The Oceano Community Services District (OCSD) turned down the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office request to install a license plate reader at its local substation, much to the relief of several county residents.
“I understand that they want to use it as part of their equipment to solve crimes, but they already have body cameras, they have cameras on their patrol cars,” Oceano resident Cathy Gonzales said at the OCSD’s July 8 meeting. “A lot of the community is rejecting this because the Flock cameras are … in to sell data. In the contracts, it does state that any information it records belongs to the Flock company.”
Gonzales was one of the seven people who urged district leaders to reject the Sheriff’s Office’s request to set up the camera at 1681 Front St.—the sheriff’s substation that the department leases from the district.
The OCSD denied the request in a 3-2 vote with board members Linda Austin and Kim Rose dissenting.
Concern grew after Cmdr. Ian Doughty wrote to OCSD General Manager Will Clemens in late June. His letter stated that the Sheriff’s Office contracted with AI-powered public safety technology company Flock Safety to install roughly 20 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras across the county.
But the Sheriff’s Office hit a snag—the lengthy Caltrans permitting process can take up to two years for all those cameras to be installed, since many of them are supposed to be placed along highways.
“We intend to install one of the pending cameras around the area of Front Street and Tranquil Court, but if we were to receive permission from OCSD to install the camera on South Station property we would avoid the delay from Caltrans,” Doughty wrote. “The LPRs are extremely helpful in retroactively solving crimes, recovering stolen property, and locating missing persons.”
The typical Flock setup is an oblong camera propped under a solar panel attached to a tall pole or a traffic light. According to Doughty, the unit has its own cellular connection and is fully self-reliant, with the Flock company handling all maintenance.
“We’ve had a program in place with the Sheriff’s Office in the county since 2014,” Doughty told the OCSD on July 8. “The data that is taken by an ALPR is owned by the Sheriff’s Office. It is not sold to third parties, and by California law we cannot share that data to outside of California, and we cannot share it to federal agencies.”
But distrust in Flock has deepened across SLO County and beyond. The growing presence of the cameras around the county, through contracts with agencies like the SLO, Grover Beach, Pismo Beach, Morro Bay, and even Cal Poly police departments, put locals on high alert.
Groups like Eyes Off SLO, DeFlockSLO, and Cal Poly Tech for Liberation are pushing back and trying to raise awareness among community members.
“These aren’t just dashcams—they’re AI systems that identify your vehicle’s make, model, color, and exact travel patterns,” the Eyes Off SLO website said. “Every drive is logged. Every trip is stored. No warrant. No probable cause. No consent. This is a violation of your Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”
Cal Poly students have advocated for the university to remove Flock cameras from campus. A petition circulated by the students garnered more than 1,500 signatures and alleged that law enforcement used the surveillance technology to crack down on protesters, activists, and certain racial groups, and collude with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On July 11, the Los Angeles Police Department said it stopped working with Flock over concerns about the data’s use.
‘I extremely value privacy, and I think many members in our community think the same way I do. … I think it’ll have the effect of scaring some potential customers here from coming in and paying their bills.’
—Allene Villa, Oceano Community Services District board
California’s ALPR Privacy Act, or Senate Bill 34, prohibits sharing license plate data with out-of-state and federal agencies.
Doughty told the OCSD that the law specifically prevents searching the data for immigration enforcement. The data is retained for 30 days and then purged, according to Doughty.
He added that Flock cameras have helped the Sheriff’s Office with local cases.
“Last year, in fall, there was a homicide in Arroyo Grande where a woman was killed and later transported out of county with an accomplice, and her body was found to be hidden in rural Coalinga,” he said. “Automated license plate reader technology specifically played a role in our detectives being able to solve that crime, identify the suspect and the accomplice, and be able to bring closure to that case, which is going through the court process now.”
OCSD board members Shirley Gibson and Allene Villa questioned the ownership of the data, since ultimately Flock still retains the information.
Villa suggested the Sheriff’s Office pick a county-owned location for the installation, and not an OCSD building that the area’s numerous Latino residents consider a safe place.
“I extremely value privacy, and I think many members in our community think the same way I do,” Villa said. “I think it’ll have the effect of scaring some potential customers here from coming in and paying their bills. Many here in Oceano are legal residents, they’re not citizens.”
Clara Fulks, the founder of SLO-based digital literacy and safety consulting practice North Star Strategies, told the OCSD that Flock routinely breaks data-sharing agreements.
“What does continue to happen is if ICE needs a license plate, they’ll contact Highway Patrol and have somebody … backdoor … look up information from their own constituents’ Flock database,” she told New Times. “There are no auditing requirements, and so we kind of really have no way to know what’s going on. We just have to trust the sheriff.”
Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Tony Cipolla told New Times that the department only shares the data with state, county, and city law enforcement agencies around California—providing a list of 280 police departments and Sheriff’s Offices, from the Albany Police Department to the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office.
“Our internal direction and policy is that all ALPR responses should be verified, if practicable, through CLETS (California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System) before taking any enforcement action,” Cipolla said. “Regardless, for any enforcement action taken by the Sheriff’s Office, establishing reasonable suspicion and probable cause remain the legal standards.”
Credit: PHOTO BY PIETER SAAYMAN
He stressed that the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t enforce federal immigration law and doesn’t cooperate with ICE in immigration enforcement activities.
Cipolla added that there are 30 license plate-reading cameras installed around unincorporated SLO County.
Now, the Sheriff’s Office has to work with Caltrans and find another spot to place the camera. Because the Caltrans permitting process has a long wait time, according to Cipolla, the department is also looking at other options.
“That just tells me the urgency, … they want to put these cameras in fast, kind of, wherever we’ll take them,” digital literacy expert Fulks said. “I think anything we can do to slow that process down is positive.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in July 16-23, 2026.
They make it sound like they won’t be able to solve crimes without these cameras. So how is it they have been able to solve crimes in the past without these cameras?
We no longer have an expectation of privacy, but it is one thing when private citizens are recording videos on public property and a completely different thing where government agencies are doing the same thing.
I know the response will be “but if you have nothing to hide it shouldn’t matter to you” which is quite naïve. Like the Shredder said, it enables stalking by those in control of the cameras of innocent people who may not enjoy their everyday activities being tracked.