IPA review finds Pasadena ALPR searches largely compliant; community members press for broader audit and policy updates

Pasadena — Independent Police Auditor Teresa Magula told the Citizens Police Oversight Commission on Wednesday that a review of the Pasadena Police Department’s automatic license‑plate reader (ALPR) data found the department’s ALPR program “appears to be operating consistent with California law as well as with their own department policy.” The audit analyzed the department’s ALPR search logs for the prior calendar year after PPD provided extensive datasets to the IPA’s office.

Magula said the dataset showed more than 5,000,000 ALPR reads during the audited year and that most searches were “associated with specific criminal investigations” rather than broad, exploratory queries. She described built‑in controls including user authentication, logged audit trails, a 30‑day default retention period unless a specific investigative need justified longer storage, and data‑sharing agreements that limit which agencies may query Pasadena’s records. Magula also said Pasadena recently disabled NCRIC (a Northern California regional intelligence center) access to its ALPR data in June 2026 as a proactive step given concerns about indirect federal access; she said her line‑by‑line review turned up no evidence that federal agencies directly queried PPD’s ALPR data during the audit period.

"Of the full dataset of all of the ALPR searches that were conducted of Pasadena Police Department data ... the ALPR program appears to be operating consistent with California law as well as with their own department policy," Magula said.

Community members at the CPOC meeting urged a wider scope. "This report's usefulness and the facts are both quite questionable," said Yari, a public commenter, who said recent media reporting and disclosures suggest violations and stressed the need for fuller transparency and stronger guardrails. Other commenters asked the commission to examine accuracy rates for the vendor Flock Safety, to review historical compliance going back to earlier ALPR use, and to document how the department detects and addresses misuse by individual officers.

Tariq, another public commenter, said vendor‑reported accuracy figures matter because even low single‑digit error rates can produce wrongful stops, citing documented wrongful arrests tied to ALPR errors. "A 90% or even a 95% accuracy rate may sound great unless you are one of the people who gets pulled over and has a gun pointed at you," he said.

PPD representatives answered questions from commissioners and the public. Officers said Flock hits are not acted on without independent verification through NCIC (the national database) and that the city has automated and vendor audit tools to flag irregular search behavior (for example, repeated searches by a single user or searches beyond a 30‑day window). PPD said the department found two in‑state searches associated with a federal facility police unit (Loma Linda VA) that prompted partners to be cut off and was the basis for discontinuing some data sharing.

Several commissioners and the IPA recommended continued oversight: Magula proposed periodic reevaluation of camera placement and continued transparency about data‑sharing partners. Commissioners discussed creating an ad hoc or community engagement process to gather priorities about camera placement, policy updates and the department’s transparency portal.

Next steps: the matter will be discussed at the Public Safety Committee in August; the commission may also convene short ad hoc workgroups to develop community priorities and specific policy changes for PPD to consider.

The meeting transcript shows the IPA’s review covered access controls, retention, and sharing; the department and community members disagreed on whether the audit’s scope was sufficient to detect certain past misuse. The public safety committee and City Council will receive related material for further consideration.