Placer County sheriff’s lieutenant outlines FUSIS real‑time crime tools and Flock license‑plate readers at Loomis council meeting

A lieutenant from the Placer County Sheriff’s Office demonstrated to the Loomis Town Council how the department uses a real‑time crime center system known as FUSIS together with Flock license‑plate reader (LPR) cameras to respond to and investigate incidents.

"This program is available to every single deputy and dispatcher within our sheriff’s office," Lieutenant Michael Cuevas said, describing how FUSIS integrates calls for service, vehicle locations, traffic cameras and voluntarily-shared private camera feeds so deputies can view nearby camera angles during an incident.

Cuevas said Flock LPR cameras capture still images of license plates and automatically alert deputies when a scanned plate matches a stolen-vehicle, felony or Amber Alert hit. The sheriff’s office recently expanded county coverage and maintains mobile LPR units that can be temporarily deployed.

To illustrate use of the systems, Cuevas played a training clip from a high‑school campus and showed how staff can pull nearby cameras, find a vehicle using a nearby LPR, then use historical plate hits to plot where that vehicle had been in the prior 30 days. “We had him in custody within 8 hours,” Cuevas said, recounting a separate homicide case in which LPR hits produced a timely lead.

Council members and residents asked about privacy and oversight. Cuevas described records and audit controls: access logs, monthly audits of system use, and a public Flock transparency website that lists data-sharing partners, counts of scans and retention policy. He said the agency does not ingest private residential camera feeds unless owners opt into an informational registry and staff requests footage during an investigation.

Residents asked operational questions — for example whether cameras have audio or gunshot-detection capability — and Cuevas replied that LPRs do not record audio, and that countywide gunshot-detection systems were not practical in the largely rural service area because of frequent lawful firearms use and the high false-positive rate.

Cuevas and council members also discussed thresholds for use. The lieutenant said either system can be used for felony cases and for many misdemeanor investigations, including hit-and-run incidents; the agency’s policy does not set a minimum crime threshold for accessing footage or plate data, but usage is logged and auditable.

The presentation drew audience questions and public praise from council members for the sheriff’s office’s use of technology and transparency efforts.

No formal action accompanied the presentation; council received the briefing for the record.