The Surveillance Advisory Board used its information-item segment to press the Vallejo Police Department for clearer, regular reporting on surveillance tools including drones and ALPR.

Board members asked the department to provide monthly graphs and trend data — not just year-to-date totals — showing how often ALPR produced case leads, how many arrests or charges followed ALPR-assisted investigations, and month-by-month counts of ALPR-assisted incidents. Board members said that routinely published, month-by-month graphs would make it easier for the board and the public to evaluate whether the tools are driving investigations and resulting in arrests or other dispositions.

Lieutenant (Tai) and staff said the department posts a daily incident log on its website and that a crime analyst supports ad hoc data requests, but the department acknowledged capacity constraints: investigators and the crime-analyst unit handle many projects and staff time can limit how quickly complex historical analyses are produced. The department agreed to explore producing monthly ALPR and drone-usage reports that include counts of cases where the technology directly supported an arrest or significant investigative lead.

The board also requested that the department provide login and usage logs for monitored systems, and that random internal audits of drone logs be considered as part of a future work plan. Several board members said random audits and routine reporting should be part of an overall work plan and recommended adding those items to a prospective ad hoc committee’s charges.

Ending: Staff said it will attempt to provide a monthly ALPR breakdown and usage metrics and will return with recommendations on audit cadence and additional reporting for the board to review at a future meeting.