Councilmember Hampton Asks City to Halt Flock Camera Use as Review Committee Struggles to Meet

Councilmember Tyron Hampton urged Pasadena city staff Monday to suspend the city’s use of Flock cameras “until further discussion” in the wake of repeated postponement by the council’s Public Safety Committee to complete a review of the technology’s use in Pasadena.

Hampton raised the issue at the Aug. 24 regular City Council meeting as the council was turning to an unrelated agenda item, framing his remarks as a response to earlier public comment. He asked staff to send out a memo discontinuing use of the Flock cameras pending further discussion, saying staff has the ability to direct the stoppage.

Flock Safety’s license-plate-reader camera network use by police departments has sparked a privacy-versus-public-safety fight across the United States.  Supporters cite stolen-vehicle recovery and crime investigations; critics warn it enables warrantless mass tracking, weak oversight, officer misuse and data sharing that could aid immigration enforcement or target sensitive health-care travel.

“Flock is a problem,” Hampton said, describing the company’s products as a national problem and the issue as a national one.

“We seem a little tone deaf to the community,” he said, contrasting the debate with the Police Department’s frequent emphasis on community policing.

Hampton said he asked for the item to be routed to the Public Safety Committee when the contract originally came before the council, and that it never got there.

“It didn’t make it to a public safety meeting,” he said. He said one Public Safety meeting lacked a quorum.

He predicted the item would consume an entire meeting.

“Our meeting’s going to be a seven-hour meeting for sure on that item,” he said.

Vice Mayor Jess Rivas’s remarks differed from Hampton’s account of whether the matter had reached the committee. She said the Public Safety Committee has been attempting to hold an in-depth discussion and has struggled with quorum (the minimum number of voting committee members who must be present for the committee to officially conduct business), and that on the two occasions Flock cameras were taken up, the committee was under time pressure to get through presentations and could discuss it only briefly.

Rivas said she has also inquired with the mayor about bringing it straight to the full council. Given everything happening nationally with the Trump administration and what is known about Flock and automated license plate readers in general, she said, the community deserves a discussion to reassess whether to continue on the same path.

Mayor Gordo acknowledged the underlying scheduling problem. The city has tried two-member committees and a number of other approaches without success, he said, and “it’s a very small percentage of this body that can’t attend or cancels. And it’s created a problem.”

No vote was taken on Flock cameras on Monday, and the item was not on the agenda.