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SANTA PAULA — Flock Safety, the provider of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) to law enforcement, has announced, through audit logs within their ALPR platform, it has confirmed access by out of state law enforcement for a period of time. As a result, Ventura County Law enforcement agencies, including the Santa Paula Police Department, had their ALPR networks inadvertently accessible by out of state law enforcement agencies. Flock Safety has accepted accountability and implemented plans to address the issue.
The function of ALPR’s is to assist in criminal investigations, including addressing violent crimes, stolen vehicles, missing persons, and other serious offenses. The Santa Paula Police Department views ALPR technology as highly valuable in enhancing investigations to solve and deter crime.
Flock Safety’s ALPR system captures images of license plates and vehicle characteristics, but does not capture images of drivers or passengers. The ALPR data is then stored in an encrypted cloud environment for thirty (30) days before its deletion. Authorized personnel from agencies that use Flock Safety ALPR technology can query the data for the purpose of locating instances when and where a vehicle was detected by an ALPR camera. Agencies may authorize other entities to access their information, creating a shared network environment.
California Law prohibits sharing of ALPR data with entities outside of California. This includes federal agencies. With our Flock Safety ALPR deployment in August 2024, the “National Lookup” feature on the Flock Safety system was turned off.
When the Santa Paula Police Department became aware of the vendor issue that occurred within their ALPR platform, an audit was initiated. The audit revealed that even though the Police Department’s Flock Safety security settings had been set to “California only” access, a vendor-enabled “nationwide query” allowed agencies access from outside of California. The inadvertent access occurred in 2025, allowing the Houston Police Department access. The inquiries were related to criminal investigations.
In addressing the inadvertent access, Flock Safety stated, “Through review of agency audit logs within the Flock platform, it has become apparent that some CA law enforcement agencies, including Ventura County, in 2025 had their camera networks inadvertently accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies for a period of time. Flock takes full accountability for this situation, and has made changes and improvements to significantly enhance agency ability to effortlessly comply with applicable laws, regulations, and community norms that govern information sharing, including implementation of settings logging to ensure that all changes going forward are tracked, and standardized guardrails governing data access and sharing are robust.”
Dan Haley, Chief Legal Officer at Flock Safety remarked, “Flock has always provided agencies with tools to comply with state law and relied on each agency and its legal counsel to determine how those tools should be configured. In 2025, it became clear that technology providers must play a more active role in ensuring consistent compliance across jurisdictions. We have since implemented structural safeguards nationwide to prevent misuse and to ensure that our platform aligns with state-level restrictions. We take seriously our responsibility to continuously strengthen protections while supporting lawful public safety investigations.”
In addition to the Flock Safety enhanced safeguards, the Santa Paula Police Department is conducting daily audits of our data to confirm it is being shared appropriately. Continuous internal audits for authorized police employees are also being conducted to ensure the users are performing actions in the Flock Safety platform that fall within departmental policy.
Flock Safety has accounted for the errors with the inadvertent accesses and has implemented safeguards to maintain compliance with California state law. The platform maintains a public transparency portal for law enforcement agencies. The Santa Paula Police Department transparency portal can be viewed at: