Richmond

With Councilmembers Claudia Jimenez and Melvin Willis absent, the Council unanimously approved the installation of over 100 additional cameras — 70 more automatic license plate readers and 40 pan-tilt-zoom cameras. Vice Mayor Gayle McLaughlin’s substitute motion to approve only the PTZ cameras and study the ALPR expansion’s effectiveness first failed; she then voted for the full package anyway, while raising civil-liberties concerns Richmond Police Chief Bisa French and Councilmember Cesar Zepeda pushed back on directly (French: camera counts track geographic area, not population; Zepeda: residents have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public). Ten of the new cameras were earmarked for the 23rd Street corridor, after a double homicide there the previous month.

The Council approved a $1 million amendment to the Flock contract, bringing the total to $2.03 million through February 2026. It added drone-as-first-responder capability, gunshot detection, “screeching tire” sideshow detection, two mobile CCTV trailers, and a Flock OS fusion center letting police monitor all cameras from one secure location. Councilmembers Jamelia Brown, Cesar Zepeda, Doria Robinson, and Soheila Bana voted yes; Mayor Eduardo Martinez and Councilmembers Claudia Jimenez and Sue Wilson — all Richmond Progressive Alliance members, which had just lost its council majority — voted no, citing sanctuary-policy concerns about the new technology.

A non-sworn RPD employee was notified directly by Flock that an administrative “national lookup” feature was active on Richmond’s system — a two-way setting that, unknown to the city, made Richmond’s plate data searchable by outside agencies nationwide, not just the reverse. The employee had it disabled immediately and reported it to a supervisor, who apparently retired without passing the information up the chain of command. Per Chief Timothy Simmons, the feature had actually been live since the cameras first came online in early 2023 — meaning Richmond’s data was nationally searchable for roughly two years before anyone at the city knew.

Newly named Chief Timothy Simmons — announced days earlier as successor to outgoing Chief Bisa French — learned of the national lookup exposure and immediately shut the ALPR system off completely, then notified the City Council. Flock’s video-surveillance cameras (which don’t compile plate data) and other Flock technology stayed online; only the ALPR system went dark.

After a nearly three-month shutdown and a divided public hearing — pro-Flock speakers including some later accused from the floor of being paid by the company, and public-safety-reform advocates from Reimagine Richmond opposed — the Council voted 4-3 to reactivate Flock’s ALPR system under a short-term contract running through December 31, 2026. Jamelia Brown, Soheila Bana, Cesar Zepeda, and Vice Mayor Doria Robinson voted yes; Mayor Eduardo Martinez and Councilmembers Claudia Jimenez and Sue Wilson voted no. Vice Mayor Robinson, who ultimately voted to restore the cameras, called Flock’s failure to disclose the national-lookup exposure “disingenuous” and said it “makes you a company that is not trustworthy,” while separately arguing that Richmond going dark while neighboring cities kept their systems on made the city “a black hole” that could invite more crime, not less. Chief Simmons attributed a year-over-year rise in vehicle thefts to the shutdown; Councilmember Wilson disputed that read of the crime data as cherry-picked. Flock’s western region public affairs manager, Lily Ho, denied paying pro-Flock public commenters despite a resident citing a radio interview in which one of them said Flock paid him “for my time.”

Ahead of the March 17 vote, attorney Brian Hofer submitted a letter to the Council stating that public-records requests showed Richmond police may have shared license plate data with more than 2,700 out-of-state agencies, potentially violating California law restricting such sharing — and said he intends to sue Richmond the way his firm is already litigating against neighboring jurisdictions. Flock’s Paris Lewbel said the company doesn’t share data with ICE and would “vigorously defend” any claims. Chief Simmons separately told the Council that between April 2023 and November 2025 the system contributed to 274 arrests and helped recover 259 stolen vehicles.