This story was funded by donations made to support L.A. TACO's investigative news desk.
For the past decade, Claire Phillips has lived in Altadena. After her home was declared a total loss after the Eaton Fires, she joined a WhatsApp group chat centered on fire recovery to stay in contact with her neighbors.
In June of last year, the co-captain of their fire recovery group sent a message to the chat about a Flock camera in a nearby neighborhood. Nobody knew where they came from or who put them up.
"We were all pretty aghast that they were installed without our knowledge," she says.
Online, people shared videos of additional Flock cameras on black metal poles near the empty, dirt-covered lots where homes had burned down. Others noticed the cameras placed at major intersections in the city, making them unavoidable for anyone driving through town.
According to documents obtained by L.A. TACO through a public records request, Flock Safety donated 50 Flock Falcons, automated license plate reading cameras, to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) in February of last year.
“Altadena has spoken. We don't want surveillance cameras. We don't want Flock replaced by another company's cameras. We don't want to play surveillance company whack-a-mole. We want a say in whether this technology is deployed in our community at all.”
Shawna Dawson Beer
The donation also included a subscription to the company's software and free camera installations throughout Altadena.
Nic Arnzen, Chair of the Altadena Town Council, told L.A. TACO the company's generosity "was in response to the fire and recognition of the vulnerability of our community to looters and bad players after the fires."
The Altadena Town Council is a volunteer-run organization and communicates the town’s needs to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Berger, who manages the unincorporated town. Two council members represent the town’s eight census tracts and serve two-year terms.
In April of last year, the department claimed crime had risen 250% in the area after the fires. In response, the LASD created a Looter Suppression Team, sending drones and deputies to patrol the neighborhoods.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions about the impact the Flock cameras had on solving crime in Altadena. Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment.
Yadi Younse, an organizer with the Privacy Defense Alliance, a privacy rights advocacy group focused on government surveillance. She’s also a fire survivor and said worries over looting were a pretext to put up the cameras indefinitely. Once surveillance takes root in communities, it rarely comes down.
"It was disingenuous for a private company to say we'll give you this product for free. There's always a catch," says Yadi. "If they thought it was so wonderful, why didn't they come out and say they put them in?”
According to an Altadena Town Council survey, a growing number of Altadena residents want the cameras taken down and returned to Flock. The Altadena Town Council found that 73% of Altadena residents are opposed to the cameras and the unnecessary surveillance that comes with them.
Shawna Dawson Beer is a longtime Altadena resident and a total loss Eaton Fire survivor. She helps run Beautiful Altadena, an online network she created in 2015 to share news and information about the town.
After the fires, she says the group's role expanded into a survivors-led advocacy group, connecting over 21,000 Altadeneans across multiple online platforms.
She is deeply involved with the community, regularly interacting with a broad cross-section of residents and community leaders. If there’s anything said or done in the town, she’d be the one to know about it.
The overwhelming sentiment she hears about the license plate readers is that people want them gone.
“Altadena has spoken,” Beer says over email. “We don't want surveillance cameras. We don't want Flock replaced by another company's cameras. We don't want to play surveillance company whack-a-mole. We want a say in whether this technology is deployed in our community at all.”
Over the past year, Flock’s ALPR footprint has grown to the point that it’s become increasingly difficult to take a trip to Home Depot or a local park without being tracked by the cameras. Flock’s contracts with housing associations (HOAs) have helped wealthy enclaves further fortify themselves from outsiders.
The company boasts that its cameras capture billions of license plates every month for its network of over 5,000 police departments across the country.
Flock's Falcon cameras photograph license plates of every vehicle that passes by them. Its Vehicle Fingerprint AI technology documents the make, model, and color of the vehicle—and any notable features like bumper stickers.
The data is uploaded into a massive searchable database that has the date, time, and location of every place you’ve been in over the past month or more. In some cases, departments can share access to their databases among each other, allowing out-of-state and federal police to search for a person’s whereabouts.
Over the course of two months, the Inspector General's Office of the LAPD's Board of Police Commissioners found 161 instances in which the department pulled over innocent people whose cars were mistakenly identified as stolen by a license plate reader.
In California, Senate Bill 34 prohibits police from sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection. That’s not stopped agencies like the San Francisco Police Department, whose database was searched by departments in Texas and Georgia on behalf of ICE.
But the number of cameras is shrinking as more cities begin canceling their contracts with the company, citing concerns over privacy and misuse. Altadena’s neighbor, South Pasadena prematurely cancelled theirs in March with the company, ending their lease on 27 cameras over data safety concerns.
It’s easy to see why Altadena residents feel unsafe with the cameras. Police across the country are continually caught misusing the database to search their exes' license plates or stalk women. Departments have used Flock’s network to find people seeking out-of-state abortion care and No Kings protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) let its Flock contract lapse last month. The department’s watchdog warned the department to "suspend deployment of new ALPR cameras and execution of new ALPR-related contracts pending public input and a broader reassessment of vendors and data practices."
Over the course of two months, the Inspector General's Office of the LAPD's Board of Police Commissioners found 161 instances in which the department pulled over innocent people whose cars were mistakenly identified as stolen by a license plate reader.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told the Police Commission in July that license plate readers are a "valuable investigative tool," but one that must be handled "responsibly."
Last week, Flock touted new guard rails that they say will reduce misuse and improve people's privacy. Their Audit Assistance will flag any unusual activity and require case numbers for every search done by officers. It’s the company’s latest attempt to save face from the bad press and hopefully stop people from continuing to saw down the cameras off their metal poles.
Residents weren't the only ones left in the dark. According to town council member Anton Anderson, the department didn't tell the city's elected officials they were putting the cameras up, either. Now he wants answers.
"How did the cameras get here, why are so many (over 50%) are in the predominantly/historically Black/Brown areas of Altadena, and who is accountable for reporting back out to the public on their use?" says Anderson in an email to L.A. TACO.
The department didn't return calls seeking comments for the story. But in May, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Civilian Oversight Commission held a forum on license plate readers. At the forum, LASD Commander Ernest Bille said the contract with Flock in Altadena was ended, and the cameras have been decommissioned.
He also clarified there are Flock cameras within L.A. County that they still have access to, but it’s up to the cities contracted with the department to manage their contracts with Flock. Their only contract for ALPR technology is with Motorola Vigilant, according to Bille. The Vigilant cameras are also in Altadena.
Arnzen confirmed that the cameras are off, but he says there are no plans to remove the cameras while the city, county, and department work to gather more feedback from the community.
Beer with Beautiful Altadena says she’d like to see further clarity from the county and LASD about what “decommissioned” means, considering that people say they’ve still been able to capture the cameras’ infrared flash with their phones at night.
“If the cameras have truly been decommissioned, then I think the next step is pretty simple," she says.
"Take them down.”
