Woodland residents urge council to suspend Flock Safety contract amid audit claims

Dozens of residents pressed the Woodland City Council on Feb. 17 to suspend its contract with Flock Safety and shut off automated license-plate readers after a series of community audits and media reports, saying the city was not given the full picture before a recent contract extension.

The most detailed critique came from Joaquin Ortiz, who said his public-records requests and an audit of Woodland’s Flock system showed “In January alone, there were over 500,000 searches of Woodland’s flock cameras,” and that the Woodland Police Department accounted for 424 of those searches, about 4.08% of the total. Ortiz said the remainder of searches were performed by hundreds of other organizations and cited Mountain View’s recent suspension of its Flock program as a cautionary example.

Why it matters: Speakers argued that the scale of searches, alleged out-of-jurisdiction access and documented problems in other California cities create legal and privacy risk for Woodland and erode community trust in public safety institutions.

Residents cited a range of findings they said were missing from the Feb. 3 presentation that preceded the council’s contract action. Shawnice Lambeil told the council that Woodland’s Flock configuration permitted sharing with “318 different agencies in California” and that state law (Senate Bill 34) was designed to regulate license-plate readers and protect privacy. Naomi Sher cited a published inquiry by Senator Ron Wyden that she said concluded “abuse of flock cameras is inevitable and Flock has made it clear it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that.”

Several speakers described specific, local concerns and asked factual questions the council said it would take under advisement, including: who owns the data, how long logs are retained, who maintains the cameras, how many crimes the cameras helped solve, and what steps would be required to turn them off or remove them.

At the meeting the mayor noted staff had received 17 written communications before 4 p.m. and asked people with new information to submit it for review. Council members thanked commenters and said they would review any verifiable data. Council member Lansberg asked speakers to send “real data” to the city for staff review; Mayor Pro Tem Vega said she was grateful for the information and would continue to engage with community members and staff on the issue.

The meeting produced no council directive or formal action to pause the Flock contract on Feb. 17. Instead, the public comment period closed after about two hours of remarks and the council proceeded to other agenda items. The council made clear it had not adopted additional measures that night and invited residents to submit supporting records for staff to examine.

Quotes: “You weren’t given a complete picture on February 3,” Ortiz told the council. “You now have more information, and the community and myself trust you’ll make a more informed decision that’s best for Woodland.” Naomi Sher summarized outside oversight: “Wyden’s investigation found that Flock cannot provide adequate privacy and security and that abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable.”

Next steps: Councilmembers asked for documentation and said staff would review submitted materials; no vote or suspension was recorded at this meeting. The matter may return to a future meeting once staff and council have reviewed additional records and legal guidance.