The debate around Flock cameras has come to roost in Sonoma County, with a petition protesting their installation circulating on Nextdoor. Neighbors are increasingly voicing their concerns regarding surveillance and data collection, while the opposing side contends the cameras keep communities safer by catching criminals.
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) have become the subject of national debate as their usage proliferates, predominantly among law enforcement, to solve crimes by capturing license plate images. Flock, the Atlanta-based start-up manufacturing many of the new cameras, has installed over 100,000 ALPRs cameras from coast-to-coast.
David Ganapoler of Penngrove began an online petition on Aug. 9 to protest the spread of the technology in Sonoma County, demanding their removal. Sonoma County “was a place where privacy meant something and personal liberties were respected,” the petition contends. “With the recent installation of Flock cameras throughout our community, a pervasive sense of surveillance has infiltrated our daily lives.”
As of yesterday afternoon, the petition has 214 signatures and 110 shares.
“Flock cameras can create detailed records of where vehicles travel, raising serious questions about how that information is stored, searched, shared, and protected,” wrote one Sebastopol resident who signed the petition. “Supporting the petition is not opposing public safety—it is demanding that safety measures respect our constitutional privacy rights and that residents have a meaningful voice in how surveillance technology is used.”
“Getting this in front of people’s eyes is very important,” Ganapoler said. “We are losing more and more of our rights.” The Penngrove resident’s fear is that a dossier will be created on every individual in the country and that the cameras capture more than license plates—they also photograph vehicle attributes like bumper stickers that signal political allegiance at a fraught time for democracy.
“No one gave their consent for this,” he said.
Sebastopol City Councilmember Stephen Zollman is against the installation of Flock cameras. “I am definitely opposed to their use,” he said, noting that he was speaking as an individual councilperson. “Given the increased ICE abuses, we all need to be aware of how this data is being used and abused.”
Interestingly, there are relatively few Flock cameras in West County so far, at least according to DeFlock, a national organization protesting the installation of the cameras. DeFlock's crowd-sourced online map shows thick clusters of Flock cameras along Highway 101 with a particularly dense concentration in Santa Rosa. It shows no Flock cameras in Sebastopol and just a few in West County—a handful along the coast near Bodega Bay and one in Monte Rio.
The Sonoma County Sheriff was unable to tell the Sebastopol Times how many Flock cameras it has deployed in West County. And, of course, there is no way to know how many private businesses have them installed.
Nationally, in states like Arizona and Ohio, there have been cases of improper use of data collected from Flock cameras, incidents that are fueling the uproar around their ubiquity. One particularly egregious example happened when an officer used data collected from cameras to track his estranged wife. It has led some cities to outlaw the technology altogether. The city of Sebastopol, for example, doesn’t allow city agencies, including the Sebastopol Police, to install surveillance cameras around town, particularly ALPR devices like Flock cameras. Some citizens have even taken matters into their own hands by sabotaging cameras. For its part, Flock continues to upgrade its security and privacy to address some of these concerns.
Yet from the perspective of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, there’s a lot of misinformation circulating regarding Flock cameras.
“I would be more concerned about a cell phone than a Flock camera,” said Sgt. Juan Valencia, public information officer at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. “The Flock cameras are not hooked up to the DMV.” He said they don’t use facial recognition, record conversations or identify drivers.
Valencia said that a car can be searched either by its characteristics (like “red Honda”) or its license plate number, but the records are kept only for 30 days and then destroyed.
“What people have to understand is that the information they’re collecting is all information that’s open to the public,” he said. “You’re in a public place, so anybody could sit on the side of the road and record every single car that drives and record their license plate number and vehicle description.”
In terms of the data being gathered into some sort of master set or being used for nefarious purposes, Valencia said there needs to be some sort of reason—like a crime needing to be solved—to flag a vehicle to look up data.
“There’s audits done; you can’t just go in there and start looking up cars,” he said.
While Valencia acknowledged that there have been cases of misuse in other states, he said it hasn’t happened in California. “California is very strict, and we have policies and procedures in place to prevent that.”
According to the Sheriff’s Department, Flock cameras have assisted detectives in fiscal year 2025-26 in three homicide cases, two attempted-murder investigations, a violent home invasion and several mental health emergencies. They have been so helpful, in fact, that they were the subject of a recent Sheriff’s Department newsletter: “Flock Helps Us Solve Violent Crime While Protecting Privacy,” which you can download below.
This success hasn’t dampened the passion of the cameras’ opponents, however. The online petition ends with this call to action:
I call upon the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to immediately halt the operation of these cameras and conduct an open forum with residents to discuss viable, less invasive alternatives. Let's return control over our personal privacy back to the people of Sonoma County.
Let's stand together and demand an explanation for the presence of Flock cameras, and urge our leaders to prioritize the privacy rights of their constituents. Please join me in signing this petition to protect our fundamental rights and reclaim our community. Together, we can push for a safer and more transparent approach that respects both our security and our privacy.
