Council committee to discuss resolution to terminate services with Flock Safety

A San Diego City Council committee will consider Wednesday whether to adopt a resolution to end the police department’s use of automatic license plate readers citywide.

The resolution titled “Rescind ALPR use policy,” is proposed by councilmember Henry Foster III i n response to widespread backlash against Flock Safety, the company that administers the city’s license plate reader program.

If passed, Foster’s proposal calls for the termination of the city’s contract with Flock Safety, and for the city to delete all stored data along with it.

Ultimately, it calls on SDPD to do away with its current policy for using ALPRs, effectively prohibiting the technology.

This doesn’t take ALPRs off of the table in the future. Rather, the city would need to treat any proposal for a new vendor of ALPRs as a completely new technology, completing an entire Privacy Advisory Board review and going through council approval.