San Jose pushes for tighter controls on Flock camera data after police officer abuse

SAN JOSE, Calif. — After a San Jose police officer was fired earlier this year for abusing his access to the city’s Flock automated license-plate reader camera database, city leaders are pushing for tighter controls to curb unauthorized use.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Vice Mayor Pam Foley and councilmembers Domingo Candelas and George Casey are seeking City Council approval for the controls on the data, including creating city-wide policies prohibiting employees from using personal devices to access ALPR and other law-enforcement databases, echoing a directive that Police Chief Paul Joseph implemented at the San Jose Police Department earlier this month after revealing the ex-officer’s breach.

They are also calling for City Manager Jennifer Maguire to work with police to increase the frequency of random audits of individual database access to more readily flag suspicious searches that lack a legitimate law-enforcement purpose or potentially violate city policy, or come from non-department devices. City officials say the police department currently performs seven to 10 random audits of individual officer access each week on top of monthly audits.

“What we had here was a disgusting abuse of power and really a perversion of technology that has been deployed to protect people,” Mahan said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s why I want to strengthen these elements.”

Additionally, the initiative — set to go before the city’s Rules and Open Government Committee on Sept. 30 — also advocates for the state Legislature to close a loophole in a law that makes it illegal for officers to access legacy law enforcement databases without a legitimate law-enforcement reason, but currently does not expressly cover newer databases like the ones maintained for camera systems like Flock, the country’s preeminent ALPR vendor.

That dovetails with previous statements from Joseph, who voiced disappointment earlier this month that the statutory gap prevented the offending officer from facing criminal charges.

According to SJPD, the terminated officer’s actions surfaced in February 2025 when a woman reported to police that a man she was accusing of domestic violence implied to her that he was tracking her.

Knowing that the man’s cousin was a police officer, she reported the interaction to police, who ran her license plate through their Flock database and discovered improper access by the officer. The actions were logged in an audit trail. The cousin was later arrested but not criminally charged.

“I was appalled that a member of our police force would use the information in such a horrible way,” Foley said. “That situation could have ended tragically.”

The former officer, who had about two years with SJPD, was fired this past April following an internal investigation, and the department has referred him to the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training for decertification, to bar him from getting another police job in the state. Mahan said that still falls short.

“I think there should be criminal charges when you misuse sensitive data like this,” Mahan said. “He should face more than job loss for abusing his power to protect people, to instead put someone in harm’s way.”

Foley said advocating for clear criminal penalties for this kind of data misuse, “of all of these pieces, may be the most important one.”

After the officer’s database breach surfaced, critics said it further substantiated their efforts to curtail the investigative reach of ALPR cameras.

The Bay Area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of immigrant-rights organization SIREN and the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are suing San Jose in Santa Clara County Superior Court, arguing that the current state of unfettered searches through the database constitute unconstitutional tracking of law-abiding citizens. They are seeking a court order requiring police agencies to obtain warrants before combing through the data.

The Virginia-based Institute for Justice is also similarly suing the city, in federal court, on behalf of residents who have objected to being surveilled by the cameras without any meaningful judicial oversight. The organization established a national database charting problems including unauthorized access by officers using the tracking data to stalk former romantic partners, and instances of people being errantly stopped and held at gunpoint because of incorrect plate reads.

Adam Schwartz, EFF’s director of privacy litigation, said Wednesday that the energy being spent on shorter reins misses the larger concerns about the technology.

“ALPRs are a threat to our privacy and safety, including officers stalking romantic partners. This threat cannot be solved by department protocols set by city officials,” Schwartz said in a statement to this news organization. “At minimum, officers should be required to get a warrant issued by a judge before searching the stored location data. Even better, cities should not use ALPRs at all.”

In San Jose, there are nearly 500 license-plate readers installed throughout the city, and the systems have strong support from Mahan and the City Council, who favor robust controls on the technology but extoll its crime-fighting benefits they credit with milestones like a years-long 100% annual homicide solve rate.

“I really think our job is to regulate and strike the right balance between the public safety value of the tools we give officers and the public risk, whether that risk is privacy or otherwise,” Mahan said. “I think it would be a mistake to make this a binary choice between using or not using such a powerful tool that has helped us solve every homicide nearly four years running, solve kidnappings, and generally reduce crime in the city.”

In March, in step with Chief Joseph, the City Council unanimously approved a clawback policy that reduced SJPD’s retention for plate data from one year to 30 days, and prohibits cameras from recording vehicles entering and leaving houses of worship, reproductive health clinics, or consulate offices.

The city’s position contrasts with other Bay Area jurisdictions – such as Mountain View, El Cerrito, Santa Cruz, Cupertino, Saratoga and Stanford University – that have either dropped or severely restricted use of Flock cameras, often in response to revelations that outside law enforcement agencies and federal authorities accessed camera data in possible violation of California law prohibiting state law enforcement from engaging in immigration enforcement.

San Jose has faced similar accusations with its Flock database. Foley said she is sensitive to those concerns, but believes that the city can forge an agreeable path.

“I think the provisions that we’re putting in place will, over time, bring back the trust of the community,” she said. “We don’t want this information to get into the hands of federal law enforcement or into the hands of ICE, nor do we want it to get into the hands of police officers who will be misusing the information.”