Residents press council on citywide cameras and Placer AI; mayor says city no longer paying for Placer AI

During public comment at the Sept. 3 Ridgecrest City Council meeting, callers raised concerns about citywide surveillance systems and location-analytics services and asked the council to schedule formal consideration and disclosure of related records.

A caller identifying himself as Manuel said he believed the city had installed about a dozen cameras that record continuously and mentioned a vendor identified as "Flock" that he described as retaining images on a rolling 30-day basis and owning the data. He asked for public discussion and a future agenda item so he could present findings from public-records requests about another service, Placer AI, including what data had been pulled and who had received it. "I'm just gonna continue to bring this up so members of the public become aware," he said.

Another caller, Mike Veil, criticized a council rule change (discussed elsewhere in the meeting) and said elected members historically could request agenda items without needing a second council member’s agreement; his remarks connected to transparency themes raised by other callers.

Later in the meeting the mayor said the city is no longer paying for Placer AI and that the service had been discontinued: "It is now officially gone. We are not paying for that service anymore." The transcript did not include additional details about the Flock camera contract, retention policy beyond the caller’s description, or any staff presentation responding to the record-request items; Manuel said his requests for details had received limited responses from staff.

No formal council action was taken at the Sept. 3 meeting to add an agenda item on Placer AI or to change surveillance contracts; Manuel asked for a council member to sponsor the request and for time to present results of his public-records requests, and the mayor suggested the item could be placed on a future agenda if a council member sponsored it.