Lafayette
Lafayette doesn’t run its own police department — it has contracted police services from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office since incorporation, which means its Flock story isn’t a city council vote on a Flock contract like El Cerrito’s or Concord’s. It’s whatever the Sheriff’s Office does countywide, applied to a city that doesn’t directly negotiate or vote on it. Here’s what’s actually documented so far — which is less than we’d like, and that gap is itself part of the story.
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Lafayette has no police department of its own — the Sheriff's Office runs it
Lafayette, along with Orinda and Danville, contracts for police services from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office rather than running an independent municipal department. A 2022 review presented to the Board of Supervisors found the arrangement had cost the county about $2 million more than the three cities paid in over the prior decade ($3.2 million out, $1.2 million reimbursed, since 2012). This matters for Flock Watch because it means decisions about ALPR technology in Lafayette are governed by Sheriff’s Office policy, not a Lafayette City Council vote on a vendor contract — a structurally different story from the cities elsewhere in this project that negotiated directly with Flock.
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The Sheriff's Office ALPR policy authorizes Flock Safety for every contract city, Lafayette included
The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office’s Automated License Plate Reader policy (CCCSO 1.07.38) puts management of ALPR equipment for “Contract City PDs” — Lafayette, Orinda, and Danville — under the same Special Operations Division that covers county patrol. The policy names three authorized ALPR systems: Flock Safety Solutions, Vigilant (Motorola Safety) Vehicle Manager, and Rekor ALPR Solutions.
It also requires the Sheriff’s Office to “provide the opportunity for public comment at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing body of the public agency responsible for implementing an ALPR program” before rollout, and caps retention: ALPR information “shall not be stored by the Office of the Sheriff for longer than one year.” We have not yet found a record of that public-comment step happening at an actual Lafayette City Council meeting — flagged as an open question, not evidence it didn’t happen.
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EFF's Dave Maass files a public-records request for CCCSO's ALPR data-sharing details — it goes unanswered
Dave Maass, Director of Investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a California Public Records Act request with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office asking for the agencies it shares ALPR/”hot list” data with, sharing agreements, and 2021–2022 detection/hit statistics — the same kind of request that got real answers from El Cerrito’s and other cities’ departments elsewhere in this project. MuckRock’s public log shows 21 communications on the request — the original plus 20 follow-up emails between November 2022 and August 2023 — with no documented substantive response from the Sheriff’s Office. This doesn’t tell us what CCCSO’s ALPR network actually shares or with whom; it tells us that basic public-records machinery didn’t work here the way it has elsewhere.
Know something we don't?
If you live in or near Lafayette and have an update, a correction, or context worth adding — a FOIA response, council document, email, public statement, or just something you noticed or heard about that isn't reflected here — send it to contact@nosurveillancepledge.com with dates and a link or scan where you can, and we'll add it with a source.