The company, Flock Safety, will maintain an existing network of 300 cameras to monitor the city’s busiest streets and local state highways for up to two years while the Oakland Police Department conducts a competitive search for a long-term vendor.
Flock representatives have fended off criticisms — and a lawsuit by a local privacy advocate — that its vast trove of license plate information is accessed by federal immigration authorities, in possible violation of Oakland’s sanctuary policies.
On Tuesday, however, the Oakland City Council voted 7-1 to award the company a new contract, aligning with other East Bay cities that use similar technology but overriding a previous vote by a council committee that rejected the deal.
The council tweaked the new contract to hold Flock to a promise not to share license plate information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The city will also maintain its data-sharing agreement with California Highway Patrol, which until now had been the primary law enforcement agency to manage the cameras by order of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“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,” said City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who described the deal as a “two-year experiment.”
OPD, in the meantime, will take 18 to 24 months to vet multiple vendors for a future contract — an amendment secured by Councilmember Carroll Fife, who nonetheless cast the lone dissenting vote in the city’s decision.
Police leaders maintain the cameras have been a vital crime-fighting tool in an era when OPD’s staffing has fallen precipitously.
Between July 2024 and last month, the existing Flock cameras had led to 232 arrests, 17 of which involved homicides. The cameras had also led law enforcement to recover 68 firearms and led to the capture of the suspect in last month’s killing of beloved local football Coach John Beam, OPD officials said at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Flock, meanwhile, has touted how its AI technology scans live images for very specific details of vehicles, though the company insists it does not employ facial-recognition software.
The city’s Privacy Advisory Commission had urged the council to seek alternate vendors. Brian Hofer, the commission’s most prominent former member, resigned and even filed a lawsuit against the city after the council rejected the civilian-led body’s recommendations.
More than 100 public speakers at Tuesday’s meeting echoed the commission’s concerns.
“Flock is backed by the same billionaires that back President Trump,” said speaker Elizabeth Corcoran, in reference to an early investment in the company by the Trump-aligned venture 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.”
Others, however, spoke in favor of Flock, pointing to a poll conducted earlier this year by the city’s chamber of commerce that indicated two-thirds of Oakland residents were broadly supportive of law enforcement surveillance.
The contract received ardent support from Councilmember Ken Houston, a close ally of OPD, as well as Councilmember Charlene Wang, who earlier Tuesday held a Chinatown news conference with immigrants who spoke in favor of surveillance cameras.
“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 said, referring to constituents in her district, which includes areas around Lake Merritt.
The council’s Tuesday vote saw a course reversal by Councilmember Rowena Brown, who helped craft the anti-ICE amendments to the contract but offered little other explanation for her new vote.
And it featured a “yes” vote from progressive Councilmember Zac Unger, who implied the city may 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 asked. “No, it won’t. But will we have the strongest, safeguards of any city in the Bay Area using cameras? We will.”
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