Residents urge Ridgecrest to review Flock contract amid claims of out-of-state data sharing

Ridgecrest — Two residents used the council’s public-comment period on Dec. 3 to call for a review of the city’s contract with license-plate-camera vendor Flock and for stronger safeguards on collected data.

Mike LeCitra told the council that investigations in other California cities have found license-plate data shared with out-of-state and federal agencies in ways that may violate California’s Senate Bill 34. He said some municipal contracts give vendors rights to disclose agency data without local approval, and he cited an incident in Santa Cruz where the city discovered undisclosed sharing and suspended data access while investigating.

LeCitra urged Ridgecrest staff to verify that contract language does not grant the vendor perpetual rights to license or disclose agency data and to confirm that search logs include human-readable reasons for access; he said his review of local logs showed many entries with only dates or meaningless numbers.

Councilmembers acknowledged the concern and noted staff had passed documents to the police chief for review. One councilmember said Flock was conducting penetration testing in coordination with other groups, and staff said they were treating security testing as an ongoing process. No vendor representative spoke at the meeting and no formal action was taken; residents asked the city to report back after a contract review.

The council did not vote on procurement or contracting changes at the meeting. Councilmembers directed staff to continue reviewing information and to follow up as appropriate.