El Cerrito

Cameras were physically installed and went live in June 2023 — ECPD’s own official statement says so directly: “the first cameras were installed (June 2023).” Chief Paul Keith told NBC Bay Area the cameras were “first installed in June of 2023.” The contract’s own math lines up with this: its 36-month term is tied to “first installation and validation of Flock Hardware,” not the signing date, the contract’s natural end was June 6, 2026, and the City Council’s May 5, 2026 non-renewal notice sits exactly 32 days before that — just inside the contract’s required 30-day notice window. That points to June 6, 2023 as the likely install/validation date — but that’s still our inference from the math, not something any document states outright; only the month (June 2023) is directly sourced. (The camera locations document below confirms where the cameras went — it isn’t evidence for when; that’s the two news accounts cited.)

Both ECPD’s own statement and Chief Keith specifically say “the first cameras were installed” — language that reads as a phased rollout, not all 40 going up on a single day, though neither source gives a schedule for the rest. We checked the City Council’s own agenda packets for every regular and special meeting from May through July 2023 (May 2, May 16, June 6, June 20) for any staff item confirming installation or go-live; none mentions Flock, ALPR, or license plate readers at all. That’s consistent with installation having been a Police Department procurement/operational action that didn’t require a council vote — which would also explain why no document states the exact day.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service queried the system between September and November 2023. Separately, Loma Linda Healthcare System Veterans Affairs Police searched it on two occasions in May 2025 — Flock says its system may have misidentified that VA police department as a state agency. ECPD states plainly that “no federal immigration agencies searched ECPD LPR records.”

El Cerrito PD issued a community bulletin laying out what its audit had found — the federal agencies that had accessed data before the department had control, the two later slip-throughs, and an announcement of a public meeting to walk through it. Chief Paul Keith later put it to a reporter directly: “The sharing incidents that happened after we took control, those did come as surprise for us.”

At the Community Safety Committee’s March meeting, Councilmember William Ktsanes announced an upcoming “Community Meeting” on March 10 focused on the Flock camera system. The committee’s own minutes also record a staff clarification that the earlier unauthorized access was due to “a system error (since corrected).”

At a Special City Council meeting at Hana Gardens, Police Chief Paul Keith gave the Council a short update on the recent License Plate Reader audit during Council/Staff Communications. The approved minutes show no further Flock discussion, public comment, or vote at this meeting.

ECPD held a special public meeting at the Hana Gardens Community Room to walk through the audit findings and take questions. Councilmember William Ktsanes was in attendance.

Flock wasn’t a formal agenda item, but the meeting packet carried a large volume of Flock-related written public comment. In his liaison report, Councilmember Ktsanes requested a study session at the next Council meeting regarding Flock cameras — setting up the April 21 agenda item.

Chief Paul Keith submitted a new proposed Master Services Agreement to the Council as supplemental material, the morning of the meeting — the outcome of negotiations between ECPD staff and Flock Safety that had been underway since early March 2026, reviewed by the City Attorney’s office the day before. Keith described it as “a compromise between Flock Safety and City Staff,” with a financial penalty for unauthorized data sharing and a 60-day camera-removal clause on termination.

Flock flew in a representative, Katie Dauphine, to present alongside Keith and take questions in person. Item 8.A ran nearly three hours, almost entirely public comment. Council gave general direction to bring the item back on May 5 for further discussion, then — moved by Councilmember Ktsanes, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman — voted 5-0 to invite the ACLU to present at that May 5 meeting. Two weeks later, Council voted not to enter into the agreement.

The revised agreement above included El Cerrito’s first offer of a financial penalty for unauthorized data sharing — the original 2023 contract had no penalty clause of any kind. But it isn’t a Flock first: as the comparison below shows, other cities had already negotiated similar clauses, and the actual contract language here cuts against reading it as real accountability anyway. Three things stand out. First, the penalty is capped at a flat $34,500 “per Violation,” and a Violation is defined as one discrete incident “irrespective of the volume or number of records, cameras, or data elements involved” — meaning a repeat of the 2023 nationwide-access incident, which exposed El Cerrito’s data to hundreds of outside agencies for months (see “ECPD locks the network down,” above), would legally count as a single $34,500 payment, not $34,500 per exposed record or agency. Second, that penalty is explicitly “Customer’s sole and exclusive remedy” for any Unauthorized Sharing — a ceiling on Flock’s liability, not a floor on top of other recourse. Third, this clause was never actually in the agreement El Cerrito operated under: it was a term Flock offered during the April 21 negotiation, and two weeks later the Council voted down the whole revised agreement — the 2023 contract, which had no penalty clause of any kind, is what El Cerrito was actually bound by the entire time.

Scale matters here. Flock’s own funding announcement put the company at over $300 million in annual recurring revenue and a $7.5 billion valuation — a $34,500 cap, for a single incident regardless of size, is roughly 0.01% of one year’s revenue. For comparison, Arlington Heights, Illinois negotiated a similar clause with the same “irrespective of volume” boilerplate but at roughly $2,000 per camera — $22,000 for an 11-camera agreement and $48,000 for a 24-camera agreement, after an Illinois Secretary of State audit found Flock let CBP access Illinois plate data. El Cerrito’s 40-camera system, by contrast, was offered a flat $34,500 — under $900 per camera, less than half Arlington Heights’ rate. And a leaked Berkeley city attorney memo shows what a court, rather than a Flock contract, might actually award for a comparable breach: citing a threatened lawsuit under a different legal theory (a per-camera, per-image state-law penalty), the memo put Berkeley’s own potential exposure at $30–60 million for unauthorized sharing at a scale comparable to El Cerrito’s 2023 incident. That’s not a like-for-like comparison — it’s a statutory damages theory, not a contract term — but it puts the $34,500 contract figure in perspective: whatever a court might actually value this kind of breach at, it isn’t $34,500.

Sometime after the contract lapsed, City Manager Karen Pinkos told the Council that ECPD had received notice of a Flock work order but had no committed date for actual camera removal. Date narrowed to June 16, 2026: the official signed minutes for that meeting record “Councilmember Wysinger — inquired about the status of the canceled Flock contract and updates regarding removal of cameras” during Council reports — the only one of the three candidate dates whose written record actually raises Flock removal status.

We checked all three: the June 9 minutes don’t mention Flock at all (ruling that date out), and the June 2 minutes’ only Flock mention is a resident’s public comment, not a Council/staff exchange. Minutes don’t transcribe staff’s spoken answers to Council inquiries, though, so Pinkos’ specific “work order, no timeline” wording still isn’t independently confirmed — someone would need to actually watch/listen to the meeting video for that.

A video of the cameras (still mounted, contract already lapsed) circulated and drew press attention, which the coalition believes is what actually pushed Flock/ECPD toward committing to the July 30–August 18 removal window later that summer. One coalition member dates a related interview to June 30, 2026, which would put the video itself around June 29 — not yet confirmed with a link.

Members of the Flock Out El Cerrito coalition walked and drove the full camera list today and logged the status of all 40. That’s up from 10 confirmed down at the August 18 Council meeting the day before (per ECPD’s own count) — 19 are now down or taped over just one day later.

Still up (21):

• San Pablo Ave @ Kains Ave — NB
• Carlson Blvd @ San Pablo Ave — WB
• Central Ave @ San Mateo St — WB
• Central Ave @ San Mateo St — EB
• San Pablo Ave @ Potrero Ave — SB
• San Pablo Ave @ Potrero Ave — NB
• Eastshore Blvd @ Potrero Ave — NB
• Eastshore Blvd @ Potrero Ave — SB
• Potrero Ave @ SO 53rd St — EB
• Cutting Blvd @ Peerless Ave — EB
• Barrett Ave @ Tuller Ave — WB
• Barrett Ave @ Tuller Ave — EB
• Arlington Blvd @ Barrett Ave — NB
• Arlington Blvd @ Barrett Ave — SB
• MacDonald Ave @ Humboldt Ave — EB
• Moeser Lane @ San Pablo Ave — EB
• Fairmount Ave @ San Pablo Ave — WB
• S 55th St @ Cypress Ave — NB
• Potrero Ave @ SO 56th St — WB
• Potrero Ave @ SO 56th St — EB
• Key Blvd @ Humboldt Ave — SB

Taped over, coming down (2):

• Colusa Ave @ Curry Ave — NB
• Stockton Ave @ Norvell St — EB

Removed (17):

• San Pablo Ave @ Kains Ave — SB
• Carlson Blvd @ El Dorado St — NB
• San Pablo Ave @ Moeser Ln — NB
• San Pablo Ave @ Moeser Ln — SB
• Cutting Blvd (Lanes 1, 2) @ Peerless Ave — WB
• San Pablo Ave @ Ohio St — NB
• San Pablo Ave @ Ohio St — SB
• Arlington Blvd @ Roberta Dr — NB
• Arlington Blvd @ Roberta Dr — SB
• Ashbury Ave @ A St — SB
• Ashbury Ave @ Lynn Ave — NB
• Moeser Ln @ San Pablo Ave — WB
• San Pablo Ave @ Huntington Ave — SB
• San Pablo Ave @ Stockton Ave — NB
• Carlson Blvd @ San Jose Ave — SB
• Ashbury Ave @ Central Ave — NB
• Arlington Blvd @ Potrero Ave — NB

We’ll keep updating this count as it changes.

Saltzman wrote and posted a public statement, then sent Flock Out El Cerrito an Instagram Collab request — accepted, so the post appears on both accounts. The statement itself is hers, not jointly written, but it’s a notable sign of a sitting councilmember actively partnering with the coalition on outreach. See the embedded post below for her exact words.

A 21-year-old Oakland man was shot and killed in the parking lot of El Cerrito’s Del Norte Plaza shopping center, near the Los Moles Beer Garden restaurant, at approximately 12:23 p.m. on August 23, 2026 — two days after Flock Out El Cerrito confirmed the last of the city’s 40 Flock cameras had come down. Witnesses reported an altercation between the victim and two men at his parked car, followed by the shooting. The two suspects fled in a gray Nissan Maxima, 2016 or newer, last seen headed south on S. 55th St. from Potrero Ave. This marks the city’s first homicide in three years. As of this writing, no arrest has been reported and both suspects remain at large; El Cerrito, Kensington, and Richmond police are jointly investigating.

We’re logging this here because of KTVU’s own framing, not because we’re drawing the connection ourselves: the station’s coverage the next day ran under the headline “Deadly El Cerrito shooting happened after last Flock cameras removed.” Whether the camera network’s absence had any actual bearing on this case — as either a lost investigative tool or an irrelevant coincidence — isn’t something we can determine from the reporting available, and we’re not asserting either. We’re documenting the timing because a local news outlet already made it part of the public conversation about the removal; if ECPD or a councilmember goes on record connecting the two, that statement belongs here as a follow-up.