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Council pauses Raven purchase; sends gunshot‑detection contract to advisory board and asks staff for added privacy guardrails
Summary
After a year of beta testing, the council deferred a purchase of Flock Raven gunshot‑detection technology and directed staff and the Surveillance Advisory Board to craft stronger privacy, retention and audit safeguards before the city signs a longer contract.
Vallejo’s proposed purchase of Flock Raven gunshot‑detection technology drew a detailed presentation from police and a lengthy council and public review focused on privacy, data‑retention and vendor controls.
Captain Jerome Bautista and Deputy Chief Knight summarized one year of Raven beta testing: 1,003 Raven alerts from September 6, 2024 through July 31, 2025, mapped concentrations in several neighborhoods and multiple case examples where Raven alerts helped find victims or locate scenes that otherwise would have been missed. Staff said the congressionally‑earmarked appropriation covers roughly 1.5 years of Raven service for the four square miles currently covered; the city is about 30 square miles of land and staff noted Raven currently covers about 12–14% of the city. Police described how Raven alerts were coded into dispatch and logged as 1075R calls when appropriate.
Multiple council members and public commenters raised concerns about retention periods, third‑party access and whether a vendor might ever disclose footage or metadata to other agencies. The city attorney highlighted a clause in the proposed agreement that allows the vendor to disclose footage in response to legal process and for limited purposes such as security or technical investigations; members of the public noted Flock incidents reported in other states and asked for stronger contractual guarantees and independent auditing. Council members asked whether, and how, the city can ensure logs and disclosure requests are auditable by staff and by the Surveillance Advisory Board.
Given those concerns, the council voted to pause a purchase vote, to send the matter back to the Surveillance Advisory Board for policy recommendations, and to direct staff and the city attorney to negotiate contract amendments and explicit guardrails (for example, retention periods, audit logs and explicit restrictions on external sharing) and return to council with proposed language. The move is intended to give the council stronger contractual protections and independent oversight before committing to a multi‑year service.
Ending: The police department and city attorney will work with the vendor and the Surveillance Advisory Board to draft precise contract language and privacy safeguards; staff will return with proposed amendments for council consideration.
