18 Mar Richmond Flock Cameras to Come Back on for Now Despite Concerns ‘of Pitting Communities Against One Another’

Richmond City Council again debated over Flock cameras and questions of public safety before narrowly voting Tuesday to turn the license plate cameras back on. (Screenshot captured by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

Flock cameras in Richmond are coming back online, at least for now.

City Council members on Tuesday narrowly approved extending its contract with the company, despite concerns over privacy breaches that could make immigrant data open to federal immigration agencies.

The meeting was a continuation of a March 3 discussion that asked the council to decide between doing away with the Flock system or keeping Flock automatic license plate reader cameras for the remainder of the year and possibly later moving to another provider.

Vice Mayor Doria Robinson and council members Cesar Zepeda, Jamelia Brown and Soheila Bana voted to extend Flock’s contract through the end of the year. Richmond Progressive Alliance-aligned members Mayor Eduardo Martinez and council members Claudia Jimenez and Sue Wilson voted against the extension.

The cameras have been shut off since last fall after Police Chief Tim Simmons discovered that a national lookup feature had been enabled. The feature allowed other agencies, including federal agencies, to potentially access the data. Simmons said there had been no evidence yet of any of the data being accessed.

Then, the contract expired at the end of February, leaving council members to decide how to proceed with a company that has faced backlash — and a growing number of cities parting ways with the company — because of privacy concerns amid the Trump administration’s increase in immigration enforcement.

Robinson said that while she found it “deeply offensive” that the feature was enabled without warning, making Flock untrustworthy, she also questioned whether the removal of the cameras would be beneficial.

“When I try to think about what it is we’re talking about here, it’s hard for me to understand how having a blackout space in Richmond — where people are traveling, using all of these different systems — provides true security from this kind of surveillance,” said Robinson.

Multiple Bay Area law enforcement agencies contract with Flock, including the El Cerrito and Hercules police departments and the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, and still have their own cameras that could capture the information of Richmond residents traveling in their jurisdictions.

Jimenez said that the problem she had wasn’t with the automatic license plate cameras but Flock itself. She said that the company’s actions put the city at risk of liability because the Flock system potentially gave access to federal authorities, violating the city’s sanctuary city ordinance.

After Simmons informed the City Council of the potential data breach in the fall, Jimenez said she hoped that an alternative to Flock would have been brought forward.

“We cannot be trusting another company that tricked you and wasn’t really upfront,” Jimenez said to Simmons at the meeting. “We want to have safety, but the safety of our community is not contracting with Flock.”

Brown said that the issue was “sort of pitting communities against one another” because she felt that immigrant safety, which Jimenez had referred to in her comments, was also part of public safety. Fear too, Brown said, is not isolated to the immigrant community.

“Protecting one community while leaving others vulnerable is not public safety, it’s negligence,” said Brown.

The cameras have aided in 274 arrests since 2023, according to Simmons. Once the cameras came off, vehicle thefts jumped by 33%.

Wilson questioned the increase in thefts. In a year-over-year analysis of data in the months of November 2024 to November 2025, Wilson said there was a 50% increase in vehicle thefts with Flock cameras still on.

“It just seems to me, sometimes year-to-year, things fluctuate,” said Wilson. “We can’t just pick them and make a story.”

After the last City Council meeting, Simmons issued a request for proposal for another automatic license plate reader vendor, which will close March 27.

Reimagine Richmond, which advocates for reforms to public safety in the city, said after the meeting that the decision jeopardizes “the security and privacy of our residents under the guise of public safety.”

“Because of tonight’s decision, immigrant families in Richmond will continue to be threatened by the misuse of Flock cameras by federal agencies like ICE and DHS,” the organization said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.