City of Santa Barbara to End Contract with Flock Cameras

The City of Santa Barbara will be ending its contract with Flock Safety, the surveillance company whose automated camera system has been under fire following public backlash regarding Flock sharing collected data with federal agencies for immigration enforcement. The city has already notified Flock that it intends not to renew the contract when it ends on August 23, and City Council will be considering an alternative system during its August 25 hearing.

Earlier this year, the City Council directed staff to look at options for ending the contract with Flock in favor of a system with a new company that does not allow agencies to access and search through the database. City staff is recommending that council approve a contract with the new company, Verkada, to replace the 12 automated Flock cameras with a set of updated license plate reading cameras, which would be owned by the city and would operate on a closed system.

The city installed the Flock camera system in late 2023 as an “investigative tool to assist in solving crimes, locating stolen vehicles, identifying suspect vehicles, and enhancing public safety.” Since then, there have been widespread concerns about the cameras collecting and sharing data beyond what was intended by local agencies..

When concerns were first raised by community members, Santa Barbara’s Police Chief Kelly Gordon was adamant that the city’s policy explicitly prohibited local data from being accessed by any outside agencies. 

“We are aware that there have been recent public concerns and media reports involving Flock Safety and the use of license plate reader data in other jurisdictions,” Chief Gordon told the Independent in December 2025. “I want to be very clear that the Santa Barbara Police Department does not share license plate reader data with federal immigration enforcement agencies, and Flock Safety cannot share Santa Barbara’s data with any outside entity.”

Despite the assurance from local agencies, concerns about Flock Safety continued to spread nationwide, and as agencies across the country began to end their individual contracts with Flock, the City of Santa Barbara pursued plans for a new camera system that “better meets the operational, security, privacy, and community needs of the city,” according to the staff report for Tuesday’s hearing, submitted by Chief Gordon.

With council approval, the Santa Barbara Police Department will make the change to a new system and install a dozen Verkada license plate recognition cameras at authorized locations around the city. According to the details of the new contract, only authorized police department users can search Verkada’s closed system for alerts and vehicles of interest.

“The system is intended as an investigative tool and is not used as the sole basis for enforcement action,” the staff report states. “The data would not be contributed to, or searchable through, a public, regional, or multi-agency license plate database. The department would retain exclusive control over system configurations, user permissions, retention settings, alerts, and system administration.”

The new system would adhere to the same guidelines included in the city’s existing Automated License Plate Reader Policy, and access will be limited to only those who are authorized through department security requirements. “Verkada is not a shared surveillance network,” the report states. “It is a city-owned, department-controlled system with no public or multi-agency search access.”

The city considered alternative systems provided by Axon and Motorola, though the staff report states that the other options came with higher costs or limited privacy controls that made Verkada the most viable choice for the city. The August 25 City Council hearing will be open to the public, and will begin at 2 p.m.