OAKLAND — Town will persist with a surveillance firm that scans license plates to assist legislation enforcement catch prison suspects, a dramatic reversal of an earlier vote that had rejected the agency’s new $2 million contract.
The corporate, Flock Security, will keep an present community of 300 cameras to observe town’s busiest streets and native state highways for as much as two years whereas the Oakland Police Division conducts a aggressive seek for a long-term vendor.
Flock representatives have fended off criticisms — and a lawsuit by a neighborhood privateness advocate — that its huge trove of license plate data is accessed by federal immigration authorities, in attainable violation of Oakland’s sanctuary insurance policies.
On Tuesday, nonetheless, the Oakland Metropolis Council voted 7-1 to award the corporate a brand new contract, aligning with different East Bay cities that use comparable expertise however overriding a earlier vote by a council committee that rejected the deal.
The council tweaked the brand new contract to carry Flock to a promise to not share license plate data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“If there is these slightest indication that this policy is being violated and used to harm our most vulnerable communities, we will cancel the contract,” mentioned Metropolis Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who described the deal as a “two-year experiment.”
Oakland Metropolis Councilmember Janani Ramachandran speaks about proposed finances amendments at a podium on the steps in entrance of Metropolis Corridor, alongside fellow council members Zac Unger, proper, Charlene Wang, far left, and Rowena Brown. (Shomik Mukherjee/Bay Space Information Group)
OPD, within the meantime, will take 18 to 24 months to vet a number of distributors for a future contract — an modification secured by Councilmember Carroll Fife, who nonetheless forged the lone dissenting vote within the metropolis’s determination.
Police leaders keep the cameras have been a significant crime-fighting software in an period when OPD’s staffing has fallen precipitously.
Between July 2024 and final month, the present Flock cameras had led to 232 arrests, 17 of which concerned homicides. The cameras had additionally led legislation enforcement to get well 68 firearms and led to the seize of the suspect in final month’s killing of beloved native soccer Coach John Beam, OPD officers mentioned at Tuesday’s council assembly.
Flock, in the meantime, has touted how its AI expertise scans reside pictures for very particular particulars of autos, although the corporate insists it doesn’t make use of facial-recognition software program.
Greater than 100 public audio system at Tuesday’s assembly echoed the fee’s issues.
“Flock is backed by the same billionaires that back President Trump,” mentioned speaker Elizabeth Corcoran, in reference to an early funding within the firm by the Trump-aligned enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel. “If we build a surveillance system in Oakland, it will be used to target our community members as it has in other cities.”
A peaceable demonstrator picks up an American flag that was mendacity on the bottom as California Freeway Patrol officers arrive in riot gear to disperse anti-immigration demonstrators protesting and blocking the doorway to U.S. Coast Guard Island, after dozens of federal brokers, together with personnel from U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), entered the island earlier in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Space Information Group)
Others, nonetheless, spoke in favor of Flock, pointing to a ballot carried out earlier this 12 months by town’s chamber of commerce that indicated two-thirds of Oakland residents had been broadly supportive of legislation enforcement surveillance.
“It is crystal clear this technology is needed to combat human trafficking, especially to hold traffickers who are perpetuating commercial sex exploitation of our minors,” Wang mentioned, referring to constituents in her district, which incorporates areas round Lake Merritt.
The council’s Tuesday vote noticed a course reversal by Councilmember Rowena Brown, who helped craft the anti-ICE amendments to the contract however supplied little different rationalization for her new vote.
And it featured a “yes” vote from progressive Councilmember Zac Unger, who implied town might face blowback from the Trump administration if Oakland “announced to the world” that it was ditching its surveillance cameras.
“Will this program be perfect?” Unger requested. “No, it won’t. But will we have the strongest, safeguards of any city in the Bay Area using cameras? We will.”
