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Residents press Nevada County to review Flock Safety contract, cite privacy and access concerns
Summary
During public comment, multiple residents urged Nevada County supervisors to suspend or cancel the county's contract with Flock Safety, alleging widespread external searches of county camera feeds, risky corporate access to video, and unlawful data-sharing; the board agreed to request the sheriff's office return with more information.
Several residents used the board's public-comment period on June 9 to press Nevada County leaders to suspend and re-evaluate the contract with Flock Safety, the company that provides automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras used by the sheriff's office.
One speaker said Flock cameras "have searched over 13 million times by over 4,600 different outside agencies," a figure the commenter said was inconsistent with a public transparency portal maintained by the vendor. "Someone's lying here," the resident told the board.
Other speakers alleged incidents in which Flock employees allegedly accessed sensitive camera streams elsewhere in the country, and argued that ALPR logs and the county's transparency portal do not disclose the full set of search reasons or external access. "This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment," a commenter said, urging the board to pull the contract for deeper review.
Board members acknowledged the community's privacy concerns and said they would request a public briefing from the sheriff's office. Chair Sworth said she would ask the sheriff to return with detailed information about how many cameras the county owns, how many searches have been logged, who can access them and under what conditions, how the data is shared, and what costs the system imposes on taxpayers. The board also noted a public meeting scheduled by the City of Grass Valley to discuss Flock Safety.
What the county will do next: Supervisors said they will ask the sheriff's office to bring a future agenda item with full information about the contract, use policy, search logs and access controls so the board and the public can assess whether the county is meeting state law and policy expectations.
Provenance: public comments recorded in the meeting transcript and multiple direct allegations about search counts and external agency access (transcript segments provided by speakers in SEG 362-412).
