crimes. It is a tool for investigating crimes, but it is still a misnomer that is fooling you all. Flock, at its very foundation, is a tool for investigating pre-crimes, not crimes. We cannot have Flock or Axon while preserving our civil liberties. This is not a technology that can be reformed. This is not a technology that can coexist with us despite attempted guardrails. Law enforcement has repeatedly displayed hubris, ignorance, and corruption. And this leads to the technology being misused and abused. We've seen this with officers stalking their ex-partners. wrongfully detaining and arresting innocent people due to errors within the technology. We've seen this with Roseville PD. Flock sent 1,427 alerts flagging cars as stolen or used in a felony, and 71% of those alerts The cameras made errors and misread the license plates. So that's seven out of 10 innocent law abiding citizens having their rights violated. It can't be reformed, regulated or managed. It's not a righteous technology. It infringes upon our justice. If we are truly here to represent and serve the community, Please listen to us and understand that romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, and other type of misconduct done by law enforcement is not protecting and serving the very people who put you all in power. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Constance Conley, followed by Eileen Conwell.

I do have to say I love baseball. One of those little boys is my next door neighbor. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. We are here to ask the city council to reaffirm its commitment to the Elk Grove general plan and to the protection of rural Elk Grove. The general plan is more than a policy document. It is a promise to residents about how our city will grow and the values will guide that growth. For decades, Elk Grove has distinguished itself by balancing responsible development with the preservation of its agricultural lands, open spaces, and rural communities. Rural Elk Grove remains an essential part of our city's character and heritage. It provides working farmland, wildlife habitat, scenic landscapes and a connection to the history that existed long before Elk Grove became one of California's fastest growing cities. The general plan was created through years of public input, analysis and collaboration. Residents participated in good faith, believing their voices would help shape the future of the community. When land use decisions are made that conflict with the adopted vision, public confidence in the planning process is diminished. Upholding the General Plan is not simply a matter of policy consistency. It is a matter of honoring commitments made to the people of Elk Grove. As elected leaders, you are the stewards of that vision. Your decisions today will determine whether future generations inherit a community that remains connected to its roots or one that allows short-term pressures to outweigh long-term planning. Today, we are honored to present to this city council the Rural Roots Booklet, a collection of stories, memories, photographs, and reflections contributed by local residents and constituents. These are the voices of the people who live, work, and invest in rural Elk Grove. The booklet captures not only history of these lands, but also the community's hope for their future. The Rural Routes booklet's a reminder that discussion about rural outgrowth is not simply about acreage, zoning designations, or development proposals. It is about preserving a way of life, protecting community identity, and respecting the values that residents have repeatedly expressed through public engagement and the general plan itself. We respectfully ask the city council to carefully consider the voices contained in this booklet and uphold the principles and commitments embodied in the general plan. By doing so, you will help ensure that Elk Grove remains a community that values thoughtful planning, honors its heritage, and keeps faith with its residents. Thank you for your time, service, and consideration.

Thank you. Next up is Eileen Conwell, followed by George Murphy.

Hello, good evening, glad to be here. The first story in the Rural Roots Sunday series was published on January 25th, and without missing a single week, the final story in this booklet was published on June 28th. The booklet in all contains 23 stories. The community did not stop there. The series has continued every week without interruption and has now reached a total of 33 published stories. If this continues, there may even be a volume two. This series is a fun and meaningful way to share the community's side of the story and preserve the memories, people, and places that make rural Elk Grove special. We appreciate the time and attention you give the booklet, and we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed developing it. Thank you.

Thank you, Eileen. Next up is George Murphy, followed by Carlos Zamarripa.

Good evening, mayor and council members. Good to see you again. You got the booklet, and as you know, putting pen to paper sometimes can be a daunting task, especially when you're writing very personal remembrances and reflections of your family and friends who have lived with you and around you for so many years. We hope each of you enjoy reading these stories and gain an understanding into the reasons people choose and enjoy rural lifestyle. These stories provide insights into why the rural area is special and should remain protected, preserved, and intact. Rural Roots Sunday booklet might not have happened without Connie's generous giving of her time, expertise, and resources. So Connie, along with the whole rural area, Eileen and I thank you for your effort. The same appreciation and thank yous have to go out to those folks who submitted their personal stories to the Rural Roots booklet. We hope that you enjoyed the booklet, and happy reading.

Thank you, sir. Carlos Zamarripa, followed by Amelia Van Correa.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Carlos Zamarripa of Rule Elk Grove. I live in Rule Elk Grove because of my father. Back in the 60s, he used to take his kids on Sunday bike rides in the countryside down Sheldon Road. the only road in the area with a hill and a canopy of beautiful oak trees. As we rode, he talked about his dreams of owning land for growing fruits and vegetables and raising cattle and chickens to feed our family. You'll never grow hungry if you have land, he used to say. and you'll never grow old and fat because you'll have too much to do, he'd say with a laugh. I convinced myself then I wanted a rural life. Dad taught me the beauty of the countryside, the galloping horses and grazing cattle, the open space and serenity from city life, where a man's and woman's hard work could be rewarded. It is his memories and dreams that caught my attention and attracted me to rural Elk Grove, and now I live on Sheldon Road. making and living my own memories and dreams. I am certain my neighbors have similar stories. You just heard it, right? And it is those memories, dreams, and the fruit of our hard work that keep us here in rural Elk Grove. But that rural life may soon change. The Summer Villas project, proposed in the middle of Rule Elk Grove, threatens our rural way of living, our hard work, memories, and dreams. The project is not just about paving over the grass and weeds over at the corner of Waterman and Sheldon. It's much more than that. It will trigger the beginning of the end of Rule Elk Grove. Why do I think so? Simply because the project is too big. Way too big. It is a 1,325% increase in homes, from 35 in the present zoning of 70 buildable acres to 499. I know change is inevitable, and I support most change, so long as the change can be managed. But I don't know of anything that would be considered manageable, reasonable, or even responsible with that grade of an increase. An increase that will require major changes to Sheldon Road. You will soon decide the fate of the Summer Villas project. If it is approved, it will very likely increase the land value of those 70 acres from 70 million, 35 homes at two million apiece, to 275 million, 500 homes at 550,000 each. Let's keep in mind the homes proposed are not the affordable housing that cities need, but rather market rate homes. Don't let your legacy be The people that set in motion the end of Sheldon Road, its beautiful oak trees, rural surroundings, and country way of life, all to support someone else's greed. Do the right thing. Save rural Elk Grove. Thank you.

Thank you. Amelia Van Correa, followed by Ellen. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Amelia Van Curen. I live on Sheldon Road in the Elk Grove rural area, and I'm a professor of geology at Sacramento State where I teach about groundwater. This is my daughter, Kaya. She's in third grade, and she and her younger brother are proud members of the Sheldon 4-H Club. You will read about our story in the Rural Roots Sunday testimonials, but we wanted to come here today to share it with you personally. Almost a decade ago, my family moved into the Elk Grove rural area because we wanted to provide our children with the benefits of a farm upbringing. Our children are learning responsibility from tending the garden, collecting eggs, and feeding and watering our livestock. They're growing to be happy and healthy by riding horses, playing outdoors, and picking fresh fruits straight from our tree. Our family deeply values living in close contact with nature and seeing both wild and farm animals in the rural area when we go for walks and bike rides around our house. I myself grew up on a small family farm in Northern California where I raised horses, chickens, pigs, and grew and sold pumpkins. This rural lifestyle taught me a work ethic, responsibility, and hands-on skills like tractor driving and equipment repair. I was also a California 4-H All-Star where I practiced leadership, public speaking, and community service. All of these contributed to why I'm now a professor working to educate the next generation and protect our local groundwater supply. Now that my children too are in 4-H, I hope they reap the same benefits that I did. But in order for that to happen, the rural area must be preserved. My husband is a high school science teacher, and in his AP Environmental Science curriculum, one of the most important concepts is the preservation of open space. These spaces, like the rural area, are critical to preserving our water supply, biodiversity, and the rural farming and ranching lifestyle that benefits not only the residents, but the entire city of Elk Grove. It provides open land where water can infiltrate down to replenish groundwater that flows into our taps. It provides habitat for native plants and animals and pollinators, and it helps counteract the urban heat island, making the city a more comfortable temperature for all. It provides fruit, vegetables, and eggs for our table. We need to protect this rural area for the good of all of Elk Grove. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Ellen, followed by Sophia Singh.

Good evening. I live in District 1 and I have been an Elk Grove resident for 12 years. Despite numerous agencies across the state discovering widespread violations of state laws within their ALPR surveillance systems, the City Council chose to ignore residents' concerns and would not even seek out an independent third-party audit of the flock system. Elk Grove PD says they audit the system every 90 days. Auditing the system means someone actually reviews the searches of the data. It's not just downloading the search records, which are called audit logs. The findings of a review would then be documented somehow. In early June, I submitted a records request for findings documentation from these audits. it has now been almost 100 days and i haven't received any audit findings from the city again just because the search records are called audit logs those search records alone do not prove that the police department actually reviews the searches in fact the audit logs show major violations of california senate bill 34 more than 1.3 million searches by 3200 out of state and federal agencies and sharing in violation of the city's own policies more than 4.3 million searches by 290 california agencies that do not have permission to search our data Yet the PD continues to state no misuse has occurred here when the audit logs directly contradict that. If the police department was reviewing these search logs as they claim, they would have seen all of these sharing violations during those audits. The best case scenario is that the police department downloaded audit logs but never reviewed and therefore did not know what they contained. This is still very bad. It means the police department was not ensuring their technology was used in compliance with state laws and local policies. The worst case scenario is that the police department did review the downloaded logs, saw the sharing violations, allowed those violations to continue, then lied about it to the council and public. Trust is not built by avoiding accountability or difficult conversations. It is built by addressing them directly. It is built on transparency, oversight, and accountability. Later tonight, the police department will be giving a presentation about ALPR use in our community. I hope part of their presentation is the chief taking accountability for the sharing violations and apologizing to residents for allowing those violations to continue for years. I hope we will also hear the city council move to add a vote to the next council meeting to remove the current ALPR system in our community and not seek to replace it with another vendor. Thank you.

Next up is Sophia Singh followed by Justin D.

Hi, good evening. My name is Sophia Singh, and I'd like to take this opportunity to express my deep discomfort with the city's partnership with the surveillance company flock. This is a company that has shown time and time again that it is not trustworthy, not that it's not trustworthy and is grossly negligent in protecting public safety because of its failure to keep the mass public data it is storing confidential from unauthorized and abusive uses. If you're unaware of Flock's bad track record, I implore you to look at the website Deflock Elk Grove. I find myself losing a lot of faith in my elected officials and public servants and the responses I've seen to the legitimate concerns that are raised by the community. The simple fact is there is a bipartisan dislike for the city of Elk Grove's support of Flock and every day more and more people are learning about it. And I know this because I talk about it extensively with my family, with my extended family, my neighbors, and other community members. Moving forwards, I hope to see good faith efforts from Mayor Bobby Singh Allen, other city council members, and the Elk Grove Police Department in addressing the growing concerns around the city's support and partnership with FLOC. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Justin Gee, followed by Allison Randall.

Okay, ready to start? Okay, thank you. Hi, my name is Justin. I wanted to take a second actually to talk first about the suburban development because that seems really important and what people said moved me a lot. I want to point out that suburban developments are actually kind of a Ponzi scheme. Cities take on debt to build these new developments and then the cost of the initial development and maintenance of the water systems, roads, and wastewater and power don't exceed the actually far exceed the revenue that the city would receive from taxes. So the city is forced to build another suburban development to pay off the old debt. And it's just it's a cycle that continues and continues. So I just want to voice my support for them first before I get into what I actually came to talk about. Because I think they have a really good point that we need to preserve the rural environment here. So thank you. Second, I am here to talk a little bit about Flock. Hi, you might remember me. I was here at the last meeting. I spoke about how much the city is a really great place to live, and we really appreciate you stewarding this place. We appreciate your hard work keeping us safe. I'm a technology enthusiast. I work for a company that installs networks and servers. I'm an engineer. I build smart home systems for fun in my free time. So coming from that perspective, I understand why Elk Grove PD would like a system like this. It seems like it has a lot of capability. There's some interesting things you can accomplish with that. But my profession teaches that when a system holds sensitive data, the design itself needs to be a safeguard. There's a couple of things that we really should consider here, four actually. First is local control. Any system a city operates that holds sensitive information about its residents should be run on the city's own infrastructure and be controlled solely by the city. Any setup where the vendor hosts the city's data and holds the keys to that data is a huge risk. And I think that that should be considered when thinking about these technologies. Second is how the data is used and how much of it is gathered. A well-designed system collects only the amount of data that it needs to actually accomplish its job. I've seen stories about these systems being used in ways that help to solve cases, right? There was a... Well, we'll see about it later. Maybe we'll touch on it later. But the point is... These systems collect a lot of data that they don't need to collect. You could put out an alert on, let's say, a license plate that's reported as being part of that shooting that's going to come up later in the presentation. A license plate reader could scan all the license plates that go by and just discard all of the data that's not for vehicles that are being flagged for alerts. Why do we need to collect all this data about residents who didn't commit any crimes? That doesn't make any sense to me. The third thing is trust. When a vendor promises you that the data that they're holding for you isn't shared, how do you verify that promise? How do you test it? These vendors have been caught lying to city councils and police departments about what they do with the data. There's discrepancies in retention rates where the vendors seem to have the data for much longer than the city or the police department believes it should be had for. And it just doesn't add up. The last thing is audits. The audits need to actually be performed. They need to be public. We need you to restore our trust that you're actually taking this seriously and using the system properly.

Thank you. Next up is Allison Randall, followed by Jerome Candelaria.

My name is Allison, and I'm a 34-year resident of Elk Grove. I have lots of questions which I hope will be answered in tonight's ALPR presentation. The police annual report lists a 39% clearance rate overall for crimes in 2025. We really don't know how many solves are directly related to ALPR cameras. The data presented at the March 2026 meeting, labeled ALPR by the numbers, claimed a 56% arrest rate from 1,500 flock alerts. This seems high, especially when Roseville's flock error rate was 71%. So I did some research on the FBI Crime Data Explorer website for Elk Grove PD reported crimes and found that the motor vehicle theft clearance rate did not improve with FLOC. Looking at the five-year period before August 2021, before FLOC versus the five years after FLOC, the solve rate actually worsened from 9.4% to 8.7%. I also looked at a couple of violent crimes like homicide, and those solve rates did not improve either. Another thing I noticed in the FBI data on Elk Grove PD is that the actual number of vehicles stolen went up with Flock to 893 in that five-year period. So obviously, ALPRs are not a deterrent either. So again, what part did ALPRs play in the crime solved since 2021? In the wind slide for March 2026 talk, Fixed traffic cameras and traffic camera data were mentioned in two of the three crimes solved. We residents want safety for ourselves and our families. Can't we solve crimes in 2026 without ALPRs? The police have other techniques that don't require warrantless mass surveillance. And there's a big difference between a targeted response to a crime in progress or a past crime and recording and storing all of our travel data in light of the 8.3 million outside searches uncovered by the DFLOC audit. We are learning from all over the country about the harms that can come from ALPR use. harms to immigrants when their info is shared with ICE, harms to innocent motorists whose vehicles are flagged in error by flock, including all the things that can go wrong during gunpoint detention, harms to females from stalking, and to all of us with our loss of privacy, our constitutional right. So it's a simple equation. Do the harms to many outweigh the benefit to the few? Thank you.

Sacrificing our civil liberties. Thank you. Next up is Jerome Candelaria, followed by Ricky Paul.

Good evening, Your Honor. and the community here. Appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Jerome Candelaria. I'm a couple decade resident of rural Elk Grove. And while I'm not part of that booklet, I wanted to throw my two cents in. And I confess, I'm really heartened by how you all premise these meetings. We heard about the Miwoks and how they were the custodians for the water systems here, Laguna Creek, for example. Behind your honors, the mayor's head is the emblem of Elk Grove, which depicts an elk, an oak tree, and presumably Laguna Creek. So I think that's a great guiding light for you all as you make decisions. I have my own Laguna Creek experience driving into down Sheldon near Waterman. Once I stopped there because a very slow moving western pond turtle was taking its time crossing. So Traffic wasn't intense. I stopped and helped the creature back to the creek. Another time was a red fox cut in front of me there. Interesting species because it's actually a refugee here, kind of pressed out of other areas, finding refuge in the creek area. The third time I stopped at that area was at the invitation of the Summer Villa Sheldon a building project where they had a community information event. And I brought up, I mentioned how beautiful the view of the creek was there. The response I got was rather terse that that's private property. I didn't get into a discussion over parian rights and who owns what. I don't dispute that, given your permission, they have control over some of the property there. But my point wasn't control. The point is that banner behind you, which depicts a very beautiful grove that still exists in one particular spot. And that's where that project has been proposed to exist. be developed. So when this issue comes before you, I do hope you turn around and take a look and remind yourself what Elk Grove ideal has been about. The only thing I would disagree with what I've heard before, though, is the notion that you don't get fat. And as a rural Elk Grove resident, I live very close to Bert's Diners, and all bets are off with the fine food of this area. But thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Ricky Paul.

My comments pertain to 9.1, so I can wait until after the presentation or I can go now.

If you can wait, that's fine.

Yeah, I can wait.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent. All right. Next, we will go to our online questions.

And as I look over our online, I do have a raised hand by our participant with the name of Dan. So I'm going to try and pull up Dan here. I'm just looking for where my timer is. Apparently that's not showing up. Dan, if you give me just a moment, I'm going to try and pull up a speaker timer for you.

Okay, I have one running here as well. Oh, excellent.

Well, and you're coming through loud and clear. So we appreciate that. And I appreciate your patience. And let's give this a try. You have the floor, Dan.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members and residents of Elk Grove. My name is Dan. I'm a 10-year resident and homeowner in District 4. If you raise privacy concerns, you'll often hear some version of this retort. If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. With ALPRs, you could have nothing to hide and still be subjected to stalking by officers, wrongfully arrested, or even jailed due to errors. There are dozens of documented stalking cases with some including chiefs. The nothing to hide argument only holds if data is never misused and laws never change. Both premises have failed publicly and repeatedly. Something like 90 cameras photograph every passing vehicle and store the location, date, time, make, model, color, and features like bumper stickers with no suspicion required. There were 71 searches of Elk Grove residents data with terms like face tattoo, person with hooded sweatshirt, or plaid shirt in the locks. This contradicts the claim that the system doesn't identify people. As reported by 404 Media, ALPRs are also being used for predictive policing by the Department of Homeland Security, by the predictive intelligence targeting teams. If this is not mass surveillance, what is it? It's certainly not targeted surveillance. Let's say you completely trust the Elk Grove PD, other police departments, and all the state and federal agencies that have this access. What about FLOC? They admitted they reinstalled cameras in Grass Valley after the police department canceled its contract and took them down. Their CEO has been caught lying and has made disparaging comments about the police departments that they serve. Flock, Axon, et cetera, are corporations. They have a responsibility to do what's in the best interest of their shareholders, which almost always means to increase profits. To that end, they could sell this data to your employer, your church, banks, insurance companies. Here are just a couple of examples that could be problematic. You frequently visit shooting ranges, casinos, or eat at fast food restaurants. You volunteer at an organization that's antithetical to your religion or social circle. It's not hard to imagine how this data could be used against you for layoffs, bank loan decisions, or to increase your insurance premiums. Do you trust these corporations with this data? Finally, we have data breaches. They happen all the time, and the only safe data is uncollected data. Someone will inevitably breach flock systems and leak your data. Scammers will take that data, add a sprinkle of artificial intelligence, and bake for 30 minutes in the hopes of separating you from your money. They will use the data to run a more convincing ransom scam or use plain old extortion to not release a list of potentially embarrassing locations you've visited. You can't opt out of real life. The only way is to not allow Flock, Axon, or others to collect this type of data in the first place. I'm asking that you cancel the contract with Flock and not seek to replace it with another vendor. We need to push back before it's too late. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other public comments online? Any other hands raised?

And I do not see the raised hand feature by any of the other online participants.

Okay, then I will go ahead and close the public comment opportunity for this item, or for general public comment. With that, I will move on to our next item, which is our city manager's report.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council, Jason Bermich, City Manager. A few items to report on this evening. And we invite members of the public to take a culinary journey around the world through an incredible lineup of food trucks and vendors at our Global Food Feast Fest, which is this Saturday, September 12th from 3 to 8 p.m. at District 56. This is part of the Diversity Month celebration hosted by the city. And this event will be presented by Wilton Rancheria, where we're gonna welcome more than 20 food trucks offering delicious food and treats. Performances by Cover Me Bad, Native Elements, and Maya Latin Roots will help keep the crowd moving. And the Kid Zone will offer games, activities, and crafts for the little ones. The Cultural Marketplace will showcase handcrafted goods, unique items, and artisan products from around the globe. And Pig Latin Lounge, We'll serve a curated selection of craft beers and specialty drinks. Come hungry, come curious, and come ready to experience the world all in one place. Learn more on the city's website. We hope to see you this Saturday, District 56, from 3 to 8 p.m. We invite members of the public to experience the rich coffee heritage of Yemen and grab a free cup of coffee. The Diversity Inclusion Commission and Sana'a Cafe will host Coffee and Culture, a free event, on Saturday, September 19th from 10 a.m. to noon at their new cafe at 9135 West Stockton Boulevard. Try a cultural treat, enjoy live entertainment, and if you're among the first 100 visitors, get a special Diversity Month coffee mug. Learn more about these events and activities presented by Kaiser during Diversity Month in Elk Grove on our city's website. The city is considering new and exciting uses for the former library and teen center buildings on historic Main Street. Residents are invited to help shape what those buildings will be used for by attending the last of three community workshops being held this month on Wednesday, September 16th at 6 p.m. at District 56 or participate in an online survey. Feedback gathered through this process will help inform recommendations presented to the city council later this year. For more information, provide your feedback online at lgrove.gov slash 8900. Creative Spark, Elk Grove's strategic plan for arts and culture is being developed to guide the next decade of arts, culture, and the creative economy. To help shape the vision, residents are encouraged to fill out an interest form to join the community pop-up, to share your ideas in person, or take an online survey and share your thoughts. Your ideas could spark the next big idea for Elk Grove's arts and culture scene. Please visit our website for more information. Finally, the City of Elk Grove and the Sacramento Public Library have transformed the former Rite Aid building at 9260 Elk Grove Boulevard into a modern, one-story library designed to better meet the needs of today's residents. The new 18,000 square feet library replaces the previous branch, offering easier access, expanded amenities, and more space for learning, creativity, and community connections. Join SPL, Elk Grove officials, and your neighbors as we celebrate this exciting milestone during the official grand opening of the new Elk Grove Library on Saturday, October 10th. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled at 10.30 a.m. And activities inside will run from 11 to 1 p.m. And that concludes my report. Happy to answer any questions the council might have.

All right. Thank you for your report. Any questions or comments from colleagues? Seeing none. Yes. Council Member Brewer.

So with the opening of the library on October 10th, it's my understanding with the work of the Sacramento Public Library partnership that the city did. The main meeting room, conference room space at the new library will be named after Patricia Sandifer. And just wanted to make that as a note. She's been a very historical figure for the Elk Grove Library and someone that, she's still alive, we're still honoring her while she is here with us. So when we do open the new library, definitely take that opportunity to get a chance to meet with her. and she's a great conversation to have to learn about the history of the Elk Grove Library and its previous incarnations and the work that she's done to help bridge that gap for literacy and for accessibility within the Elk Grove Library. Also, Elk Grove History Week is my understanding will take place between September 20th through the 26th. Do we have additional details on that?

There is information up on our website. It's going to be hitting social medias here shortly. There are lots of activities coming up for that in the coming weeks.

Good deal. Good deal. Thank you.

That's all. Okay, thank you. No other comments, questions? All right, with that, go on to our next item, our consent calendar items. At this time, I'll go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for consent calendar items. I don't have anyone signed up in person. Anybody online?

And we have participants online, but none are using the raise hand feature for the consent calendar items.

All right, I'll close public comment on consent calendar and look for a motion to approve consent.

Move to consent. Second.

Roll call.

And starting with that roll call vote, I will start with Council Member Robles. Aye. Council Member Spies.

Aye.

Council Member Brewer. Aye. Vice Mayor Suen. Aye. And Mayor Singh-Allen.

Aye.

Consent passes 5-0.

All right, thank you. We will go ahead and move on to our next items. There are no public hearings this evening. That takes us to our regular agenda action items or recommendations. 9.1, receive a presentation of the Elk Grove Police Department's automated license plate reader technology.

Good thing Dre's here to get the computer to work. Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council, my name is Bobby Davis. I am the Chief of Police for the City of Elk Grove. This is Andrea Cortez, our manager of the Real-Time Information Center. And we are here to present the report out on our automated license plate reader program that we have here in the City of Elk Grove and the Elk Grove Police Department.

Yes, good evening. I'm Andrea Cortez, your Arctic manager. I stood before you in March earlier this year and provided a brief overview of our ALPR program. That presentation was designed to be a snapshot into our program as to what we are currently doing. Tonight's presentation will be a much more comprehensive and historical review of our program.

So the presentation overview, we're going to be defining what automated license plate readers are and the functionality, the historical review of the ALPR program, the review of how the technology and the program have evolved, an explanation of current oversight and safeguards that we have, and plan improvements to policies, procedures, and governance here at the Elk Grove Police Department in the city of Elk Grove.

What is ALPR?

ALPR is an automated license plate reader. It's a camera-based system that captures, analyzes, and stores vehicle license plate information. What ALPR does is it captures license plates' images. It's the date, the time, the location where the image was captured. It captures vehicle attributes, including the vehicle make, color, and other identifiable characteristics. What ALPR does not do is continuously track a vehicle or conduct any behavioral analytics or predictive policing. It does not identify occupants of a vehicle. It does not provide any registered owner information of a vehicle. It does not conduct facial recognition, and it does not have any audio recording. Here's an example of what it looks like.

So the image you're seeing here is demo imagery from what an end user would receive in Flock. So when you conduct a search, this is the search card result that is included. You'll see time, date, location, and the license plate information there. What we don't know is if the vehicle goes north, south, east, or west after this image is taken. There is no continuous tracking of the vehicle, which is likely why the courts have still held that ALPR technology is within the Fourth Amendment. And a search of ALPR technology is not a violation of Fourth Amendment. This is the information we receive and we use this in conjunction with intersection cameras. Our intersection cameras are faced mainly at the middle of the intersection and so we are not able to get any license plate information from a intersection camera. So using these tools in conjunction allows us to be really precise when we're working events in real time or if there's a crime in progress, we can leverage ALPR technology in addition to intersection cameras, to be very precise in our response. If you can imagine, there's a call for service, and a white Toyota Camry is identified, and we have, let's say we have license plate information, but absent ALPR technology, we would have to look for every white Toyota Camry that goes through the intersection, and anyone who's driven in Elk Grove, there's a lot of traffic, and you can imagine the challenge that law enforcement would face absent this technology.

I think in addition to that, one of the things that we look at when you talk about the example that Andrea just brought up is specifically if there's a white camera in the city of Bell Grove, how many white cameras are going to get stopped? How many interactions are we going to have that potentially lead to something else based on what the crime is or the reported crime is relating to that vehicle or who's in that vehicle? I think we have all a lot of members of our community that do not want to be involved in a vehicle stop if not necessary or if not been involved in some sort of action that we have a precision-style policing that ALPR allows us to utilize and that we can specifically look for a license plate, specifically look for a vehicle, make a stop on that after some sort of verification has taken place, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. We have a case study we want to talk about really quick. Early in 2026, the suspect targeted multiple businesses in Sacramento and Elk Grove. These are small businesses that are directly affected by incidents like this, when there's a break-in, when there's damage, when there's vandalism, when there's things that happen to these businesses that are business, small business, small family owned, has significant impact to them and their ability to continue to stay in business in the environment that we currently live in. The suspect would remove a lockbox obtained with a key, and they'd get a key out of that lockbox, burglarize the business. They would target cash registers and other items within easy access. The majority of these businesses are privately owned by hardworking people, and I think that's important to note. By utilizing the flock and traffic cameras, detectives were able to follow the suspect vehicle backwards from the location where the key evidence was discarded, all the way back to a local business in Elk Grove, and that's the seat at the table. It's a small business here that we were able to identify the suspects, submit for a warrant, and we're just pending that warrant and arrest based on technology that we were able to utilize that this person would never have been taken into custody. almost with 100% certainty this person would never be taken into custody. And on top of that, they were able to, with technology, identify this vehicle and other vehicles associated with this and link them to several other businesses in the surrounding communities that have been affected by this particular crime. And again, we would never have found them without the technology. And this specifically addresses a business in our community at the seat of the table that probably wouldn't have had this opportunity to become whole and ultimately finds relief for the victims of this crime.

So now we'll go into the history of the program. And the program was established to provide law enforcement personnel with additional investigative tools to support public safety needs, an example you just heard of. We've identified two phases. We had the early phase of the program from 2008 to 2021. We had a limited number of patrol vehicles that were outfitted with ALPR technology. And we had a limited number of cameras that were deployed throughout the city. Then we moved into an expansion phase from 2021 through 2026. We expanded the vendor. We deployed fixed cameras, and we increased success and case solvability factors. And we are continuing to evaluate and implement program policies and procedures. So it's important to identify those two phases because they will come up. In our timeline here, it's important to note this timeline is not fully and all comprehensive as far as everything and every instance of the program. But it certainly does highlight the key importance the program and key dates. So in 2008, we had our vigilant mounted fixed ALPRs, and we had a small number of those, approximately five. And then in 2021, we did start a flock trial. In 2022, we expanded and went into a full flock contract, and then we added Axon Fleet 3s, and that was a part of a bigger acquisition related to Axon and some other technologies that were included in that package. In 2023, DOJ released guidance on ALPR administration. This came as a result of a state auditor's report where ALPR uses were being reviewed. And so in 2023, DOJ releases that guidance. Once law enforcement becomes aware of that guidance, we start taking action here locally, reviewing our practices and data sharing requirements and how we are administering the technology. We removed all one-to-one sharing out of state with entities, removing the ability to generally search a license plate. When I say one-to-one sharing, I mean that the program administrator Receives a request for access and then acknowledges and says yes, we will share data with you There is a feature in the current vendor platform flock that has a lookup tool and that is not a one-to-one sharing it is searching on a The lookup tool allows those that are subscribing to that, agencies that are subscribing to that, to search on a national level. And that setting is under, it looks different than one-to-one. It's through a different setting on the administration side when the account was set up. So by February of 2024, we had removed access to the national lookup tool, and we were no longer sharing any information out of state. or with federal agencies. By June, we have a new program administrator that's identified. That's myself. By July, MOUs were now required. Access to EGPD ALPR data was, an MOU is required to access the data. We began auditing practices and documentation, implementing additional training. And the biggest thing was training our end users as far as understanding not only the functionality of the system, but certainly the rules and guidance and laws we have to adhere to. There was a great deal of focus on criminal justice information systems and requirements there, right to know, need to know. We need to understand why you are doing a plate inquiry. And we need to be able to tie that to official law enforcement purposes. And so we gave a good deal of training on that. In 2025, we had no instances of out-of-state data sharing or with federal entities. It should be noted there were two searches done over a 72-hour period. The California Veterans Police due to a misclassification by the vendor. Once the vendor became aware of this, they immediately resolved it. I will note that search does not equal result. And we'll get into that a little bit later. But that did occur in 2025. But the remainder of 2025, there was no instances of any out-of-state data sharing or sharing with federal entities. Currently, 2026, we have approximately 90 flock ALPR. And in July of 2026, we did start an Axon ALPR trial. And it's a firm 90-day trial. And the purpose is to evaluate, just as we would with all technologies, other competitors in the space to ensure that we are selecting the most appropriate vendor for the city.

So early program administration, primary focus was to onboard new technology and provide end user training. Efforts focused on data-driven decisions for deployment of equipment based on historical crime data and acknowledge track wins and successes in establishing best practice for features within the system and for documentation. And this leads into, just before the audit, we were finding success as we were utilizing the system, which was a complete system that we were receiving from FLOC. Once DOJ did their review of the system and provided best practice guidance for all law enforcement agencies, we didn't just take the face value of the FLOC program itself, and use what they chose. What we started to do because of the new direction we were headed with, the MOUs with our partner agencies, the direction with Dre becoming the new administrator, what we started to do is anytime we received any update or any total solution from FLOC, we would go into the system and make sure that it met our standards, made sure that it would meet the SB 34 standards that are the state legislative standards as far as sharing information, how information is gathered, how information is shared, and that was what we chose to do moving forward. We did that not out of an abundance of our own worries or concerns, it was out of caution for our community to ensure that we were doing it the right way and making our own policies to match what our community expected from us and what the state guidance was.

So here you're seeing a representation of out-of-state data sharing. It starts at the expansion phase in 2021. In 2023, it was the peak of the data sharing. 2023, excuse me, was the peak of the data sharing with 81 of the searches were through that lookup tool that I mentioned where you need a full license plate. The lookup tool was, again, an administrative setting that is not present in the one-to-one sharing. So that is important to note. It was called the National Lookup Tool. It's been renamed to the Nationwide Lookup Tool. But again, it was a tool that You could search a license plate, and then you could see if that has gone across state lines. We are no longer subscribed. We haven't done that for years. We are no longer subscribing to the National Lookup Tool. This is the catalyst for change. So October of 2023, DOJ releases guidance related to ALPR. Law enforcement entities start to become aware of this. The bulletin is directed to all law enforcement agencies. And this is our catalyst for change. This is when we began to look at practices and how we were administering the technology here locally. So you will notice that this is that same chart. We have DOJ guidance is released. A new program administrator is identified. And we have not shared any information out of state for over two years. February of 2024 that has been resolved and there is no out of state or sharing with any federal entities. Program changes in 2024. significant efforts were made to ensure compliance. So what you're seeing here is a training brief, and the date should be noted. It's in February of 2024. We are telling our law enforcement professionals, you must list a case number. You need to list a reason why you're accessing this information or a crime code. Do not use vague information. Do not use something we cannot associate to official law enforcement purposes. Another point to mention is that just because you are a sworn law enforcement professional here in the City of Belgrave does not mean you get access to this system. You have to be conducting investigations, meaning you need to be a detective or you're on patrol or you are supporting those areas, meaning you are in dispatch or our TIC personnel have access to that as well because they support things that are happening in real time and they also assist with investigations. but outside of that they're just by the sheer value that you're a law enforcement officer does not get you access to this system we do onboard any new hire or new training and to if it's a new officer coming in and that will be going to patrol they do have to go through some training to be able to understand the rules and guidelines related to this technology they do have a certification process they go through that that they understand the system functionality, and then after that process, they get access to the system. We do have MOUs now that are implemented to formalize data sharing, so other agencies acknowledge state and the government code laws that govern this technology, and to ensure that we want to share with agencies that are doing Business the way that we are doing business. And so that's why the formalized use of the data sharing agreements. We also began developing and implementing auditing requirements. The main focus, again, was on the specific reason. Again, you have to have a specific reason why you are accessing this information. We did implement multi-factor authentication. We audited roles and permissions to access the data. And at the bottom there, you're just seeing an important reminder from one of our training briefs that talks about the prohibited sharing and who they are not to share with. So continuous education, ongoing education for officers and personnel to make sure they understand the rules that guide this technology. Here's a snapshot of search activity. So this, in August of 2025, FLOC released a feature that it can now actually say when a result was produced from the network. So what you're seeing in the light blue line is an external search, meaning another law enforcement agency within the state of California that has a data sharing agreement on file with us has conducted a search on our network. The dark blue line you're seeing down at the bottom indicates when a result is actually produced. on average we are producing a result or the network produces a result 20% of the time. Meaning 80% of the time a result is not produced. So there's a significant gap between searching and an actual result produced. And it's significant to note that because I think that there is an assumption that when a search is conducted there's automatically all these license plates that come up and that they're just seeing everything and that's not what's really happening. Typically law enforcement is needing a very specific plate or they have a partial plate that they're working to identify. And so specific searches are what they're looking for. Additionally, it's important to acknowledge why we do share with our partners, our other law enforcement partners, because we need to identify if this is a regional crime that's occurring. And so to be able to connect those dots, we do have law enforcement personnel and investigators need to be able to see where this vehicle was, when they're conducting an investigation, where this vehicle's been. And is there crime in that area? And that helps for prosecution and building a case and really ensuring that those who do commit crime, that they get a proper sentence. Additionally, our data is only kept for 30 days and then it is removed from the servers. And there's no longer access to the data after 30 days.

And I think a couple of real points I'd like to make on that as well is Drake kind of talked about the closure or circling of the loop when it comes to prosecution. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But I do think it's important to note that as a chief of police, I have no access to the system. I can't get in the system and I can't run anybody. I can't be a part of any searches of any vehicles or license plates. I have no access because I have no need. It's not a right or a need to know for me as chief of police for the city of Elk Grove and the police department. I have no need. And I think that's important. She covered quite a bit of that. But we want people to understand that just because you're in or a sworn member of this organization or a non-sworn member of this organization that has access and has a right to know, not everybody's going to have that right. And so I want to make sure that that's covered. So the evolution of the technology and guardrails. So from 2021 to present day, Flock continued to develop equipment and features. Much of the technology looks the same, which does create confusion. Some of the technology and cameras are included are Falcon ALPR, Condor Live Video Camera, the Community Partnership Camera, which is live video camera, and then Raven Audio Detection, which is like a shot spotter. We do not have a need for that here in our city. Flock LPR versus fixed video, it's the same camera body, but two different types of camera. The Elk Grove Police Department has only the Falcon automated license plate reader cameras. We do not have live cameras. We do not have video recorded cameras as well. So all of our flock are only the Falcon ALPR cameras.

So we want to talk about protocols. That's something that we worked to develop. We developed that in the early phase when we first adopted the technology as far as what does a verification look like? And we've heard tonight about misreads, and misreads do happen. There are several variables that can affect the scan of a license plate, and that could look like lighting, license plate covers, license plate frames, trailer hitches, other vehicles. This technology captures one to two lanes of traffic It's not capturing every single lane of traffic, and so there are times that the vehicles aren't being captured. But when we talk about what happens when there is an alert, there is a verification process that should happen, and it does happen here at Elk Grove. Whenever an alert comes in, there are several steps that happen. So we first make sure on the face value, and what you're seeing here is what we would receive as an alert. So you're seeing, okay, the license plate is at the top left-hand corner, and then we're seeing an image of it. And we need to first confirm step number one is does that scan match what the plate says? If that doesn't match, then there's nothing that needs to happen. The other thing that we need to do, let's assume that those two things match, then we are going to run it in alternate other databases. We're going to run it in DMV to see does the registration match. which the vehicle that we're seeing here, it's possible there's a plate swap, right? We understand, law enforcement professionals understand that there's plate swaps and things like that happen and we have to account for that. There's also a verification on the back end as far as our dispatch teams who also reach out to the local agency So if it's a stolen vehicle that was stolen from outside of our organization or outside of our jurisdiction, then there is alert that comes in. We will verify. We verify what we're seeing. We verify registered owner. They're looking at the plate hit from the state database. that's maintained by DOJ and confirming, does that information match? Does the information in the miscellaneous field match what we're seeing? And then we take an additional step and our dispatch team actually calls that agency to confirm. Do you still show this vehicle to be outstanding in your records management system? And then they acknowledge. And if it is confirmed, then we go forward with contacting that vehicle. If those steps don't happen, that is not a failure of the technology. That is a failure of protocol. And so we here take those verification steps very seriously. And it is important to also note that if there is a scan that is... It goes to the state database and all those steps were taken as far as verification and it's still a wrong vehicle was actually recovered. That is also a human element that that information should have been removed from the state database. And so there was a failure somewhere along the way in the protocols.

I think that's important because it's not the failure of the technology. Technology is doing exactly what it's supposed to by identifying a plate that's been listed as a wanted vehicle for some reason. The important piece, and I think this is where some of the numbers get confused, is that the city of Elk Grove has not done and created any or done vehicle stops on vehicles that were not verified by human intelligence. So we've been able to, like Andrea said, we get a license plate. We confirm that plate through multiple factors before we dispatch. I mean, we put another call in the system that says, go to that area and find that vehicle. And we take that very serious. We don't just assume that. that the scan that we have that comes across is the accurate scan. We verify that through multiple factors before we dispatch anybody to that location to find that vehicle because we do not want a confrontation with a vehicle stop or somebody in that car that could lead to who knows what without being 100% certain that that's the vehicle that we're trying to identify.

Here you're seeing an image. These two SNPs are from the actual system. We're going to talk about free form searching because this was an evolution of the technology. Free form searching did become available to Elk Grove in December of 2024. This is through ALPR cameras as far as what we have access to. So you're seeing the SNP there. You see vehicle and you see people. The vehicle side is what we have access to through our contract. And we are, within that box, we can free form a search. We could say, you know, we are looking for a vehicle that has, there was an assault that just happened and that the reporting party can't really remember the vehicle description completely other than it's a white sedan, but it had a King sticker or some sort of sticker. We can search that and see if we can get a result. That is what free form is. What we don't have access to and what we don't subscribe to is any sort of people searching. Unfortunately, and I've asked the vendor to disable that ability to try to click into that box, but unfortunately we cannot. But what does happen is this people search advisor unit says, only video cameras compatible with people search will appear in the device selector. LPR cameras are not supported for this feature. And then you can select the prompt to move forward. What unfortunately we cannot do is we cannot prohibit, I can't gray it out to where nobody can search that. And so there's an educational component internally as far as making sure that people understand that there's nothing to be found if you're trying to search a person. And then externally, obviously we don't have control over what other law enforcement agencies as far as when they're trying to conduct these searches or if they have that technology on their through their contract, then they can search that way. But that is free form searching, and that's where the people searching is not something that we have access to through ALPR.

I think we want to reiterate that. We do not have that feature here at the City of Elk Grove. The Elk Grove Police Department cannot search people with a free form format. So the evolution of the technology and some of the guardrails. So how will the department address any misuse? Well, as with any investigation involving misconduct, the investigation will be completed by our organization's Internal Affairs or our Professional Standards Bureau. Any investigation associated with a sustained ALPR policy violation will lead, can lead from anywhere from corrective action up to termination. And it's gonna depend, obviously, on the severity of the action itself, but it can lead to termination. And any personnel on administrative leave will have their access removed during the leave of absence or throughout the course of the investigation, depending upon, again, the gravity of the investigation itself. And I think that's important. I think that we have a very strong history here of holding people accountable, and it would not change with this. This technology is something that we don't take lightly. We understand the importance that is not just for our community, but for us in our profession to hold ourselves to an extremely high standard, and that standard would be diminished if we were to look at this lightly. And so for us, it's an important topic, an area that we would absolutely do like we do with the rest of our integrity and maintain it at the highest levels.

Here is a timeline of the safeguards that FLOC has put into place. By what you will know, there's a lot of information here and I won't read it all to you, but it will be available later too on our website. But essentially by August of 2025, the big things they had blocked all out of state data sharing from anyone. So it's not allowed for California law enforcement accounts. It's blocked federal agencies from even being able to find us, to discover us within the system. So they're not able to find our agency to be able to ask for sharing. It's not even allowed per the system as of August of 2025. They also have the mandatory offense types as of December 2025, where they now are required to put in a NIBRS-associated crime code in addition to a reason code. And so that has kind of standardized what we're seeing in the audits. And then here's just kind of a summary, current safeguards and oversight. So we're an authorized use, so we're going to make sure that whoever's accessing the system should have the access, or that's actually below. So access, controls, we're going to make sure that whomever's accessing the system, they have the right to know, they need to know, and that they fully understand the... the functionality of the system, and that all individual users have multi-factor authentication authorized use. This has to be for official law enforcement purposes. You've heard me say that several times, and our patrol teams and our law enforcement personnel are very aware of that. So it should be tied to identify a law enforcement purpose or investigation. audibility, so we are still crafting our auditing practices and searching the system to make sure that the activity can be reviewed and audited in a timely fashion. We audit every 90 days, that was something we started in 2024, and we are continuing to find the best practice to document the audit and understand what should be included in the audit and standardized. And there's an accountability piece that the chief just touched on. Again, more training, and that's something that we've continued to do and that we've done and that we will continue to do. And the biggest thing that we recently started was an ALPR administration committee. That's an internal committee that is going to help us quickly address any trends update policy and procedure, and issue directives when appropriate. So the idea behind the committee is to bring, since this technology is leveraged by several divisions, it allows us to bring those stakeholders to the table so we can quickly move on issues that we need to. We can get feedback and understanding, making sure that we don't make decisions that greatly impact operations or a specific division. But the purpose of the committee is to bring them together. We can quickly move on things that we need to address.

Community concerns and expectations. So we recognize the concerns that go beyond effectiveness of the technology, privacy, accountability, transparency, and the public trust. So we focus on training, data retention, appropriate access and accountability, how and when we search, when searches are conducted, information sharing, potential misuse of technology, public transparency, privacy, and civil liberties. Public concern and scrutiny are an important part of our responsible government. The department's responsibility is not simply to operate technology effectively, but to ensure that it's government responsibility. And we don't take any of that lightly. We recognize that across the country there have been things that have happened with ALPR technology that are concerning. What we can tell you today is that not a single person in the city of Elk Grove or the Elk Grove Police Department has violated those policies, rules, or regulations with searches or shared information with partners who aren't supposed to have information uh from the state of california we are fortunate that that has not happened but that's because of the things we already have in place and the things we continue to do to ensure that we don't make those mistakes that we are taking accountability that we are doing audits you know we say we search we do audits roughly 90 days but our real-time information center manager ensures that they're in that system several times within a 30-day period. We have multi-factor authentications that have to take place before we can get into the system. We have to have a justification and a reason to use this system. Andrea Cortez and the real-time center, it's not just this technology, it's all the technologies that we have. We push back on our vendors and say, we want this technology, but we want it to be done responsibly. So our goal and our objective of this entire thing is to ensure that not only you can be confident that we're doing, but our community be confident in how we're doing it, how we deploy it, how we utilize it, and how we respond to our community in a couple of ways. One is through response to criminal action, and the other one is for the victims of our communities. We have an obligation to both. We have an obligation to do it the right way for the criminal justice system, but we also have an obligation to do it the right way for the victims. And so this allows us to when we go after somebody who has committed a crime to do it with precision. It means that we're not just going and have a crime here at Laguna and Laguna Springs and we're going and hitting 10 houses to find one subject. That's 10 searches we don't have to have because one search based on technology allows us to target one person. And we all know that the more you contact people in your community, the more contacts you have that are negative in that light. When you have one contact, then you can build a relationship with those other nine to ensure that we're not doing things to people in our community that feel disparate treatment against them. Technology allows us to build relationships, create relationships, and not destroy them. So we have quite a few case studies. All of this is gonna be available to the public and the community when we're done with this presentation. We are gonna release it on our socials as well as they can get it obviously off the feed. But I have a couple of community leaders. We talked a little bit a while ago about how it crosses lines and borders and boundaries. Whatever happens in Elk Grove doesn't just stay here. with the seat of the table is a great example that happened in Sacramento as well as here in our city. Luckily, the technology allowed us to find those people responsible. But I am going to play a couple of videos, and then I'd like the sheriff of Sacramento County and the Sacramento County District Attorney to come up and speak as well on some of the areas that they see are concerns or successes when it comes to supporting the community in criminal justice and support for our victims. And so I'll get those going here. Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

The sheriff will talk about what these were.

was caught was because of a flocked camera. Seven minutes after the call came in, we got a flock hit on the suspect's vehicle. So yeah, a flocked camera. And all this noise about cameras and automated license plate readers, it helped us solve that murder today.

Is it just muted? Is it me that's just muted?

That's frustrating.

You guys hear that?

That might be the video coming through. It might be an issue. Thank you for that. If you have just a moment, let me see what I can do.

Okay.

Thank you, crowd. That was awesome.

It helped us solve murder today. And that's the crazy part about it. But a lot of folks don't care about that. And that's frustrating as someone in law enforcement who does this for a living on a daily basis.

How do you try to navigate through that noise, especially the past few weeks when it comes to that topic?

A lot of those folks have no idea. It's big government on one side, other side, reproductive rights and ICE. I don't care about immigration. I don't care about reproductive rights. I care about catching bad guys, criminals. That's our job. Every police chief, every sheriff cares about that. We don't get involved in the political part of it. And it's just frustrating. Someone wants to ban something they know nothing about. They have no idea what it does. We don't sit there and sit through a computer. I don't have the resources or the manpower. We don't have it. Seven minutes from the time it was called in until we find the suspect vehicle traveling on Highway 50 because of a flock camera.

I take it, were the witnesses on scene helpfully?

100%, yeah. Absolutely. Witnesses, yes. Yes. I just lost the video.

I don't realize where the audio went, but it's gone.

Yeah, I can't.

Well, I think the importance part of this particular video is that the Sheriff's Department found a resolution for a victim of domestic violence. Not the Sheriff will talk about this, but we had somebody who was murdered in our community and in the county, and they were able to catch it through technology. It ultimately led to somebody being arrested in seven and a half minutes or so. And so I'd like the Sheriff to come up. Sheriff Cooper, if you wouldn't mind, come up and talk.

Good evening, mayor and council members. Chief Davis, you guys did an amazing job on your presentation. A lot going on here. And when I say that, I don't care. That's not my job for immigration enforcement. We don't enforce it, number one. Local law enforcement, your deputies and police officers aren't involved in immigration enforcement. So when this first came out on the LPR, it was when other states in the nation did the reproductive rights, and people were worried about folks coming here to California to get services and being identified through LPR. We heard that, then it was big government, and then it was ICE. We don't do that. I think Chief Davis laid it out perfectly. We don't cooperate, and that's really the big issue. I'm not here to be a flock salesman. I'm here for pro-LPR. Licensed play readers, there's a lot of systems out there. There's Axon, there's Motorola, a lot. And there are 36 million registered vehicles in California. And people talk about the olden days, go back to good cop work. You're driving around, there's no hot sheet. And back in the olden days, you'd write license plate numbers down on a piece of paper. There are so many stolen cars and vehicles wanted. You can't do that these days. We get a lot of hits. So when I drive and I'm driving in my car, my radio's on, I hear my dispatchers all over the county read off hits off of LPR, stolen vehicle, Watt and Auburn, blah, blah, blah. There's no one there to go after it because we're busy on calls for service. So you think about that. You think about an Amber Alert. You think about a Silver Alert. If somebody's loved one's missing elderly person, a young kid's been kidnapped under an Amber Alert, a Feather Alert for our Native Americans, Ebony Alert, all those alerts, typically we get the hits through LPR. No one talks about that. And LPR is an important thing. It was interesting with some of the speakers earlier, someone talked about romantic stalking, romanticize that. I was at that shooting. I saw the videotape. He waited for her. She was getting in her car, chased her down, shot her like a dog. She went down and shot her in the back of the head. That's not romantic. There's a whole lot to this, and I know people are passionate about it, and that's great. But I've been in law enforcement for 35 years, been around it for 40 years. This is my job. This is what we do every day. It makes a difference. We talked about the homicide, the one on Sockton Boulevard. Elderly jewelry store owner, about 12 or 15 guys from the Bay Area drove down, drove a car into the jewelry store and killed a 17-year-old, 72-year-old man. They all then escaped and ran because the security guard was there. They all wore masks. LPRs traced them back to the Bay Area. Elk Grove's had incidents from folks in the Bay Area that we've tracked down. Those are real numbers. We're not making this up. We had a shooting over by on Auburn Boulevard. It was in the paper. A student at Sac State went to a party on Auburn Boulevard with one of her roommates. There was a shooting. They were caught in a crossfire. She was innocent. Her father was a San Jose PD officer. She was shot and killed. We were able to get those individuals through LPR data. Human trafficking, Watt and 80, a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, two separate incidents. Months later, we rescued them. They talked about the traffickers. Able to go back on those LPRs, identify those cars and who they were and connect it and arrest those individuals. The Panera Bed shooting yesterday, he shoots her. A citizen records it and tells us, but that's fine. There's a lot of cars on Highway 50. There's a lot of cars on Howe Avenue to try and single out a certain car. He drives south on Howe Avenue. It's put in the system, gets the LPR hit, and then he's gone from the area. We don't know where he is. But a deputy driving eastbound 50 saw the vehicle, got behind him, never activated his lights. He knew it was up, so he shot and killed himself, committed suicide. The case here in Elk Grove, one of my former deputies who we fired, Morales, obviously he killed this kid and then choked the other kid and thought he had killed the other kid and left his house. I was talking to Chief Davis on the phone. He was worried about him coming to my house because I had terminated him. I told him I was okay. I was heading to work and Chief Davis advised me that LPR picked him up driving south on I-5. I got on I-5 from Laguna Boulevard and saw the suspect vehicle. We think he was going to Stockton where his wife worked to kill his wife. We'll never know. But we stopped him. Obviously, he ended up dead with deadly force. So there are a lot of cases we talk about across the country. And because things have happened in other states where officers have less restrictions and are poorly trained, that's where a lot of these things happen at. that set law, set precedent, no matter what it is, whether it be LPRs, use of force, a lot of shootings, a lot of things came from other states that we've seen, and that's part of it. So we use the LPR data in our investigations for murders, for rapes, for sexual assaults, kidnappings, because obviously for suspects, patterns of movement, Has a suspect been to a crime scene before? The Idaho college student killings, he had been there before. Confirmed alibis, clear individuals. And I keep going back to missing persons. We have about 2,000 missing persons a year, the Sheriff's Office does. Elk Grove has the same thing. You'll see on the social media where there's an at-risk missing person for the vehicle associated with it. They don't have the time or resources to go look for a specific white Toyota or whatever color it is to find that person. We rely on the LPR hit. It is technology that we use, and it's so important. We're not big government. That's not our job. The people that use this the most are deputy sheriffs and police officers, not the federal government. So SB 54, which I was there when it was written, and I had a big part in it, tells us what we can and cannot do. We don't pick that, I'm not gonna break the law and Chief Davis isn't. We follow the law, those mechanisms are in place. So we have that. You can't have public safety policy to be based on facts, not fear or misinformation on that. It is a big issue. Sensitive data, so I get up every morning to go to work, I get in my car, I have Apple Play on, it says go to work, 25 minutes. When it's time to come home, Here's my route, 25 minutes. They talk about the LPR data. On your phone, it has all your information. You talk about stuff, all of a sudden it pops up that you're talking about bicycles. Bicycles pop up. Your phone has so much data, and you continue to hit it, accept, accept, accept. You talk about privacy, someone also spoke about sensitive data. There's health records on your phone, medical records, banking information on your phone. Really? There's a ton of data. And we're doubting things. Private businesses, they all have cameras. A lot of HOAs have flat cameras themselves or other cameras, LPRs. They have that. We tell citizens, get a ring doorbell, put cameras in your home. Businesses, we have business watch. So when a crime happens, the first thing we do in a residential neighborhood, hey, do you have a ring doorbell? Do you have cameras for a burglary? That's part of our life. You cannot unwind that. It's electronic. We do a case with the DA, they want to know, hey, what's on the phone? Where's the data at? It is data on there. On human trafficking cases, there's data because those pimps are texting and talking to those girls. That's how it is. Right now on Grant Line Road, a lot of ag, a lot of wine growers are having the copper pipes stolen, theft. We've told them, install cameras there so we can get it in LPRs and catch those folks. So it's one of those things, I know the public is concerned about it, but it's like the left big government, I'm sorry, the right big government, the left, reproductive rights and ICE. And we're not that. And that's the thing, and I go back to the mask. We never wore masks, ICE wore masks. The state passed the ban where officers can't wear masks. It didn't impact ICE. The glove, they've used the glove for years in California and other states. It's a less lethal method. And now I spot gloves, so we can't use gloves in California. I'd rather see a glove used than someone being shot. That's what I'm concerned about. I want to minimize the loss of life. So I get the frustration and people are worried about it. There's a hell of a lot more information out there on the dark web. And I'll say this. I run the High Tech Crimes Task Force in Northern California, about 120 sheriffs and police officers. It's based here in the sheriff's office. So doing the forensics on that, I get that I know it better than most. And while I get their concerns, they're really misguided. And it's just like I said, so much information on the phone, way more than an LPR, it just captures it. And that's the thing. So if your loved one's missing, an elderly parent's missing, the best chance of finding them is going to be an LPR. If someone's kid gets kidnapped or is missing and they're at risk, and there's a vehicle associated with it, it's going to be an LPR. So there are so many things associated with it. And like I said, the legislature heavily regulates law enforcement in this state unlike any other state. There are safeguards in place. In 23, the AG put it out and they fixed some things. That's how the system works. But don't fill the baby out with the bathwater. It is so effective. I just want to make sure I hit everything I want to talk about. That's it. I want to thank the folks for coming out here. I respect your opinion, and you don't have to like me, but I am your sheriff, and I've been doing this job, and that's our expertise. He has 30 years in this job, too. We take it very seriously, and we want to protect our public, and we do a good job for the men and women, and we can't keep tying their hands because pretty soon it's bad guys. A lot of bad guys don't have license plates on their cars. They take them off. So there's things time and time again. So it's a good tool. And we're always looking for improvement. And Elk Grove is very transparent. And like I said, one thing that she said is there's no boundaries. Bad guys don't have boundaries. A lot of folks come from the Bay Area to do that. In San Francisco, crime has dropped. They got LPRs everywhere. That made a big difference. And DFR made a big difference. Same thing with Oakland. And CHP put most of those cameras in San Francisco. the Highway Patrol, the state uses them. They are very effective. So thank you, I appreciate you and your time and thank you for serving and I wanna thanks for folks for coming out and being engaged in their community. I've lived here 37 years in Elk Grove, I raised my kids here. I call Elk Grove home because Elk Grove is safe. And one of the reasons they're safe is because the programs they have, the counsel they have, they're very engaged. Elk Grove's a good place to live and raise a family. I want to keep it that way. And like I said, people come across the borders. They come to Elk Grove to get things sometimes. And you just got to deal with it. Otherwise, you're not going to catch them. You're not going to catch them. So thank you.

Thank you, Sheriff Cooper. Yes, sir.

And real quick before the District Attorney comes up, I think one of the high profile cases that I can tell you with 100% certainty we would have solved is the Sikh homicide we had in March of 2011 on the east side of town. In that particular area, we have cameras now that are ALPR cameras, and I, to my core, know that we would have solved that case. We would today have answers for the families of the victims of that double homicide. And, you know, I think, again, talking about the victims and talking about true criminal justice, that's what this does. It gives us that opportunity. And I'd like the district attorney, Tianho, to please come up.

Thank you for joining us, District Attorney Tianho.

Good evening. I've been an attorney for almost 30 years and a prosecutor for 25 years. I've prosecuted your homicides, your sex crimes, your serial killers, and your human trafficking cases. And we often talk about the criminal justice system, but I want to rename that for a moment to the criminal victim system. justice system. Because it's important that we also talk about victims as well. I'm an attorney and I believe in the Constitution, I believe in the Fourth Amendment, I believe every single person deserves and has a right to due process. And that the government should follow the law and that we do follow the law. But I also want to make sure that we focus on victims and survivors as well. because at the end of the day, they had the very fabric of their lives ripped apart. And so I'm here today to talk about and advocate for license plate readers because public safety starts with making sure that we provide law enforcement with the proper tools to detect, deter, and disrupt crime. And this technology is making a difference when it comes to public safety. In just the last couple of years, LPR technology have helped law enforcement solve over a dozen homicides here in Sacramento County. And as a homicide prosecutor who did not have this tool when I was trying cases, I can tell you that it has made a difference. And let me provide you with two examples and a few others in different situations. So here is a case, and the victim's name is Anthony Holliday. So let's remember that for a moment, that there was a victim involved, somebody who was gunned down in the middle of the night by at one point an unknown assailant. Witnesses were able to describe only a silhouette of a suspect, but could not identify anyone in particular. The car involved was described as a white Honda with a partial license plate. Investigating officers used the partial plate and a generic description of the car to search for cars matching that description in the area of the shooting. They discovered a match. and a registered owner of the car through the use of LPRs. They then went and spoke to the registered owner of that vehicle, who originally denied saying, I was not involved in this. But eventually we obtained a search warrant into that individual's phone. And that individual then admitted to his involvement and the evidence on the phone corroborated that. But for the use of LPRs, we would not have been able to identify that individual, would not have been able to locate him, would not have been able to then get a search warrant into his phone and corroborate that. And but for the use of LPRs in that situation, Anthony Holliday would not have obtained justice. His family would not have obtained justice. And yes, we need to make sure that LPRs are used properly and responsibly. And when it's not, there does need to be consequences. But let's not forget the victims and the survivors in the criminal victim justice system. There was another case in which the victim was 29 years old. And he was eating out at a local Mexican restaurant. And the victim went into the parking lot with some friends and encountered another person. They didn't know each other. There were some words exchanged. The defendant in that case felt disrespected. He got into his Yukon, his GMC XL. He drove back into the parking lot where the victim was located and ran him over and killed him, left him dead in the parking lot. Now, some of the victim's friends were able to obtain a photograph of the vehicle, but not a license plate number. Using LPRs and some of the cameras in the area, detectives were able to locate and identify that vehicle, the make and model, identify the location close to the area of the crime, and also was able to bring justice to this 29-year-old. This 29-year-old who will never see the sunrise again. This 29-year-old that will never be able to celebrate a wedding, a birthday, an anniversary. So yes, we need to protect civil rights. Yes, we need to make sure that the technology that we have, whether it's AI, whether it's LPR, whatever it is that we have, that it be used responsibly. But let's not forget the victims of crime as well. And I know Sheriff Cooper talked about a couple of different cases, and he talked about human trafficking. I've sat down across from a human trafficking victim. I've held their hand. I've watched them break down and cry. I've watched them struggle with drug abuse. I've watched them struggle with life. I've watched them come back with cuts on their wrists and their arms with the pain of being a victim of human trafficking. And I can tell you that LPRs, in two specific cases here in Sacramento, have helped us be able to rescue those victims, one of which was in the north part of the county. in which it is a well-known straw area blade. And the human trafficking victims were forced to be out there. But through the use of LPRs, we were able to identify a vehicle that was always around those two victims. And we were able to obtain more information, identify that individual, and then get a search warrant to rescue two human trafficking victims. We were also able to then, in another case, help identify another human trafficker. When we had a victim in Elk Grove run from an apartment and identify that she had been kidnapped and was able to then say that there was another victim that was kidnapped and we were able to rescue them through the use of LPRs. So again, I believe in civil rights and I believe in protecting our immigrants. As an immigrant myself, LPR shouldn't be used to go after immigrants. I'm not sure how many people in this room are immigrant. I am an immigrant and I believe in making sure that we protect our immigrants in our community, in our country. But I also believe that we cannot forget victims as well in the criminal victim justice system. So in closing, the technology that we have in place must be used responsibly. And what I've seen from the presentation by the chief and the city here demonstrates that there are checks and balances here. that there are good procedures here in the city of Elk Grove. And I'm not speaking for what happens in other parts of the country. I'm speaking about what happens here in Elk Grove and here in Sacramento County. And so LPRs will never replace good police work, but they do give our officers a tool to detect crime, to deter criminals, and to defend our community. And I do want to thank, as Sheriff Cooper did, all the people that came here and spoke. And this is the beautiful part about democracy that I absolutely love. Not everyone in this room is going to agree with what I say or what the sheriff says. But the fact that people can come here and voice their opinion, voice-versely. and vehemently and eloquently is a true testament to our democracy, one that I will continue to defend as a district attorney, but I also want to defend those victims and the survivors of crimes as well. And thank you to the council for really bringing this issue up and exploring it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, District Attorney Tianhe.

And so what I would just like to say in closing, I think what we've heard a lot from Sheriff Cooper and the district attorney is an argument for balance. I am your ALPR administrator. I am the Arctic manager, but I am also the wife to a first-generation Mexican-American. I am the mother to children who drive on the public roadway, and I am a professional here. Our administration hasn't been perfect, and we've evolved and gotten better, and we will continue to get better, and we will continue to refine. And I am personally invested in this technology and being distributed appropriately, as you've heard tonight. And that's what we will continue to do. Thank you.

Yeah, I think Jerry said it best. In the end, right, we have a responsibility to have the best practices. And to have best practice, you have to have balance in everything that we do and all the systems that we're part of, the criminal justice system, victims' rights, and civil liberties. We have to make sure that we can maintain those. And I think the City of Elk Grove is, gotten many titles and being one of the safest places, safest places to live is one of those titles. And that's because of what you've allowed us to do, what our communities allowed us to do, the safeguards that we have in place to provide the highest level of criminal justice or public safety that we can in our community, but also being transparent, answering the questions that can be hard. I don't think anybody pretends that policies and procedures are not written because we've done everything right. The fact of the matter is that something caused somebody to ask a question about how we do it, why we do it, and when we do it. And the truth from that is that a lot of policies and procedures have been written because of those things. We're not saying that everybody that uses the system is doing it the right way. What we're saying is that we're doing the best here in the city of Elk Grove to ensure that we're doing it the right way for the people in our community. I do not want to see policing go back 30 or 40 years. As a black American, that is the last thing that I want to see law enforcement do is to utilize practices that we practiced 30 or 40 years ago to identify victims or identify suspects of crimes. That is not how policing is supposed to be. We are supposed to utilize technology to do precision policing and not arbitrary policing. Our goals, our objectives are to find the suspects responsible for the actions that they've taken in our communities to ensure that not only they're taken into custody safely, but our community's victims truly have closure, and we can restore their faith in our community, their faith in the criminal justice system, and ensure that they can live peacefully in the city of Elk Grove, and in this case, the entire region. Thank you for allowing us to speak on this topic, and we're always here to answer questions.

Thank you. All right. Very thorough presentation, thank you. And before we go up to public comment, I want to thank our sheriff and our district attorney for also coming to the meeting tonight and providing additional information. All right, I'm going to go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity for in-person first. We're going to start with Lindsay Halsell followed by Logan.

Hello, thank you to the police for that presentation, and I wish I had as much time to speak as the sheriff did, but I suppose I will make due. First of all, I want to reiterate that no one who's against ALPRs is pro-crime and against victims. We want crimes to be solved. We don't want there to be crime in the first place, but this is not the answer. In the presentation today, the police mentioned that they retain ALPR data for 30 days, and that's also something they've mentioned previously this year in an ALPR presentation. However, this does contradict the city's ALPR overview and facts page, section 462.4, data collection and retention. which states that, quote, all ALPR data downloaded to the server should be stored for a minimum of one year. So even though the police are giving this presentation, we're getting conflicting information from the city and from the police about what happens to the data. regardless of how long Elk Grove Police think they're storing ALPR data, the reality is they have much less control than they believe. We know Flock retains data indefinitely because their own representative said so a few weeks ago in a city council meeting in Marietta, Oklahoma. The police chief said, we want this technology, but we want it to be done responsibly. And we want that too. We want responsible ownership of this data. And unfortunately, Flock's making it very clear that that's not possible. Flock goes out of its way to gather data, whether local governments know about it or not. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, city officials were not informed that there are Flock cameras. would track driving speeds and movement patterns. But after recently attempting to cancel their Flock contract, sales representatives contacted the mayor offering to sell the city five years of this very data. Flock was gathering more information than the city knew about or consented to. Elk Grove police say they don't have people search enabled in the Flock system. However, that doesn't mean that Flock isn't collecting that data. It means that search function is turned off for you they may still be collecting the data, just like we saw in this Wisconsin example. We also saw Grass Valley recently informed Flock that they were canceling their contract and they had their police remove the cameras. But Flock came out to conduct maintenance and reinstall the cameras. Flock does not see individual police departments as customers, although you're paying for Flock's ALPRs and access to its network. The real customer is whoever buys the data. Your job is to farm information. In February, Flock updated its terms and conditions to remove the statement, quote, Flock does not own and shall not sell customer data, end quote. They state that Flock has a perpetual worldwide license to use and disclose customer data and use customer data to support improved Flock products and services. These are the terms a company would have if it were using you to collect data and then selling it behind your back. It is at best naive for the city and the police department to assume they have control over data collected through Flock and ALPRs. Thank you.

Next up is Logan followed by Sappy.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Logan. I'm a lifelong Elk Grove resident, a student, and an independent security researcher. My background involves reverse engineering closed-source systems, holding major tech corporations accountable, including Google, for misleading claims and systemic data practices. This is not anti-police critique. I respect what you guys do, even if it's a little wonky. While our city redacted the reasons for all 8.3 million flock network searches and disclosed records, they cannot control what other agencies disclose. By cross-referencing audit records with neighboring jurisdictions, it reveals bi-directional sharing from Elk Grove, including out of state. Only 3% of searches were performed by Elk Grove Police Department, while 97% came from over 3,200 external agencies across 43 different states. As you know, our city has tied Flock directly into our real-time information center by adopting Flock OS and their autonomous drone system known as Aerodome. Public logs from last month show drone flights over residential backyards labeled simply as surveillance. Our city promised residents this exact practice would never happen. Because Flock is a software as a service, our city has zero control over what their hardware does on our streets. As the mayor of Dunwoody warned, Flock changes the rules mid-contract. Last February, they updated the terms to strip out promises not to sell data. Their own patents explicitly detail AI pipelines for facial recognition and demographic profiling. Independent researchers have already discovered facial recognition capabilities and software built into the LPRs themselves. And our own logs reveal 71 searches for human characteristics. Understand that a single over-the-air update is all it takes to activate live video or facial recognition across our entire city. No new hardware, no permits, zero council approval. This is a call to action to freeze all contract expansions, unredact public records, activate the transparency portal that FLOC provides you in order to build trust with the community, and perform a technical audit of the real-time information center. Do not involve flock. They have entire teams dedicated to damage control for situations like this. I end my words with a question. Who do you answer to? Your own neighbors who uncovered all this information or an out-of-state multimillionaire who labels our community as domestic terrorists for holding them accountable?

Next up is Kathy followed by Ellen.

Hello. I would like to reiterate, I am the child of a former sheriff's deputy, as well as the great grandchild of the former governor of California. I'm all for justice. I'm all for restorative justice. But what we are protesting is mass surveillance. That's what we're against, the normalization of mass surveillance, police exploitation, zero public oversight, and the abuse of this technology. I don't think Mr. Cooper understood what I meant when I mentioned romantic stalking. A good example is in Texas, a law enforcement officer literally looked up his ex-girlfriend's license plate 10,000 times. We have other instances of this being done 2,000 times in Massachusetts. An officer was looking up the mother of his child. All you have to do is just type in a keyword, and you all of a sudden have an investigation, and you can now abuse the system. Police officers are fallible. Law enforcement officers have egos, insecurities. They have a long rap sheet of breaking the law. The Institution of Justice has categorized more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse by law enforcement. This does include romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, as well as other types of misconduct. Officers have already been arrested for location tracking and romantic stalking. That's great that it hasn't happened here, but it's a matter of time. In Roseville alone, I've already mentioned, there was a 71% error rate on these license plates readers, resulting in 7 out of 10 victims who were wrongfully accused of having their car involved in a felony. When mass surveillance makes an error and wrongfully accuses an innocent law abiding citizen of a crime, everybody has something to worry about despite doing nothing wrong. Law enforcement would rather use flock cameras to arrest a Wisconsin man for driving to Michigan and buying weed from a dispensary rather than actually using that resource to find missing children. They do it to find women going out of state to have an abortion. And then they're prosecuted. We know people are trapped. And it's one of those things where they say they're helping victims of trafficking and missing children. Sure. But we have an estimated 460,000 to 6,000 missing children every year. But for some reason, we can track a guy buying weed, but we can't reunite these kids with their families. This technology has false positives. These errors lead to innocent people being stopped, detained, and wrongfully accused of crimes. A tool that introduces risk without proven benefit is a liability. They are heavily flawed. There's no proof that these technologies reduce crimes. Audits and studies show no clear or sustained impact on crime trends. Having ALPRs and other forms of mass surveillance with nor demonstrated results is an irresponsible use of public funds. It's non-consensual and it's oppressive.

Next up is Ellen, followed by Shauna Valencia.

So the first thing I wanted to say is that I want crimes to be solved. I live here, I have a six-year-old son, and I want this to be our forever community. And it's incredibly defamatory and offensive for Sheriff Cooper to say people opposed to ALPRs don't care about victims. That's bullshit. Shame on him. I also wanted to share, during the presentation, the PD mentioned that the robbery at A Seat at the Table Books wouldn't have been solved without ALPRs. I messaged the owner of A Seat at the Table Books when I heard that, and she was furious that her case was being used to support ALPRs, which she is opposed to. Quote, this is what she sent me to say on her behalf. This is Emily Ottenreth, owner of A Seat at the Table Books. I do not value finding our robber over personal privacy and safety. She also stated she was never even told that the Elk Grove PD actually found the person that robbed them. The DA said, we have good checks and balances here. That is not what the data shows at all. The only reason this meeting is happening is because residents made it happen. We requested the records. We spent hundreds of hours looking through 8.3 million searches where all the reasons were redacted. We had to corroborate those with Woodland PD's unredacted reasons. to find out that yes, there have been sharing with ICE. Maybe not directly, but other agencies have searched our data for ICE. This is a violation of SB 54. There are many immigration search terms. You can see them in the community audit. These violations have occurred, and we have had to spend our volunteer hours, hundreds of volunteer hours, to do the job that Elk Grove PD should have been doing. You say that you're crafting our auditing practices. It's been five years. Why does it take that long? You've been auditing since 2024 and still trying to figure out how to document those audits. Come on, this is your job. We shouldn't have to do this for you. You said that the 2023 DOJ memo was a catalyst for change. That's not when the law began. SB 34 has been law since 2016. You should have been following it the entire time. You have a legal obligation to do so. If you've been auditing since 2024 and you say MOUs have been required since 2024, then why has the Riverside County Sheriff and the Orange County Sheriff, two agencies that have shared with ICE, why are they still searching in 2026 when you said that they have to have an MOU? It's just absurd to think that because there are no scandals here, that there have been no stalking incidents. Most of those stalking incidents were discovered by not the audits being done by police. On a personal note, I have friends who shared that they were afraid to come speak here because they feared police stalking is retaliation. So that's the vibe in Elk Grove right now.

Thank you. Next up is Shauna Valencia, followed by Warren Bell.

Hi, everybody. Hi, Council. Hi, Mayor. My name is Shauna Valencia, and I am an immigrant. I am your 0.2% Canadian immigrant. And I am married to a Mexican immigrant who serves in the United States military. And I live in District 2. So I want to bring a different lens to the discussion through which we can look at this debate over ALRPs and specifically the Flock Company. And that is through the lens of our city's shared values. I have heard directly from the chief of police that the city of Elk Grove is taking every measure to ensure that our police department does not misuse the information collected from the ALRPs. However, the problem is that our ethics are not a legally binding contract for FLOC. A state audit in Illinois found that FLOC had let US Customs and Border Protection access Illinois' cameras through an undisclosed pilot program without consent. Under pressure, the company acknowledged in August 2025 that it had run pilots with federal agencies, NCIS, Homeland Security Investigations, and CBP. Furthermore, in February 26, a class action filed in San Francisco Superior Court alleged that out-of-state and federal agencies queried San Francisco's flock cameras more than 1.6 million times in about seven months. In our state of California, there is an ALRP privacy law that flatly prohibits sharing that data with federal agencies without case-by-case authorization, and yet it happened anyway. We are not immune to the misuse of our cameras and our data. We are no different than any other city that had set up protections for their citizens and was blindsided to find that FLOC had violated their protective measures without consent and without notice. With that in mind, is this a company that Elk Grove feels morally comfortable aligning itself with? Are we going to continue to use flock until it is our city that discovers that we had our data breached? Or are we going to wait until it's too late before taking action? How do the citizens here feel knowing that money is supporting a company that brings harm to already marginalized groups in our community? No one here wants our city to be unsafe or our police to be inadequately equipped to perform their job. But if the argument that you are making is that you're incapable of providing the city safety without flock, then maybe there's a staffing problem. And if the city council cannot reflect our concerns, then maybe there's a staffing issue there too. Thank you.

Next up is Warren Bell followed by Justin D.

Good evening, Council. After listening to tonight's presentation, there are a couple points that came up to me, and so I wanted to really go over these in the most clear, because I haven't heard them addressed so far. First of all, there have been no statistics provided to us regarding ALPRs. The presentation mentioned ALPR has been in effect since 2008. I've seen no stats at all showing it valid as far as the effectiveness or any type of increases of resolution of crimes. All we've heard so far have been anecdotes not only from the city council, excuse me, from the police department, from the sheriff's department, but also from there. So all we're hearing is anecdotes. We're not hearing actual statistics. If they're so involved and so important, we should be seeing some improvements from there. So that's one issue that's really jumped out at me. Second of all, the presentation talked about accountability. Where is accountability? It mentioned as far as for if there'll be investigations done through internal affairs and then also mentioned ultimately until termination, how will the public be involved? How will the public be informed in there? So I don't see anything listed about as far as public involvement or public there. If it is so important that you have a process as far as re-evaluating, public should be involved and they should be aware when there's transgressions that happen and be involved with as far as understanding there. And finally, also one thing I want to get to is that there's a lot of people brought up, myself just like others, we have disagreements with them. It's not that we wish that there should be, that criminals get free pass anywhere, that's not our goal. We respect for the rights of all of our citizens here, we all have a Fourth Amendment rights, we're all U.S. citizens, and they should be protected here as part of that. once when I've looked into these cameras, you've seen a lot of that. You know, right now in this country, we have over 150 committees have already pulled upon flock cameras and canceled those. And this is not as far as political things. You're talking about states of Texas, Arizona, here in California, Virginia, Colorado, cities all around have realized this is the wrong thing to do and they've made the change then, so. I understand the city has made an investment in it. I know there's a lot of money involved in it. And I know some people have some personal opinions and personal respect tied into this. I understand that. But we have to make an understanding and look for what is best for the community. And sometimes what's best for the community is making the change. So I understand it may be difficult, but I want you to understand it and listen to what the people are saying here. If this is something that needs to be decided by the citizens of Elk Grove, let's have that discussion. Thank you.

Next up is Justin D followed by Jeff Toon.

Hello again. I wanted to thank the police department for their presentation. You were really professional. You covered a lot of topics. You did assure me of some of my concerns, but not all of them. So I am going to speak to some of those. You did mention about Fourth Amendment protections. And you said one camera doesn't constitute that. I know exactly where that comes from. That was from a Supreme Court case where they discussed this. And I agree with you. One camera doesn't. But you guys have 90 cameras across the city. And a vehicle traversing the city passes many of those cameras in sequence. And they get logged. I want to touch back on also what I said earlier about my profession. I install servers for a living. We build control systems for cities. We give cities the servers themselves. We put the hardware in the city's hands or the police department's hands. We don't do police work. But we put the hardware in their hands. We give them the servers. They have control over the network. They have control over the actual system itself and the data on it. These systems are on remote servers somewhere that you don't know where. Like other people have said, Flock has been going behind cities' backs and accessing these servers on behalf of federal agencies with pilot programs. So you don't actually know for sure. You could do everything right. You could be as responsible as possible. You could be doing everything you're supposed to do, and it still wouldn't be enough because Flock can go behind your back at any point and do whatever they want. That's a huge concern for me. Sorry, a little heated. I want to touch again also on the professionalism. You guys were really professional. You guys covered topics. You were really polite to people, even though we all disagree. I wish I could say the same about Sheriff Jim Cooper. His interview on the news was a little bit upsetting. Seeing him say that people know nothing and were misguided was really disturbing to see. And I would like to see more of how you guys engaged with us on this instead of that. He also mentioned that phones have lots of data on us, too. I think that's also bad. I don't think that that's a good reason to say that we should allow this. That's not, oh, something else is bad, so this isn't as bad. That should be okay, too. I don't think that that really qualifies. That doesn't seem like a good way to reason that. Sorry, I have a lot of notes. um somebody else already covered this but i wanted to touch on it on riverside and orange county searching our system um i actually have the numbers on that riverside county searched our system sorry we'll start with orange county that's less orange county searched our system 374 000 times without an mou um and riverside county sheriff's office searched our system 901 000 times um And again, these are things that Flock could allow other agencies to do, even if we tell them not to. I also thought it was strange that we had to ask Flock to disable a feature when you talked about facial recognition. It proves that we can't just make the system do what we want. We need Flock to work with us and do what we ask. But this is a system that they host, and they can do whatever they want with the information. I probably had more things that I wanted to say, but thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next up is Jeff Toon followed by Yev Bergovy.

Well, good evening. I wanted to start by addressing the administrative change that was made in 2024 to remove the nationwide lookup tool. The presentation clearly shows violations of state law. Ignorance of the law or administrative mistakes do not justify violations of the law. As of 2024, you claimed that the new admin ended out of state. I'm speaking to Chief Davis here. You claimed that the... A new admin ended out-of-state sharing as a deliberate effort. However, Chief Davis, you stated on multiple council meetings that Elk Grove does not share out-of-state. Chief Davis, are you telling us that you were unaware of years of sharing violations while at the same time, as of 2024, the new admin was making a specific effort to close these major administrative loopholes? As a city council and as a community, As a city council, and as a community's literal voice, we are relying on you to ask these difficult questions. Why are you not curious about misuse and violations of the law? These misconceptions that were mentioned in the presentation, and particularly by Jim Cooper, are a straw man argument of the concerns expressed by the community. We are not confused that crime is bad. We are still learning, but we are well aware of what these cameras can and can't do. We are not claiming that victims don't matter as the district attorney seemed to suggest. What we do know is that you are expecting us to believe that this flawed system with unaccountable failure points, including the squishy human component, is safe and not being misused. I am asking you to place an agenda item on the next city council meeting and vote to end the contract with FLOC and to not seek any other ALPR replacements, thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Yev Bergovy followed by Ricky Paul.

My name is Yev. I'm a Ukrainian and an IT guy, since we're all introducing our backgrounds here. Drones, cameras, databases tracking citizens reminds me a little too much of the Russian government, and I do not like that. A single camera pays for itself in a single recovered stolen vehicle. This is something that we have heard before. A single camera costs $2,500 a year per camera, but potentially opens the city to a liability of $2,500 per unlawful search, as described in SB 34. There are already multiple class action lawsuits filed against Motorola, its subsidiary Vigilant, and Flock, alleging that they knowingly facilitated unlawful cross-jurisdictional sharing of California residents' data, maintained an inadequate privacy policy, and profited from the sensitive data. One of these law firms that's involved in this case was also involved in the Equifax privacy breach case, helping to secure over $1.5 billion for affected users. Under SB 34, the persons affected by ALPR violations are entitled to $2,500 per violation per person. Why is the city of Elk Grove taking on this massive liability when 97% of the searches are from outside of Elk Grove? Another concern, this tool has not been fully fairly evaluated after deployment. Stating that multi-factor authentication has been implemented on these systems when this has been an enterprise practice for at least 10 years is a worrying sign to me. These cameras have already been installed and any proof in the future that shows these tools to be less effective than they are sold to be will be met with a response of, we need even more cameras. It's unlikely the response will ever be to take them down. And even if you do decide to take them down, they might even put them back. Here's a headline from CBS News updated as of September 7th. Grass Valley police removed cameras again after unexpected reinstallation. Further in the article, it mentions as flock systems had mistakenly triggered the reinstallation of license plate cameras that Grass Valley police had already removed after canceling the contract. If you are gonna ask your officers to run hot on an ALPR alert, they deserve a system that doesn't mistakenly trigger the reinstall of cameras. Walking up to a vehicle on the side of the road is one of the most dangerous spots our officers are in, and a system with baked-in failure rates is just not good enough for me. Training and policies cannot fundamentally make a technology 100% reliable. And I just want to say, you already have eyes everywhere. You already have a surveillance network. It's imperfect, but it's human. Community members, business owners, neighborhood patrols, and just everyday people. In felony cases, tips from regular people are still an important part of actually solving the case. Every $2,500 a year camera costs you how much in community trust? When people feel watched and observed, are they more or less likely to report anything? Community policing is a proven approach, and these cameras are a giant step backwards for building the trust that is the foundation of community policing.

Thank you. Ricky Paul, followed by Lorraine Pryor.

Good evening, everyone. My name's Ricky Powell, and I serve as the Parkgate Neighborhood Watch Coordinator. I truly appreciate everybody's time, everybody's input, and I wanna share a few facts about AP. ALPR cameras in our neighborhood. Parkgate has 162 homes, and our residents privately funded two flock ALPR cameras after a series of community discussions, outreach efforts, and fundraising activities. We started the program in 2022 after our neighborhood experienced serious crime, including residential burglary in 2019 and a robbery at the Parkgate resident in 2022. Rather than simply expressing frustration, our community looked for practical public safety tools that could assess law enforcement when vehicles were involved in crime and suspicious activity. The purpose of these cameras was straightforward. They were installed to help document vehicles entering and leaving Parkgate and provide useful information to law enforcement when an incident occurs. These are not intended to monitor people's daily activity or replace traditional policing. Our cameras are positioned to face inward. towards the Parkgate community and access to provide to the Elk Grove Police Department through agreement through the neighborhood. The initial cost was $10,000 to install two cameras and an annual cost of $5,000 which Parkgate continues to privately fund. Recently, these cameras were vandalized. Elk Grove Police Department responded quickly and detained two individuals and connected to the incident. There are residents who support these cameras and residents who have concerns about privacy and data sharing. Both perspectives deserve to be heard. My request is simply that decisions involving LPR technology consider the facts, the safeguards in place, the experiences of residents. and the community safety purpose of the program which it was created. I'm going to go off script a little bit and thank Chief Davis and Andrea and to the law enforcement, Sheriff Cooper, for all the support that they have provided to the park community and their responsiveness to all our legal issues that we've been facing in the last recent couple days through this vandalism. And I appreciate the city's support. and providing all the guidance and the communication and your availability to talk to me and talk to our neighbors about the recent crimes. Thank you.

Thank you. Lorene Pryor, followed by Adela.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I come to this conversation from several perspectives. I am a black woman. I lead a nonprofit organization serving predominantly black youth and their families. And I also spent 16 years at the state capitol. Most recently, I was the committee secretary of privacy and consumer protection. So privacy isn't an abstract conversation for me. As a black woman, I am keenly aware of the history of surveillance in black communities. I don't dismiss that history. I carry it with me. But that history does not make me afraid of technology. It makes me insist that we put strong policies around how we use it. Technology is a tool. Most of us use GPS and location services, cameras, and other data-driven technology every single day. These tools can make our lives easier and our work more efficient. I believe public safety can benefit from technology as well, but government is different. Government has power, and that power comes with a greater responsibility. So with every new technology we consider, my question is simple. What's the policy? Those questions don't make me anti-technology, and I have a list of questions, but Chief covered them in his presentation, and Andrea, so thank you. Those questions don't make me anti-technology, they make me pro-accountability. I can support technology that helps find a child, recover a stolen vehicle, or allows law enforcement to do its job more efficiently. And let me be very clear, I am not always pro-law enforcement. Those things are not mutually exclusive. I don't believe we should fear technology. I believe we should govern it. And if we're going to invest in technology, let's be equally committed to investing in the policies that govern its use. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Pryor. Next up is Adela.

Let me start out by saying I appreciate everyone in this room. I believe the council and our police department is trying to be a responsible steward of this technology, but lack the technological savvy and knowledge to do so. This isn't about your intentions. It's about what you're building and the companies you're building it with. A surveillance system doesn't ask who's in charge before it works. The cameras, the data, the access, they'll still be here long after everyone has left this room and office. The restraint you've shown is a choice, not a safeguard built into the system. We choose our leaders. We don't get to choose what they inherit when they take office. That is the nature of infrastructure. It outlives its architects. Good governance today is not a guarantee of good governance tomorrow. A free society, a democracy, shouldn't build a tool that only stays safe as long as the right people are holding it. Thank you.

All right, Adela was our final in-person public comment speaker. We will now switch over to online.

And just to give you the broadcast, we have attendees, and we have five individuals who have their hands up. And so I'm going to be starting with Eli. And so, Eli, we're going to be asking you to allow you to talk, and then I'm going to be pulling up that speaker timer, if I can find it. It's always hiding.

Can you all hear me?

Yeah, we can. I'm going to turn it down a little bit. Thanks for waking everyone up in the audience. Eli, are you there and ready to go?

Yep.

Please proceed.

All right. Good evening. My name is Eli. I'd just like to unpack some of the statements we heard tonight by the sheriff and the D.A. So the D.A. in particular likes to make an emotional argument coming up here and trying to shout us down with this tragic story. Well, exploiting the victim in that story by giving using them to advocate for mass surveillance, because that's the best thing they can come up with. Frankly, we don't want crime in our hometown, but we also don't want to be spied on. I don't know why that's so hard for some people to wrap their heads around. We as local residents judge that it's not worth it. Um, the sheriff did much of the same exploring this tragic shooting to justify the invasive surveillance of our community surveillance that we did not ask for and surveillance that in case you didn't notice council members, we do not want. Um, I'd also like to make fun of the sheriff just a little bit for saying your phone has so much data spoken like someone who doesn't really know how data privacy works. Um, I don't know about you guys. But I don't give location data to whatever service asks. I don't post identifying information online. And the data that I do give is strictly necessary and requires my consent at some point. Guess what I didn't consent to? Surveillance in my community. Just because consumer electronics have become a source of open source surveillance doesn't mean this new violation of our residents' privacy is any less egregious. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying these words. Anyway, I'll keep it short. The folks at the real-time crime center and the sheriff's office really thought they ate with this presentation, but all we saw today was them trying to gaslight us with an emotional argument into thinking warrantless mass surveillance is a good thing. Don't fall for it, council members. I yield my time.

Thank you. Next public comment.

And our next speaker is going to be Dan. And just one moment while I get everything lined up here. And Dan, you're going to be our next speaker. Looks like your audio is on. You're coming through just a little. We can just try speaking into your into your microphone. Sometimes it's just an attenuation for it to catch on.

Is that a little bit better?

That's way better.

So Dan, it might also be my fan. Hold on. Yeah.

Anything that you can mute for any of our speakers, if you mute other devices, fans, other attendees that can help the sound attenuation.

Okay. I am ready. Please proceed, Dan. Hello again, counsel. We all want crimes to be solved, and I do believe that Elk Grove PD does care about the community and doesn't want abuse of the system. I truly do believe that. But let's talk about Flock. It's a private company that has raised close to a billion dollars in venture capital funding. Those firms, they want a 10 to 100 times return on their investment. So if you've raised a billion dollars, they want to sell that company for 10 billion to 100 billion dollars at a minimum, either publicly or to another company. One of their investors is Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel is a founder of Palantir. And they would love this data. So it's unclear to me what they will do with this data to make that return happen. See Facebook, Google, etc. They all started out with lofty goals, connect people, share the world's information, and they all ultimately sold out data to make their valuation. Also, the CEO continues to make disparaging comments against police departments it serves, has basically called them podunk, underfunded, and that they don't really even know how to use the technology. Look up those comments. They're fun. In the presentation, you mentioned searches were being misclassified by the vendor. This vendor sure seems to make a lot of mistakes. They added cameras back to Grass Valley after they canceled their contract. They clearly had a misclassification, all kinds of things. So it really boils down to a single question, is do you trust Block to care about our community? I don't. Quickly, a little bit about software as a service. There's a thing called feature flags. I work in technology. I know how this works. If you've ever been on Zoom and you have a feature that your coworker does not have, that is a feature flag. They rolled it out to you to see how it did before they decided to roll it out to everybody. Maybe you have a new emoji, new feature, whatever. So they're telling you that the data is only kept for 30 days or whatever you set. This is just a flag. Block keeps this data indefinitely. There's no reason for them not to. It's harder to delete than it is to keep. It costs them almost nothing incrementally to keep it. And ultimately, they can sell it for a whole lot of money. Same thing with facial recognition. They tell you that you don't have facial recognition. It's not available to you. But that doesn't mean that they don't have access to do it. A little bit on the presentation. On the first slide, there was a statement that said it does not continuously track. I started to make some notes until you hit the next camera. If you look at enough data points, you can map where you're going and for how long you're there. And then immediately on the next slide, it said we were able to follow the suspect vehicle backwards from the evidence location to the business. That sure sounds like continuous tracking to me. A couple of quick points. MFA is not an audit. Being in the system is not an audit. What do 90-day audits look like? I yield my time. Thank you.

Next public comment.

And our next speaker is going to be Brian Hofer. And just moving towards the allow to speak.

Good evening, my name is Brian Hofer speaking on behalf of Secure Justice, a privacy advocacy organization. We've worked with more than 100 municipalities on surveillance technology issues. I spent 10 years evaluating this tech for the city of Oakland as chair of its privacy commission. I'm also a victim. My brother and I had four guns pointed at our heads by the Contra Costa Sheriff's deputies due to a mistaken license plate read. After the New York Times picked it up, more than 100 people contacted me to share similar stories. There are significant red flags about flock that are not being discussed tonight. More than 180 officers have been the subject of formal complaints involving misuse of flock systems. More than nine have already been criminally charged. The system itself is ripe for abuse. In August, in just the first eight days of this month, 181 flock contracts were terminated nationwide. That should give this council serious pause before continuing its relationship. A Flock whistleblower leaked audio and documents concerning Flock's use of stolen data purchased from the dark web for its open source analysis products. Flock webinars provided to police have demonstrated using this technology to identify protesters at an O'Kings event. There are serious California legal concerns as well. Flock audit logs, including yours, reveal potential violations of multiple state laws. FLOC audit logs no longer capture the purpose of a query or the identity of the officer conducting it. Both are required of you under SB 34. That creates an ongoing compliance problem. As for the contract itself, your city attorneys did a decent job protecting Oak Grove, the corporate entity, not so much protecting the residents and visitors whose movements are being collected. Your police presentation states that facial recognition and predictive analytics are not in use, possibly true, but misleading. Flock's own patent contemplates both, while your contract permits Flock to make unilateral changes and introduce new features without city approval. It has been widely reported that Flock currently provides heat maps, vehicle convoy tracking, and predictive pattern analytics already, which has caused several cities to terminate their own contracts because Flock did not disclose these features. OutGrove nominally owns its data, but the contract grants Flock an irrevocable perpetual worldwide license to use that data and permits retention of aggregated data after the contract ends. That data is being used for machine learning and product development. The contract also permits Flock to share your data with any third party at its sole discretion. Finally, I want to address the data sharing MOUs mentioned tonight. Direct agency access fundamentally undermines meaningful oversight. In real time, no Elk Grove employee knows another agency is searching Elk Grove's data, who is conducting the search, or why. That means Elk Grove cannot prevent misuse before it occurs, cannot ensure compliance with state law or your own use policy. You have effectively outsourced control over sensitive location data while retaining the legal and political consequences when something goes wrong. We ask that you pause the use of the system and evaluate it. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Next public comment.

Our next speaker is Yadi. That's how they're listed. So, Yadi, you have that ability to unmute yourself and proceed.

Hello?

You are on.

Great. Hi, thank you for discussing this important issue. However, I admit that I'm shocked and disturbed at all the violent crimes that law enforcement referenced in the same breath as professing that Elk Grove is a safe city, all of which apparently happened on Phlox Watch. It was appalling to hear repeatedly that we think about the victims like their voices aren't being represented or in the room. My neighborhood was hit with a rash of burglaries last year, and we didn't turn around and ask for surveillance. Actually, that is when we understood the limitations of this technology. It was a hard pass. I've gone to court to obtain a restraining order because of a stalker, and the judge didn't turn around and tell me that I have no expectation of privacy in public. or to go get surveillance cameras instead. I swear the judge signed the restraining order so fast he burned a hole through the paper. You know that these tools are used to track and stalk women. Will you also offer to install cameras in our living rooms and bedrooms to combat intimate partner violence? Where does this end? The bar is so low. You accept a tool simply for having value under the guise of public safety. What's next? When cops come in wanting to use creeper meta glasses for safety, are you going to agree? Are you going to be okay with installing safety traffic cameras, also known as crotch cams for public safety? Why not install microchips in all of us or sedate the population while you're at it? These are not the cameras of yesteryear that you installed in 2008. They are supercharged with AI and analytics which fundamentally make them operate like data brokers. Data brokers hovering mass quantities of personal information about the public and sharing it with countless untold government and private entities. Did you know that Flock is selling cities back their own residents' data they helped collect? Who else are they selling your citizens' data to? Do you care? There are so many safety alternatives. Have you ever had your police give you a presentation about CEPTED, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, which uses no surveillance? A neighborhood in Fort Wayne reduced their crime with CEPTED by 40%. Can any of these exploitative technologies say the same? Let's be clear that the people don't want mass surveillance packaged as public safety. Please address the underlying issues, not wave empty guardrail gestures. The public deserves better and victims deserve better. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next public comment.

Our next speaker is Matt.

Can everyone hear me? Indeed. Please proceed, Matt. Hi, my name is Matt, and I'm a resident of District 1 in Elk Grove. First, I'm appalled by the insinuation that residents who oppose mass surveillance are thereby pro-crime. This is a ridiculous assertion. Of course we want crime to be reduced in this city, but they're not tied together. What did law enforcement do before Flock? Do that again. Residents and visitors to Elk Grove have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is being violated by Elk Grove PD's flock ALPR cameras because they create a dragnet system of surveillance that effectively tracks the whole of our physical movements. Rather than only triggering an alert for a wanted vehicle, the system retains data on every innocent driver who passes by. Block has admitted that its ALPR system can generate a heat map showing exactly where a specific vehicle has traveled over a 30-day period. The argument that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in public is not supported because of the indiscriminate tracking that ALPR camera systems utilize, especially considering there are approximately 90 ALPR cameras in our city. It seems that the ALPR cameras are placed to make it difficult to drive anywhere from our homes without running into them. Residents who have started to keep track have discovered that they pass ALPR cameras multiple times every day, sometimes more than a dozen times. Going to work, taking their kids to school, going to the store, visiting friends, going to the doctor, attending religious services, attending protests, or going to the gun range. Some people say that they have nothing to hide, and being surveilled does not matter to them because they are not breaking the law. But what is worth hiding can change. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Overnight, abortion became illegal in the 13 states with trigger laws that were waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling. On June 24, 2022, people seeking abortions had nothing to hide. But on the following day, essential reproductive care was now a crime, with at least one sheriff's office using LOPRs to try to track a woman for this reason. When surveillance is indiscriminate like this, our entire community is monitored without any reasonable suspicion that we might be doing something illegal. We're all treated like criminal suspects, with every detail of where we go treated as potentially suspect. The use of ALPRs is a violation of the rights of every member of our community. I urge the City Council to stand up for our residents' privacy, safety, and civil liberties by canceling the flock ALPR contract, and not replacing it with another ALPR vendor. Thank you. I yield my time.

Thank you. Next public comment.

In our online environment, we have one more speaker, Caitlin, and that is who I'm going to be unmuting on our end, and that is our last signed-up speaker online.

Awesome. Can you hear me?

Indeed. Please proceed.

All right. So some of the points I'm going to bring up are going to be reiterations from other things that people have said, but that's just because all of this stuff is so important. We've seen in Marietta, Oklahoma, Flock told them at a city council meeting that these cameras do, like they have the footage forever indefinitely. So we can set our retention rates for whatever we want. but they keep the footage indefinitely. And I think that alone is a reason enough to cancel. They are lying to us. They are not following the contract if they are keeping this data for indefinite purposes. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, they had offered to sell the city five years of data on traffic speeds and movement, but they weren't supposed to be collecting that data. And the police chief shared that information the new level of undisclosed data collection undermines his trust in the system. That is a quote from him. Additionally, we saw that the 404 media reported that Flock was using marketing material and included things from Elk Grove. So we already know that we are using this data greatly more than what is being shared by the police department. And then a Washington Post article, they were talking about a survey That was done of approximately 20,000 adults. And this year it was 46% of people opposed it. Whereas last year, 45% of people were in support of. So as more people learn about what these things are doing, they do not want them in their communities. More and more people are learning and they do not want them. And that's why there's such a drastic pushback against this. Now that we are becoming aware of the depths of this technology. So I urge the city of Elk Grove to cancel their contract. Do not seek another ALPR vendor. They are violating our Fourth Amendment rights. This is just drastically not what we signed up for. I yield back my time.

Thank you. And just to clarify, that was the final online public comment? Indeed. All right. With that, then I will close public comment on this item and call back our police chief and on Ms. Cortez. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to speak before we then go into questions and comments for you. Yes?

That is fine. Andrea has a few things she wants to cover as well, or you can ask us the questions.

I'll defer to you. If you want to go ahead and speak, and then I'll open it up to my colleagues.

Thank you. There's just a few things that I'll touch on. Policy that was referenced, Policy 463.4, refers to the download of the image, meaning that that information is going to be used with the case. The downloading of the ALPR information means that it will be used for a case and then retained for a year. So we do have 30-day retention. It's stated in our contract. It's stated online. And so there's that. In reference to Sheboygan, I can't speak to, obviously, what Sheboygan's contract terms state, but within our contract, FLOC does have permissions to use anonymized data, meaning that there's no actual indication of what the vehicle information is. It is counting cars and traffic patterns. And so that That is within the terms of the contract. We certainly defer to legal as far as reviewing and making sure that the contract is in compliance with what we are seeing play out in real time. Let's see. The case I was referencing was actually Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, where there was 176 cameras related to tracking of someone's movement. That was decided in January of this year, January of 2026. And so while we definitely respect and hear the concerns related to Fourth Amendment, we obviously defer to the courts related to Fourth Amendment violations. These things are really complex, and so we want to defer to the experts and the court systems. And so it has still been determined, as it stands today, that ALPR is legally to be used by law enforcement with these other parameters in place, but it is not tracking the continuous movement of an individual, and that's where that cases. And we look to the courts for guidance there. What else?

uh false hits alpr hits on license plates again we covered what we do here in the city of belgrove not what other organizations or other jurisdictions do when it comes to a license plate hit itself it's verified here through several means before we actually would dispatch or allow anybody to go try to identify that vehicle or put a stop or initiate a stop on that vehicle i also want to cover dfr cameras our dfr cameras when we fly them their cameras are set at the horizon they are not set at They're set flying. The cameras are set at a horizon. They are not set on in down towards any of our yards in our communities until it arrives at the location that it's supposed to be dispatched to. Yeah.

Related to misuse, so officers have been identified and law enforcement personnel have been identified. It's estimated there's approximately 750,000 law enforcement professionals within the United States. And so absolutely each case of misuse needs to be handled accordingly. And we take it very seriously. But just to provide some context, it doesn't mean that that's happening everywhere. We are certainly doing our due diligence here to ensure that it's being administered, the technology is being administered appropriately. And we definitely hear the concerns of the community.

Yeah, and if an internal affairs case is opened as a result of a violation of this magnitude, you know, again, we have things in place to ensure that if there is one, the investigation will take place. Peace Officer Bill of Rights will come into play, and certain information based on SB2 can be released to the public, depending upon the crime or the investigation itself or what the accusation is. But what we have shown here as far as internal affairs investigations, if there is a sustained violation, we handle it through a progressive policy. And progressive discipline can go anywhere from corrective action to termination, but it doesn't have to start a correction action. And it can be termination straight from the complaint itself.

And further, just related to the technologies and the vendors in the space, it's not my position certainly to defend a particular vendor. We are evaluating other vendors in the space, and we always want to make sure that we are using the most appropriate vendor for the city of Elk Grove, which is why we've engaged in a trial with other ALPR vendors. There's kind of two parallel arguments running here. One is that LaFleur is not an honest company, and the other is that all ALPR technology should not be used. And so we will continue to evaluate other ALPR technologies in the space. We will adhere to the courts and the state for guidance related to administration.

All right, well thank you for that additional clarification. All right, I'm gonna open it up for council comments and any questions, I'll start to the right. Council Member Spies.

All right. So first, I want to thank all of my fellow technologists for being here. I don't think we've had a technologist in the audience for, gosh, at least as long as I can remember. I myself, I've been in the Department of Defense world for 40 years now, primarily dealing with nuclear weapons and cybersecurity. That's what my company does. And so I get it, I understand some of the concerns. I won't get into some of the deep technical stuff, because we'll really bore the heck out of a lot of people, and I'm sure you know that. So I wanted to express that first. Also, just one thing that I'll add, two things that I want to add a little bit before, is with my experience in the government, particularly in federal government, and particularly with NSA, there's something that is actually written on the wall in the NSA and it's trust but verify. Okay, and that is very, very important to me. The second part is, maybe it's a little bit crass, but when folks say, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have no, there should be no problem with being checked, right? For me, I kind of look at that as, well, I pay my taxes, and I do my taxes well every year. That doesn't mean I want to be audited every year. So what I'm trying to say is I understand where you're coming from and mass surveillance, it is something that concerns me. Every morning I'm yelling at KCRA on the television because I've just seen government agnostically, right? I've seen... I've seen things in government that I can't unsee, given what I've worked on. And I know a few things because I've seen a few things. So I get where you're coming from. I get it. I want you to know that I value public safety. Like most all of you, I think all of you, value public safety. You also value civil rights. And it's my assertion that you cannot have public safety without protection of civil rights. They go hand in hand. If you don't have the Fourth Amendment, what do you have? So I want to park that there for a quick second. And I wanna tell a little story about a friend of mine who I had lunch with during COVID and during the protests that were related to George Floyd. We sat down for lunch, just two friends hanging out for lunch, talking about his business, the impact of COVID, his family and other topics. George Floyd obviously was an important topic of the day. And we talked about it at length. I'll say, in the interest of time, because it is getting late, but I'm going to give you the punch line. My friend's name is Kevin. And I, of course, am Kevin, right? So what he said to me was, Kevin, I get it. You can tell me that violent crimes are lower. You can tell me that society is safer. But we've all seen what's gone on in Minnesota. And honestly, as a black man, I don't feel safer. All of my interactions with Elk Grove Police Department have been positive. but because of what's gone on across the United States, how can I be sure that it won't happen here? And that's what I'm hearing from folks. How can I be sure that it doesn't happen here? So that is focus for what I'm going to try to explain a little bit and how I was able to loosen my tinfoil hat a little bit, okay? All right, so I'm gonna ask you guys a couple of questions, and you've talked about it before, it's been in the presentation, but I wanna foot stomp on some of these things, okay? I'm gonna ask some questions about how we can ensure ALPR is appropriately used in Elk Grove. How often, by the policy, how often do we audit, by policy?

Well, at least every 90 days, but we're in the system significantly more than that because we are looking at how things are done, why our officers are in the system to ensure that we don't just do a search because we want a search. You have to have a specific code before you're allowed to go into the system. You can't just go in and say, see me. That's not what you need. You have to have an investigative reason to be in the system.

But we audit a minimum of 90 days, which means that we're Auditing less. Yes. We're auditing more frequently is what you're saying. Okay. Specifically who, and I'm talking about like by job description or by job title, specifically who conducts that audit? Dre and her team.

So the Arctic analysts are conducting and myself are conducting audits. The timeframe is not specifically stipulated in policy. However, we've made that determination when I became the program administrator in 2024, we thought not 90 days was a reasonable timeframe to be able to actually evaluate the data. There's a significant amount of data. And so 90 days was felt to be appropriate. And we are in the process of through that ALPR committee that I mentioned earlier of really formalizing and, and, putting a lot of this in policy.

Okay. So I'm going to ask that we stipulate a timeframe, which is no longer than 90 days, right? I mean, I would personally prefer 30 days, but let's do it practical, right? Okay. So by job title, then the director of the, I just forgot what it's called, does the audit. You do the audit.

I do the audit and the Arctic analyst also do the audit.

Okay. Okay. What specifically is audited? What data fields are audited? And is that in a policy?

Yeah. Specifics are not in a policy. That is, again, something we are developing to identify through a procedure. And a lot of this will be drafted in policy. We are, right now, what we are conducting audits on is the reason field. So that was that training brief that was referenced in the presentation. We really focused on the reason code because we wanted to make it very clear that you had to have that reason. The official law enforcement purpose was identified in the search reason.

And in fact, I saw that actually Flock is now making that statement.

Yeah, so they then later on.

That is a required field by.

2025, they made it a required field.

Right.

And so, you know, there was an indication like what's taking so long with this? And it's because the platform is developing and adjusting as we're trying to complete auditing practices. So it's a bit of, you know, we're figuring it out as far as what we can put into procedures and policy that will still exist, you know, depending on how the software is developed. We want to make sure that we are consistent in what we're doing. And so that will much look like memos will be, I think memos is probably the best way to identify what the results were from the audits.

So the memos are directives as well. So they're coming out as a directive from me to the organization itself. And I believe the flock put that in place in 2025. Our training document was in February of 24, I believe, requiring that for our organization.

Okay. What specific positions in EGPD are provided access? So can a motor officer look in? Can a, I don't know, name, I mean, I don't know, can someone from, and I use this, I don't use this jokingly, but the animal services are within the police department. Can animal services look at these, specifically which positions are allowed to look?

So we've identified those by roles that will be because we want to be ensure that we are in compliance. So we want them to be broad enough that it does include the folks that need to have access. So detectives, patrol teams, Arctic and dispatch folks who are conducting investigations that will be that hasn't been formally called out in policy. And that's what we are working through the ALPR committee. to formalize and get language for that.

And when you say ALPR committee, that is a committee that is within our department.

Yes, and that was developed to bring multiple stakeholders to the table because we need to evaluate these processes. But ensure that what we don't do is make knee-jerk decisions We don't roll out knee-jerk policies that will not be a best practice.

Right. Makes sense. Okay. I want to talk real quick about audit dashboard. So the community review that was done had really some interesting data points, right? So there was a long list of data requests that were received by our... Instance. Right. An important point of clarification is those were requests, not returns. OK, I can ask the chief to tell me Miss Cortez's home address right now. And what he should tell me is, thanks, have a good day, creeper. You're not going to get that. So when you see requests come in, as you see in the data, that does not mean that there was a return. But that is an interesting data point. And so I think what I would ask Flock to do is to provide us a portal or a report, something that we could put on the interwebs that says number of requests, number of valid requests, number of returns. And I can definitely provide some of those things. But I think if we were to provide that data on a recurring basis, at least as often as the audit is, right? And Flock should be able to make it a very, very simple push a button, get the report kind of thing. And so I would ask that they do that. While I'm at the part of asking Flock to do something, I want to talk about the people search in the free form. I think what folks need to know or need to remember is, correct, the radio button is enabled so that you can check it. Okay, I would ask once again, can you please disable that? However, just because you click it doesn't mean that the camera that is on the other side has the ability to produce it. We don't have the cameras that provide the capability to do the people search. OK? So ask them again, please. They may tell us, yeah, have a good day. It really isn't. And for all my technologists, they're probably going to say, that's not a difficult thing to do. They should be able to do it. So all right. I'm going to turn a little bit to the dreaded EULA, the terms and the conditions. All of us have our stupid little iPhones that come on and we get a EULA that we have to agree to. We scroll through it and we agree to it at the bottom. I'm asking what do we do here in the City of Elk Grove when a new EULA or a new term and condition, what do we do when that's received?

A request for access to the data, to clarify. That's what you're asking about.

No, what I'm asking about is when the software changes or when data writes something in the contract, right, is when something changes. Just like the EULA on your phone.

So essentially when there's an update and an iPhone comes back, something turned on.

Yeah. Right. So what I'm asking is who reviews the changes to the terms and conditions, right?

our legal department. I would refer to legal. I don't take that on myself.

Right. I'm asking because I know that answer.

Okay.

And I'm hoping that Mr. Hobbs can step in because Ms. Suzanne told me that she reviews all those changes in the terms and conditions.

Ms. Kennedy does do that when there are changes in conditions. Our assistant city attorney does review those and reviews those for satisfactory compliance with the city and state law.

Right. So that's whenever there is a change or a software update that has a change determined conditions, it is reviewed. Yes. Okay. And again, I know the answers to these questions. I'm only asking them once again so I can foot stomp. Let's see. When... When the software is installed, and I'm going to say this is more of a statement than a question because I've read about it, at installation, the default sharing is set to none. What that means is, for those of you with least privilege, you understand that It's kind of like Linux where you install Linux and you have to grant permissions, right? So when you first install the software, you have to look to the MOUs that you have and you have to click on that you're going to share with those. And that's important because what I'm telling you is the default out of the box doesn't share with everyone. You have to purposefully click the buttons to share. And that list is those that we have an MOU with. Let's see. All right, cybersecurity. Again, I've spent a little bit of professional time in cybersecurity back even before it was called cybersecurity. And I'm not going to go into a long thing on this. So I haven't personally, technically evaluated their cybersecurity. I haven't, I mean, I wouldn't anyway because I would go to jail for trying to hack their system and I'm not into jail. So, but what I have done is I have reviewed the practices that they say that they do. And from reviewing those, those practices meet or exceed what best practices are for criminals. a company like Flock, okay? One day, if they would like to offer me the opportunity for me to go audit it personally, I'd love to do it. They're not gonna, but I can tell you that their assertions tell me that they are doing things according to the law. I'm going to pick on the cloud and on-prem here for just a little bit. And again, I'll make it a short conversation because, again, there's probably only about three people in the room that really, three to four people that really care about this. This is a topic that can be lost on a lot of people. Some will claim that having servers on-prem is the most secure. while others will claim that cloud is more secure. In my experience, I can tell you that proper implementation of either on-prem or cloud is the key, proper implementation. Just because a server is on-prem does not mean it's more secure. Conversely, just because a server is in the cloud doesn't mean the application is more secure. I can tell you from personal professional experience that organizations with extremely high value data to include banking institutions and the federal government, Department of Defense, they are increasingly using cloud technologies. There is secret and top secret information on the cloud, not AWS, but in other systems, okay? So I asked about the people search. I'll wind it up here. ALPR is a very powerful tool. and it's been invaluable to law enforcement. Across the country, we have seen civil rights abuses. That absolutely has happened, and it's wrong, and those officers should be punished to the full extent of the law, right? But we have appropriate safeguards here in place in Elk Grove, and we will continue to remain vigilant on compliance. And so with that... I hope I didn't put anybody to sleep yet. But with that, I'm finished. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Spies. Councillor Robles, you're next.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, Chief and Andrea, for the presentations. Thank you to everyone for being here. And thank you for continuing to come out and speak. And just thank you for just being respectful to each other. We might not always agree on certain issues. but we're respectful, and that's what matters, right? There's other cities that don't offer that respect, but we do. I also wanna say thank you to Council Member Spies. You definitely went in depth with your depth of knowledge of technology. I appreciate the lining of questioning that you did ask. I also appreciate some of the residents from Park 8 that came. They're part of District 4. When this occurred, I think it was before my time, when I was on the council, but they reached out to you, Chief, and I think you went out there to the community and spoke to several of our residents. And it was a conversation, I think, that they wanted your support, but then I think you also put the ball in their court and asked them if they were willing to also figure out how can we take care of our community and if they were willing to put some money towards it. How has that relationship been going?

Oh, it's a great relationship. Again, I think they were asking for some expertise or some, they had questions in regards to how our success was with the ALPR system that we had. I was able to share the success that we had as far as preventative measures. And I think their overall objective or goal was to ensure that they no longer had burglaries in their neighborhood where there was significant loss over a few years there. And they were unfortunately unable to be captured or caught But because of the location of the neighborhood and how it's set up, the ALPR system or the cameras that they ultimately chose to use were perfect. And it has reduced a ton of calls in that particular neighborhood. And it's made it significantly safer. And I think that's what Ricky spoke to today.

I know we're talking about all of Elk Grove, but I'm going to stick to District 4. I know that the sheriff talked about... his ex-employee who worked, and he was also a resident of District 4. And I remember that day very clearly because for 24 hours or even more, I was heartbroken when I found out that in our own district, or my own district, that a resident would kill his child and attempt to murder his other child. had it not been for the hit that happened on the Flock cameras, this ex-sheriff wouldn't have been caught. I understand folks Like, we don't want the civil rights and civil liberties being over-policed. I understand a lot of that because I agree that we shouldn't be over-policed. But I also believe that this prevented someone's mother from dying that day. This prevented a sister from dying that day. And here in Elk Grove, we believe in public safety. And as someone who continues to serve in our military, a lot of it is training, training, training, training, remember to train, remember to train, and then procedures, how we follow the SOPs. And if those SOPs need to be updated, we will update them. There's, I think there was three triggers, correct? Verification to verify that a license plate is going to be pinging or how to verify that. You mentioned one is directly pinged to someone from the center, correct? And then you verify from the DMV and then from there, if it all is correct, then you pass that information on to the officer or whoever, you know, go track this car, correct? Yes.

That's correct. Our dispatch teams do that. And then simultaneously, Arctic is doing it if they're operational. And then dispatch also takes an additional step to call the outside agency if it's related to an outside agency.

Has there been incidents that those triggers have not been met? Therefore, no car is pursued or vehicle? And then I also... Like, I understand, and I thank you, Council Member Spies, for talking about the timeframe on the 90 days. I agree with that. We should absolutely have a timeframe. Listen, I agree that what's going on in other states is very horrendous. I also agree that what's going on in these red states in Texas, in Florida, regarding, or Florida canceled, but every other state that's doing in Oklahoma, like, I would attribute that to bad actors and just bad policing, right? And even There is not every, again, there's those jurisdictions. Every officer, not every officer is a good officer. I think we can kind of agree to that. But here in Elk Grove, from what I've seen, Chief, is that you've done your very best to make sure that we are one, we have integrity, we have respect for our community, and we truly follow the rule of the law here. I haven't seen anything that says otherwise. to keeping our community safe. And for those, I've been to the No Kings protests. I go whenever we do have one because I believe in our American community. I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen when people go into these communities and they're being ripped apart. I'll be the first one out there too. I will be out there making sure that our folks and our residents are safe.

Please, public comment is over. We are deliberating. Thank you.

I just want folks to make sure to know that we follow the rule of law here in Elk Grove.

Yes, sir, we do. And I would say, you know, the review that was done, including the DOJ review and audit, essentially, of the systems that we have, were a trigger. And I think ultimately for us, it's to make sure that we're doing it the right way, developing policies, continuing to review those policies, and ensure that, you know, we do have the best foot forward every time. And the transparency that we believe in is what we've continued to do. We hire the best of the best. We're very fortunate in that regard. We don't overhire. We hire at the appropriate levels that match with the technology that we have to ensure that our city is the safest when it comes to public safety. And so we do. And again, I think one of the things that has come from this rightfully so, is review of policy and ensuring that we not just look at the policies we have, but are we adding policies? Yes. Are we going to review those policies? Yes. We will, through conversation, through our community, and through law, ensure that we can create policies that meet people's needs and standards to ensure that all civil liberties are met. Perfect. Thanks, Chief. That's all I have.

Madam Mayor, I think it would be appropriate to waive the 10 o'clock rule, please.

Yes. Agreed. We're likely going to go past 10. Thank you. Council Member Brewer.

I don't filibuster that long. I don't know what you're talking about, Council Member Spence. I appreciate both of your comments because you're speaking to the larger issue from a technical standpoint and from a municipal standpoint. And make no mistake, This is a very controversial subject. It's not anything that we could sweep under the rug, and I'm glad we're having this full-throat discussion with everyone in the room, both the people who want to see the cameras gone and eliminated from our sheriff and our district attorney. I want to thank them for coming and providing their testimony. I want to thank you, Chief. I want to thank both of you here for providing this opportunity this update because in a lot of ways, yeah, we normally vote on stuff in these meetings, but hello, we also do informational hearings and that's what this is. And it's done to educate the public and to really give us a better understanding of what these automated license plate readers are, what they're not, what the technology entails, what we have control over. stuff that we may not have control over, but we're doing our best to control it. I believe Andrea Cortez and the Real-Time Information Center does a really good job of administering this. And I also want to ask this very question because there's the stuff we can control and there's the stuff that we can't control. So we just heard from one of the people who testified earlier that Orange County and Riverside County does hits on our system. And obviously we know those are red counties. At least we know the sheriff of Riverside who attempted to run for governor and tried to steal ballots. I know that that was something that we definitely knew that that is something that if he does that, then he knows he's doing some other stuff. In terms of firewalls and guard rails, how can we ensure that we keep those parties who are not part of our MOU to get into our system and harness our data?

So we have not shared with Riverside or Orange County since February of 2026. That's been completely removed so they no longer have access to the data. They would have to be fairly sophisticated as law enforcement professionals to hack into our system to specifically target Elk Grove license plate data. We do, through the IT team here, have firewalls in place and securities in place to ensure that that access doesn't happen. Flock also adheres to industry standards as far as access and security related to compromises.

And for parties who we do have an MOU with, do we have amendments in our agreement where they are required to not share our data with their partners in an MOU? No.

So they don't have the ability to share our data. Our MOU does call out the civil code and the government code that states that they will adhere to all applicable laws, rules, and regulations pertaining to the use of ALPR data.

Okay, and for, And the reason why I'm asking these questions, because it's really leading back to the meat of the situation, Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Security, they are not obligated to contact Elk Grove Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff, or any law enforcement agency if they're going to be in an area.

They're not obligated. We like it if they would and do, but I don't believe, we don't govern them. So I can't tell you whether their policy is or not. I can tell you their practice has been not in most cases. And they're not honor bound to contact the FBI either.

And so it's one of those situations where I hate to invoke this guy. When you involve 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into this discussion, This is where all the anxiety and fear comes into play. And that's why we've seen so many people feeling really passionate about this device. And then when you factor in who owns Flock and another name who was invoked, Peter Thiel, that also creates another issue where people are like, What are we doing? We're trying to protect our communities. Elk Grove Police Department has done a really good job of protecting our community for many decades. And the one thing that attracts us all to live here in Elk Grove are the schools, the parks, but our feeling of safety, our quality of life, public safety and families. And for a long time, As we travel, we've always seen but never really noticed the red light cameras. And only recently, I started noticing the flock cameras. But you know what? For a lot of different reasons for a lot of different years, I'm going to be under surveillance anyway. I'm gonna be, people are going to look at me weird or try to ask me that extra question when I'm in a grocery store. And people say that there's no relation to that, but there is a correlation to that. Because as a black man, as a black individual, and yes, I'm putting race into this, so if people are mad about it, just be mad. It's a reality that we all face every day. We're always under surveillance. We're always going to be looked at with an extra lens. And it's never positive. It's always negative. And we have to work twice as hard to show that we are part of this society, even when people don't want to give us the benefit of the doubt. So I get the passion. I get this anxiety of what we're seeing and feeling right now with these cameras. But these cameras have saved lives. and not just over the last few weeks and not just in the past 24 hours. These flock cameras have basically been of some great service here in Elk Grove. We just never have noticed them until the last 19, 20 months. And it's because of what we've been seeing in different parts of the country in red states and red counties. Thank goodness we live here in California with all the laws and all the regulations that we've foisted upon ourselves It allows us to live a quality of life, a good quality of life. Yeah, it's expensive. Yeah, affordability is through the roof. But we have one less thing to worry about when we have to leave California and go into the Midwest or into the South. That's where people have seen a lot of drama. That's where a lot of people have seen a lot of heartache. And it's just, I get it, but these flock cameras, here in Elk Grove and in Sacramento County, they've been of great service. It's like, um, as the saying goes, freedom isn't free for me. That's one concession I'm willing to live with. Some people will say it's short-sighted, but for me, it's common sense. That's all I got to say, mayor.

Thank you, sir. Vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Um, I also want to start off by, well, let me start off with a question. Andrea, I heard one of our public members speaking tonight talking about the tracking of our movements. But I also heard earlier our ALPRs take only photos and cannot track movements. Can you clarify for me?

Sure. So, yes, the ALPR cameras take pictures of vehicles. There's no live tracking or video recording associated with that same camera. And I believe the indication was that there's so many, there's a lot of ALPR cameras, and so we will always know where someone is. But that's not true. There are several different ways a vehicle can go. There are several latencies of traffic. And so the continuous tracking and the continuous monitoring for mass surveillance is not there. And that's likely why the courts have still held that ALPR is not a violation of Fourth Amendment.

Okay. Thank you very much. And so, again, I want to start first by thanking everyone for coming out and speaking. I echo my colleagues' sentiments that this is very good, transparent conversations that we're having. You know, it doesn't mean we're going to, you know, just say what we want to hear, right? We're trying to get the data out and hear all sides. I really appreciate the concerns that residents have raised and how they feel. I also appreciate the words of District Attorney Tien Ho and Sheriff Jim Cooper and Chief Bobby Davis and Andrea Cortez and how the technology benefits residents public safety. And, you know, when I, and also I want to recognize council members, we on the council appreciate your expertise in this technology sector as well. But there's a lot, there's a lot. And I'm, I don't believe we will you know, ever get to the end of it, because whether it's agreements or advancements in technology, there's always going to be something that each side will be able to point to as some example, some code, some practice. And what I'm coming to the conclusion is, you know, this is a matter of, you know, first, I hope the public will believe or understand the well-intentioned that our police department, our chief, Andrea Cortez, what they're doing at the city. They're trying to modify policies, keep up with the changing technology. The instances that the public has cited, Notice they're not mostly here. They're in Wisconsin or, you know, Grass Valley or wherever, you know, they're cited these specific examples. There are generalizations of concern here on what could happen. Certainly heard that. And I think having a vigilant police chief and staff in the Arctic Center, you know, making sure that these things don't happen. You heard changes that occurred when things came out, when we were made aware, the adjustments that were made. These are things and what responsible agencies do. Nothing is going to be perfect. I'm, I'm, I am confident that we're not perfect human beings. This isn't perfect technology. You know, the potential for abusers happens with anything, any type of technology, anything, any tool, the potential for abuse, you know, can happen. And so for me, the metric is, the trade-off of what, you know, we have a responsible agency that's making sure this technology is used in a responsible manner and we're vigilant about, you know, making changes as they're needed. And it is an effective tool in solving these crimes. I think you'll agree, even if you don't like the example, I think most folks will agree, victims need, they need justice. And so making sure that if that technology is what is the best tool we have, because I haven't heard a better tool from anyone Show me a better tool and then we can have that conversation. That one that can keep up with the amount of resources that we were needed. A comment was made earlier about going back to the way it was. But I also heard from Sheriff Cooper, there's too many crimes that are happening. You can't go back to the way it was because you don't have the resourcing. So show me a better tool. We can have a conversation. Absent that, I am confident our police chief, this city, I'm not speaking for any other city, this city, as long as these individuals are here, they will continue to uphold the law in a responsible way and ensure this technology is used in a responsible manner. And I would say that because when you ask around Elk Grove, absent this, most people do feel safe. So that is evidence enough for me at the moment. And one last thing, we're not married to flock is what I heard our police chief and Andrea say. We're not married to flock. However, the ALPR tool does seem to be the one that is the tool that is the technology that is making a difference. So with that, I'll turn back over to you, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues for your thoughtful comments. I took like two and a half pages of notes, so I just want to gather my thoughts on this a little bit. I am an immigrant. I was born in India. I'm from the Sikh community. And I remember a time in Elk Grove, not that long ago, in 2011, where two Sikh grandfathers were gunned down just down the street. That actually propelled me to serve on the school board at the time. Those are dark days that leave a deep pain in our community to this day. Why? Because it's still unsolved. I know without a doubt Had we had this technology, these would not be unsolved murders. We have lived with that grief, and the hate manifests in many ways. And the Sikh community and other communities of color have dealt with different kinds of pain and suffering. from ignorance, from hate, from hate crimes and so on. But that is one memory that is very close to my heart. Because that is really what, it was one of the key reasons why I decided to serve. Serve my community and teach and be a living example about the Sikh community and teach others about our community. So I just wanted to sort of really focus a little bit on that because I really appreciated, as part of the presentations, the focus on supporting victims and survivors. That is not the only tragedy that I have witnessed. I actually had a murder in my family as well. And having advocates that speak for victims and survivors is important. ALPR technology is a hot button nationwide. So much so that our legislature introduced a bill, Senate Bill 1013, to have this very discussion for having protective measures or having protections in place. Not unlike what we are already doing. We're already doing the things that they sought to do. And that bill, in a super majority in California, failed. It failed to pass. It failed to get to the governor's office. Prior legislation that was similar in nature passed, and it got to the governor's desk. And he vetoed it. And one of the sentences really that stuck out for me was that the bill failed to properly balance public safety with individual privacy. So these discussions are taking place at the state capitol where bills are introduced in hopes of becoming law. But this one really stuck out for me, Senate Bill 1013, because some of the protective measures that the bill sought to implement Our police department is already doing that, those safeguards that are so important when it comes to public safety. Specifically, your slides on the current safeguards and oversight, the authorized use, the access controls, the audit ability, the accountability, the training. Very importantly, the ALPR Admin Committee with the oversight and the transparency because what I appreciate about our police department is that continuous improvement and the partnership that you have with the residents of Elk Grove. Our residents do expect public safety. Your slides on the current safeguards and oversight, those were also compelling of what you've outlined here. We are the Elk Grove City Council, so our oversight is what we do here in our city. It's disheartening to see the abuses elsewhere, but what I can govern is what happens here. And what you've outlined, Chief and Ms. Cortez, is to assure the safety, the trust. Now, I know it's not going to make everyone happy, But we also have that balancing act that the governor even put in his veto message. And that is balancing public safety with individual privacy. I am comfortable with the protective measures that you have in place here. I think we are doing it the right way. That is what the intent was for Senate Bill 1013. That didn't pass, so that bill did not make it to the governor last week. Because people recognize the importance of solving crime for protecting victims and survivors. It's happening every day. And I don't want to see murders like the two elderly that were murdered here in our city going unsolved. Because the ripple effect that that has on communities nationwide, I know what that looks like. I've lived it. And that fear that comes with it. So I want to thank you for being responsive, for hearing the community, and having this informational item. I want to thank every single person that not only came here that spoke online, but also those that sent emails. Thank you. This is what democracy looks like. We're not going to always agree on everything, but know that your city has protections to look out for the best interests of our residents. So with that, this is an information item, so there is no action. I just want to thank you for your service to the great city of Elk Grove. Thank you both.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right, with that, I'm going to move on to our next item, which is Council Comments, Reports, and Future Agenda Items. Council Member Robles, do you have anything to report?

Nothing to report.

Council Member Spies?

Very quick like, the Sacramento Metropolitan Cable Television Commission met last week. We have a final budget. It is more fair for our member agencies. I'll take the opportunity to thank Mr. Prasad and I've just forgotten his name. He was there last week. Nathan Bagwell for being there and for supporting. So I just wanted to say thanks real quick on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

STA tomorrow, by the way.

STA tomorrow. Yep, we'll be there. Council Member Brewer?

No items to report.

Vice Mayor?

Nothing to report. Thank you.

Okay. And yes, we have STA tomorrow. I do want to adjourn in the memory of a great man, Arnie Zimbelman. who passed away, he was a giant in our community, an educator, founder of the Straus Festival with his wife, and just a great human being who served and uplifted everybody around him. They say teachers teach eternity, and he had a lasting impact on everyone that he helped to mentor and guide. So we want to send out our condolences to the Zimbelman family. May his memory be a blessing to everyone that knew him. We will adjourn in his memory this evening at 10.08 p.m. We are adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you. Good night, everybody.