Flock Fails at Public Safety Committee Meeting
A surprise stalemate at Oakland’s Public Safety Committee Tuesday sapped the trajectory of what many observers believed was an all but assured vote to institutionalize and expand OPD’s Flock surveillance program. OPD’s proposal that would see the department taking over CHP’s Flock network, while expanding it to include a potentially unlimited private and public CCTV network collided with a split vote in the committee. CMs Rowena Brown and Carroll Fife voted no; and Committee Chair Charlene Wang and CM Ken Houston voting yes. A simple quorum majority is necessary to forward items to the full Council, so by the Council’s own rules, the Flock expansion ostensibly died in the Committee.
Although Fife’s no vote wasn’t a surprise to most observers, many expected her to be alone in that position. There was little question Wang would vote to forward the legislation—per Rules Chair Kevin Jenkins, the Public Safety Committee Chair requested the legislation bypass her own committee and go straight to council in October. Wang has telegraphed her lack of support for the Privacy Advisory Commission and her enthusiasm for Flock in other venues, and her office appears to have been involved in sending a text blasted constituents asking for support for Flock at a previously cancelled Committee meeting to counteract the large number of opponents mobilizing against the surveillance system. Houston’s vote was also all but guaranteed, given his many public claims that OPD do not have enough resources and their hands are “tied” by oversight. Houston zoomed into the committee meeting as he had throughout the day for his other committee participation. Several advocates and stakeholders this publication spoke with over the last several weeks suspected Brown would join to create a majority to forward the legislation to full Council, where it may have had no debate at all if placed on the Consent agenda. Even one of the committee members put their expectation of Brown's yes vote on the record during deliberation [see below].
But certainty about the vote was shaken up over the past several weeks by a near endless torrent of negative press about Flock, as the surveillance platform’s social-media like data networking platform intersected with Trump’s prejudiced federal law enforcement regime. A new story about unintended consequences of the Flock platform has arrived seemingly weekly since OPD first broached its plan to the Privacy Advisory Commission in late spring. And on the same day as the meeting, Tuesday, Oakland was hit by a lawsuit from former PAC Commissioner Brian Hofer seeking to halt ALPR completely after alleged violations of local and state law in their use of Flock’s ALPR. Hofer resigned from the PAC earlier this month following the body’s negative Flock recommendation, in protest of the City’s lackadaisical enforcement of an existing use policy and OPD’s lack of “guardrails” in preventing other agencies from using Oakland’s ALPR database for purposes other than those stated.
Organizing from several Oakland organizations and community networks brought over a hundred opponents of Flock’s technology to the meeting. But the item, which was initially agendized to be heard first, was placed at the end of the agenda by Chair Wang in a move many commenters criticized as sapping attendance. Wang bowed, at least ostensibly, to concerns of the last several months and read in proposed amendments at the start of the deliberation*. Wang’s proposed amendments, however, missed some of the biggest issues brought up in Hofer’s lawsuit and by advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and would have little additional effect; state and local agencies are already barred from sharing ALPR data with out of state or federal agencies, thus obviating the “National Lookup” feature in the Flock program. And OPD’s use policy for the Flock pan and tilt video camera additions already bans on the books sharing of data—but not information gleened from video—with any other agency outside OPD. On Wang’s suggestion for liquidated damages if Flock were to misuse Oakland’s data, Flock’s spokesperson Trevor Chandler declined to confirm whether Flock would accept this into the contract.
Wang’s amendments didn’t respond to concerns about security weaknesses in the camera devices. And one of the primary concerns in OPD’s use of Flock—that the policy is porous given the capacity for local and state agencies to regardless access data under misleading pretenses and without acknowledgment—was missing from amendments and most of the deliberation. That concern is one of the primary focuses of the Hofer/Secure Justice suit alleging that OPD allows broad access in bulk to state and local agencies without substantively reviewing and limiting individual requests.
Over two hours of continuous commentary, about a hundred community members blasted the City’s current use of ALPR, and the decision to scale up the program—only about ten people spoke in favor of the technology. Though not visible in the City’s official video record of the meeting, a copy of the Zoom video feed reviewed by this publication shows Houston in a split screen appearing to be asleep during lengthy periods throughout community input and some deliberation. At one point, Houston was wrapped in a blanket.
An ironic juxtaposition during public comment
After community input, Fife objected strenuously to Flock as a company, calling it a venture capital invested product whose largest funders are Trump supporters.
“What I'm not comfortable with is I have not seen a solidly made connection, that connects not through correlation, but a causation, to this technology being able to actively solve the issues that make people feel unsafe…[but there is a] correlation between cameras and a very real possibility of our data falling into the hands of bad actors that have a track record of working with the agency that are in contradiction with Oakland's values…” said Fife.
Throughout the night, Fife said she was uncomfortable with Flock’s investor linkages to Trump and what is likely to be an expansion of immigration enforcement to come. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested heavily in Flock after Trump took office in March. Marc Andreessen has performed public spectacles of rightward sentiment over the past several years and donated $2.5 MM to Trump’s election bid [along with another $2.5 MM from his partner]. Y Combinator, led by a center-right San Francisco activist Garry Tan, is also an outsized investor whose support is credited with helping establish the company. And noted conservative Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund is also a significant investor, long-time right wing idealogue as well as a visible Trump supporter and patron of Vice President JD Vance.
Both Wang and Brown asked several questions about the system to OPD and Flock representatives as well as the City Attorney’s office, prompted by both the public comments and national media reporting. Wang asked about Oakland's responsibility on judicial warrants; the state of Washington public records decision; and widely discussed security concerns. Brown asked about reporting that indicates other agencies have accessed OPD’s database over 200 times for federal-related issues. Brown also asked if other agencies could work around “prohibited” terms in their searches—Brown had previously asked OPD for a supplemental report on the question. In the report, OPD responded in an extremely brief reply that the searches are focused on terms like “CBP, ICE and immigration”.
But context was missing from the questions during the meeting—and there were few follow ups, even when answers were vague, imprecise or misdirecting. For example, no CM asked OPD's representative, Lt. Gabriel Urquiza, the lead and author of the OPD report, why the OPD failed to include the Flock access logs in its 2024 annual report. The SF Standard’s records request was the first time the information was made public, despite PAC’s request for the log when it was found to be absent in the report. The fact that Oakland’s Flock database has been used by local agencies on behalf of federal agencies only came to light through the SF Standard’s reporting, not OPD’s own required annual reporting.
Wang asked lobbyist Trevor Chandler about Flock’s security vulnerabilities, but let the question go after Chandler mentioned a vaguely described federal certification.
Overall, OPD sidestepped the central concern about local and state agency use and access to the database, how little descriptive information is necessary to access it, and how OPD is not capacitated to monitor the requests, regardless. Urquiza told Brown that there is only one instance of an agency [the CHP] citing ICE in their sharing request, neglecting SF Standard’s reporting, verified by the Oaklandside and mentioned in Hofer’s suit, that other local agencies cited the FBI or another federal agency in 2024 and 2025 dozens of times. This publication also reviewed the logs and found the term "FBI" appears repeatedly in the logs from local jurisdictions San Francisco and Fremont.
Brown did not follow up on the other reported federal linkages. No CM mentioned Hofer’s suit, nor the information contained in that complaint.
Urquiza’s main line of defense on the issue was that searches on behalf of a non-state or federal agency would violate California law, and that the state takes such violations seriously. Urquiza also argued that because a major Flock client like Los Angeles had not had such problems to his knowledge, he considered the technology safe to use and was not concerned with the risks.
Urquiza, however, seemed to admit that OPD is unable to audit outside agency use of the system in real time and has no formalized way to do comprehensive audits.
“So there's a lot of information to go through, and we're trying to figure out the best way to audit that information…And I think as we go forward and we look at reassessing that policy related ALPR, that's something that we can we can add in there to formalize,” Urquiza said, to no redirect.
Houston said he supports the OPD’s original legislation and felt indifferent to the amendments. In his remarks, Houston teed up questions that he disclosed were inspired from a conversation he’d already had with Urquiza. Houston ended his questions for Urquiza by asking for a “success” story for Flock ALPR–Urquiza’s response was anecdotal in keeping with the absence of any correlative data offered in the legislative report. Just before the vote, Houston professed his certainty that he expected Brown and Wang to vote for the legislation, saying that the committee needn’t specify whether the item should be on consent or non-consent, since a vote of “three to one” would put Flock on non-consent automatically.
Before the vote, Brown voiced doubts about the efficacy of Wang’s amendment for liquidated damages and despite appearing neutral toward Flock in many of her interrogatory statements, ended up voting no with Fife. As the vote failed, Wang and Houston momentarily suggested they would make another motion, either without Wang’s amendments or specifying that the matter should go to non-consent, instead of consent. But Wang closed the deliberation instead as the meeting passed the five hour mark—the motion would have also almost certainly failed along the same lines. And with the imminent departure of Fife after the vote, the body would have lost quorum, since teleconferencing presence cannot be used to satisfy quorum rules.
The dramatic arc of the Flock story was not yet finished, however. Council’s rules of procedure would have allowed the City Administrator, OPD or individual Council members to reintroduce the legislation for direct scheduling to Council and the expectation was high among advocates that such an end-run around the committee decision was likely, according to those familiar with the coalition’s online discussion network. That suspicion was magnified with the publication of the Rules committee agenda Wednesday night which listed the Flock item in the section reserved for recommendations from the subject matter committees. A little known recent change to council policies now lists all items that go through committee in the following Rules meeting agenda, even if they have no recommendation for forwarding—generally such items are read in as failed in committee and are not forwarded to Council.
Notes accompanying the entry show that the resolution failed in Committee and is not recommended for advancement to Council. But guided by the suspicion that the item still could end up on a Council agenda given recent Council practices, Flock opponents again mobilized to advocate against the cameras in the Thursday morning meeting.
Chair Jenkins read in a statement at the beginning of the meeting that the item was not to be scheduled, but about a dozen people spoke against Flock again. The item was not read into scheduling, but it won’t be a surprise to see the Flock contract return in some form—and in the meantime, it continues to be used under a CHP contract with Flock, in which Oakland manages and controls the system.
Here is the live reporting thread for the deliberation on Flock:
And for posterity, a PDF version [no active video]
Post-Script
Throughout the public comment period, many speakers mentioned a specifically acute irony revealed a little earlier in the meeting. While OPD seeks a city wide surveillance system, the department has not activated its own vehicular GPS system. OPD received a use policy for its vehicle GPS system over a year ago from the PAC, but has not turned on the system. The revelation, perhaps the first time it's been mentioned on public Council record, was noted in the midst of the Auditor's report on 911 response times. The Auditor, Michael C. Houston, noted in his presentation that OPD could improve its slow 911 response times by activating its GPS, so that vehicles closest to an incident can be routed to it.
In defense of why the system is not functioning, despite its contribution to slower 911 response times, Joe Devries stated that the potential of turning on the GPS leading to disciplinary outcomes has kept the issue in "meet and confer" with union and management:
OO will have more on this in the weeks to come.
People’s Arms Embargo Campaign Ramps Up at Port Commission With First Public Call Out
The coalition of labor, anti-genocide and social justice organizations seeking to stop the transit of military equipment to Israel through the Oakland airport stepped up its campaign at the Port Commission this week. For about a month, the coalition has been building strength, adding labor and other partners. Significant additions are the transportation union representing flight attendants, Local 556, SEIU 1021, Unite Here 2, ILWU Local 10, the Oakland and Berkeley Teacher’s unions, the California Nurse’s Association and Cal State SF’s chapter of the California Faculty Association, among many others. The movement also received a resolution of support from the Alameda Labor Council this month.
During this time, members of the Coalition have been coming to Port meetings to speak during Open Forum–since there is currently no item or ordinance that reflects the group’s goal on the agenda. But this is the first time that the Coalition organized a general public call out to the meetings. Over a hundred advocates converged on the Jack London Square headquarters for the Port—according to organizers, advocates filled both the main meeting room and overflow room for the Commission meeting, an unheard of outcome.
— millie cleveland (@oaklandmillie) November 21, 2025
In anticipation of the large number of speakers, Port Commission President Andreas Cluver read a prepared statement which, while sympathizing to some extent with the goal of the coalition, claimed the Commission is unable to halt a private business enterprise activity at the airport if it doesn’t violate federal law. Cluver said the Port instead supports Federal legislation brought by Lateefah Simon that would ban weapons shipments to Israel, the Ban the Bombs Act.
Representatives of the Coalition read in their own draft resolution, which they are urging the Port Commission to adopt, resolving that the Port does have the power to control airport actions through ordinance, supporting the federal Ban the Bombs legislation, and committing to pursuing voluntary disclosure about the cargo transport companies transit through the airport.
Dozens of advocates would have spoken, but the commission lost quorum, limiting the amount of public input. At the end of the meeting, Commissioner Jahmese Myers told the assembled coalition members and supporters that she supported the goals and an eventual resolution of some form.
Here is a copy of the Coalition’s resolution.
You can see hear many of the speakers in video snippets in this Twitter Thread Reader thread.
Police Commission Votes to Allow Ostensibly Downgraded Bearcats
The Police Commission voted unanimously on a recommendation to allow OPD to seek funding for two Lenco "SUV" Bearcat vehicles, Tuesday night. Lenco’s “SUV” model is about half the size of the OPD’s current Bearcat, and seats 6, rather than 12. Lenco bills the vehicles as an “unobtrusive, low impact” version of the infamous vehicle profile. But the SUV Lenco Bearcat maintains the “turret” that was used as a shooting platform in the killing of Joshua Pawlick that began a long controversy over the potential for the Bearcat to heighten a sense of siege and move to action when used by police.
The Commission has duties under city law to review the OPD’s arsenal of weapons and equipment yearly, and make recommendations on it and any new proposed purchases by the department. This year, however, the process has been delayed due to repercussions in a destabilizing Council process that declined to reappoint Commissioner Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, the Chair of the body, and the body’s only alternate Commissioner, Omar Farmer—two subsequent meetings lacked quorum over illness and an injury, according to the public record.
Essentially, the Commission voted to support the effort of the OPD to replace the current Lenco model with a lower scale, and less visibly militaristic vehicle—but as alternate Commissioner Farmer, who co-led the ad hoc committee on the militarized equipment ordinance noted, this was a retreat from a previous, non-binding commitment by the OPD to buy a non-Lenco alternative closer to a civilian fortified transport used in non-military contexts throughout the world. After some deliberation, the Commission voted unanimously to forward the recommendation–Farmer as an alternate who was not in acting position due to sufficient quorum, did not have a vote, but his co-lead on the ad hoc, Wilson Riles also voted for the recommendation.
The Commission also recommended that in OPD's vast array of weaponry, such things as CS gas, less lethal ammunition, rifles, etc, that the OPD only replace old and spent equipment, not purchase additional iterations. The Commission also recommends that the oversight of the body over militarized weaponry be an ongoing and iterative process.
OPD has said it does not currently have a funding source to buy the Bearcats, together worth over $1 MM, but if the Council approves the recommendation, it will clear OPD to find it.
You can read the live reporting thread here
For posterity, here is a PDF of the same report, though video appears as thumbnails and can't be played in the PDF versions.
*Wang’s three amendments, per minutes:
- Flock Shall Not Enable A "National Lookup" Feature Capability For The City To Access
- Providing For Liquidated Damages In The Event the Contractor Causes Unauthorized Sharing Of Data, Up To $200,000 Per Incident
- Community Safety Camera System, Is Approved With The Following Additional Provisions: that CS Camera Data Shall Not Be Shared With Other Agencies For Purposes Of Criminalizing Reproductive Or Gender Affirming Healthcare/That CS Camera Data Shall Not Be Shared With Local Or State Agencies For The Purposes of Federal Law Enforcement
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