The October 21 action by the City Council's Budget and Government Efficiency Committee represents a dramatic reversal for a surveillance program that city officials have repeatedly defended as essential to fighting crime. The committee's position, announced by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, comes amid mounting allegations of privacy violations, wrongful arrests, questionable procurement practices and a pending lawsuit seeking to dismantle the surveillance network and erase millions of stored vehicle records.
But the fight is far from over. Gloria immediately condemned the effort to eliminate the cameras, warning that removing the technology would endanger public safety, while Wahl issued an unusually forceful statement arguing that the decision would undermine criminal investigations and harm crime victims.
"Automated License Plate Readers are helping San Diego police solve serious crimes, recover stolen vehicles and property, and locate missing people," Gloria declared. "Taking this proven tool away from our officers would be a serious mistake and a step backward for public safety."
The mayor urged the full City Council to preserve the technology, arguing that San Diego's surveillance safeguards, including independent privacy reviews, audits and public reporting under the city's 2022 TRUST Ordinance, provide sufficient protections against abuse.
"Elected leaders shouldn't be making life easier for criminals. We should be making it easier for our constituents," Gloria said.
Police Chief Wahl was equally emphatic.
"Removing a proven public safety tool from our streets is a loss for San Diego communities," Wahl said in an October 21 news release provided to SanDiegoVille. "We don't have to guess whether ALPR helps solve crimes. We've seen it work in more than 900 cases, from stolen vehicles and kidnappings to murders."
Wahl rejected suggestions that eliminating the cameras would meaningfully improve police staffing, address immigration-related fears or solve San Diego's financial problems.
"What it will do is make it harder for our officers to solve crimes, find suspects and deliver justice for victims. That's what's at stake."
For opponents of Flock, Wednesday's committee vote marked a major breakthrough in a yearslong campaign to force San Diego to reconsider the extraordinary surveillance capabilities it has placed in the hands of law enforcement.
"The community has been right all along," Elo-Rivera declared in a statement issued following the meeting.
The District 9 councilmember accused the city of ignoring legitimate warnings about mass surveillance, mishandling sensitive information and prioritizing expensive monitoring technology while cutting essential public services.
"Data has been shared improperly, and San Diegans have been arrested and detained for weeks based on false data," Elo-Rivera said.
He also questioned why San Diego reduced library and recreation center hours while maintaining what he described as a $2 million Flock contract.
"The community was right to ask for investments in youth programming, libraries, parks, and rec centers instead of creepy surveillance," he said.
Elo-Rivera thanked committee Chair Henry Foster III, Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee and Councilmember Vivian Moreno for supporting the effort, ending his statement with an unmistakable demand: "Get the Flock OUT of San Diego."
The proposal seeks to terminate the Flock Safety subcontract associated with San Diego's smart streetlight system, rescind the City Council's prior approval of the automated license plate reader use policy and amend the city's TRUST Ordinance to prohibit the technology. The committee action does not itself terminate the contract or require the immediate removal of cameras. Those steps would require further city action.
The political landscape changed dramatically on October 13 when Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, who previously supported the cameras, announced that he wanted the program eliminated. His reversal potentially gives Flock opponents five votes on the nine-member City Council, enough for a simple majority but not necessarily enough to overcome a mayoral veto.
One of the most provocative elements of Wednesday's controversy involves a former high-ranking San Diego police official who helped oversee the city's adoption of surveillance technology before taking a job with the company providing it.
In his statement, Elo-Rivera specifically highlighted the employment of former SDPD Captain Jeff Jordon, who helped oversee the department's surveillance technology initiatives before retiring and subsequently joining Flock Safety.
"The SDPD captain who spearheaded bringing Flock to San Diego went to work for Flock immediately after retiring from the City," Elo-Rivera stated.
As SanDiegoVille previously reported, Jordon's transition into the private surveillance industry had already attracted criticism from Councilmember Foster, who publicly described the situation as "totally inappropriate" during an earlier review of the program.
There is no publicly established evidence that Jordon violated an ethics law, received compensation from Flock while employed by San Diego or improperly influenced a city procurement decision. Nevertheless, his move from a leadership position involving police surveillance technology to employment with the company selling that technology raises legitimate questions about the relationship between government procurement and private-sector employment.
Those questions have become increasingly consequential as San Diego confronts growing public skepticism about whether the institutions responsible for regulating surveillance technology have exercised meaningful independent oversight.
The extraordinary scope of San Diego's surveillance network was detailed in a September 29 lawsuit filed by the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, represented by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
As SanDiegoVille reported in its September 30 investigation, the lawsuit alleges that SDPD operates at least 500 automated license plate readers throughout San Diego while also having access to more than 200 cameras in local private networks.
According to figures cited in the complaint from Flock's own transparency portal, the city's system recorded approximately 3.9 million vehicle detections during a single 30-day period between August 18 and September 17, 2026.
Only 15,483 of those scans, approximately 0.4%, generated matches to license plates of interest.
That means the overwhelming majority of vehicle observations did not produce a hot-list match, although such observations can still become useful in subsequent investigations.
The complaint also cites more than 244,000 retrospective searches conducted by SDPD in 2025, averaging approximately 668 searches every day.
The technology captures license plates along with the time and location of passing vehicles, creating a searchable database that investigators can use to reconstruct vehicle movements over time. San Diego has maintained a 30-day retention period, according to the lawsuit, despite Flock's announcement earlier this year that it was reducing its recommended and default retention period to seven days.
Civil liberties advocates argue that collecting location information from millions of motorists, most of whom are not suspected of wrongdoing, amounts to an unprecedented form of government surveillance.
The lawsuit, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans v. City of San Diego, San Diego Superior Court Case No. 26CU051879C, seeks a declaration that the city's program violates constitutional privacy protections, termination of the surveillance operation, removal of equipment and deletion of collected records.
Those allegations remain subject to litigation and have not been established by a court.
The controversy extends beyond theoretical concerns about what surveillance technology might eventually be used to accomplish.
SanDiegoVille previously examined the case of San Diego resident Hugo Parra, who spent approximately 28 days incarcerated following an attempted armed carjacking investigation involving a Flock alert and witness identification. According to reporting about his litigation, Flock's own location records placed his vehicle approximately five miles from the crime scene when the offense occurred.
The case raises questions about the dangers of treating automated investigative leads as conclusive evidence, particularly when errors or misinterpretations can lead to prolonged incarceration.
Additional scrutiny followed revelations that SDPD entered into a pilot agreement involving Flock's Nova investigative platform in December 2025 without initially presenting the arrangement to the City Council, Privacy Advisory Board or public.
The department maintained that Nova had not been activated and that it did not intend to use the platform. Critics nevertheless argued that the undisclosed agreement exposed weaknesses in a regulatory system designed to ensure public review of surveillance technologies before their deployment.
Unlike conventional license plate readers, sophisticated data-integration platforms can potentially combine vehicle observations with police reports, public records and other databases, allowing investigators to identify relationships and patterns that individual cameras cannot establish on their own.
The implications extend far beyond identifying stolen vehicles. An interconnected surveillance system can potentially reveal where individuals live, work, worship, receive medical treatment or participate in political activities.
National concerns about misuse have also intensified. SanDiegoVille reported in August on a Washington Post investigation identifying dozens of law enforcement officers accused, charged or convicted of abusing license plate reader systems, including cases involving officers tracking romantic partners and former spouses.
A new Washington Post investigation published Wednesday further documented instances in which former law enforcement officers allegedly retained access to Flock's surveillance network after leaving their agencies, highlighting additional questions about account security and access controls.
Flock has announced changes intended to strengthen accountability, including additional auditing requirements, automated detection of suspicious searches and tighter security protections.
The financial stakes are also significant for a city struggling with budget pressures and contentious reductions in public services.
San Diego's surveillance arrangements involve annual expenditures of approximately $2 million, according to figures cited in the litigation and public debate. Opponents contend that money could be redirected toward police staffing, emergency response, libraries, recreation centers and other public services.
Supporters counter that the cameras deliver measurable benefits that cannot easily be replaced by additional personnel.
Gloria previously credited the technology with assisting in nearly 900 criminal investigations and recovering more than $8.7 million in stolen property. Wahl's latest statement places the number of cases assisted above 900.
Those figures demonstrate why the technology has remained politically resilient despite increasingly vocal opposition.
The central dispute is not simply whether automated license plate readers can help police solve crimes. It is whether those investigative benefits justify continuously collecting location information from millions of vehicles, including those belonging to people with no connection to criminal activity.
San Diego's surveillance controversy has already produced some extraordinary scenes at City Hall. In August, a protester dressed as Darth Vader appeared before a council committee to sarcastically praise Flock as an ideal tool for an authoritarian empire, mocking the potential for government surveillance to be abused for stalking and tracking political opponents.
What began as political theater has now developed into a serious confrontation over the future of policing in America's eighth-largest city.
Wednesday's committee action places San Diego closer to ending its relationship with Flock than at any previous point in the controversy. But with Gloria and Wahl firmly opposed, the next confrontation could involve a mayoral veto, a divided City Council and an ongoing constitutional challenge in Superior Court.
For privacy advocates, eliminating the cameras would represent a significant victory against the normalization of mass surveillance. For police leadership, it would mean surrendering a technology they maintain has helped solve hundreds of serious crimes.
The ultimate decision will determine whether San Diego continues operating one of California's most extensive municipal license plate surveillance networks or becomes a major American city to dismantle it in response to mounting public opposition.
Originally published on October 21, 2026.
