Less than two weeks before a town hall on its license plate cameras, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office has dropped about half the police agencies that could search the cameras’ records, its public camera page shows.
On Tuesday, the sheriff’s page on the website of Flock Safety, the company that makes the cameras, listed 312 agencies “granted access” to Lake County’s data. On Thursday, the same page listed 160. No agency was added.
The Sheriff’s Office homepage doesn’t mention the change, and neither does the county’s Nov. 3 notice of the town hall.
The sheriff has 25 Flock cameras. They photograph passing cars and read the license plates. The Sheriff’s Office keeps the pictures for 30 days, and its staff can search them for a car tied to a crime. Agencies on the sharing list can search them too. Sheriff’s staff ran 105 searches in the last 30 days, the page says.
Who’s off the list
The agencies taken off include the Los Angeles and Oakland police departments, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The El Cajon Police Department is also gone. The state attorney general filed a lawsuit against the city of El Cajon, near San Diego, over sharing plate data with out-of-state and federal agencies, CalMatters reported.
On Tuesday’s list, 209 agencies came before Rohnert Park in alphabetical order, from Alameda County to Rocklin. Of those, 152 are gone. All 103 agencies from Rohnert Park to Yuba County are still on the list.
The San Diego, Santa Monica and Huntington Beach police departments can still search Lake County’s records.
Who’s still on
The California Highway Patrol and Cal Fire are still on the list. So are the sheriff’s offices in Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Humboldt and Marin counties, and the police in Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Willits.
So is NCRIC, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. On its website, NCRIC says, “We connect the federal, state, and local agencies in our region to each other, and to the nation.”
Every agency on the old list and the new one is in California. In March, Sheriff Luke Bingham told the Big Valley Advisory Council in Kelseyville that “only California agencies can access them,” according to the council’s minutes.
The sheriff’s written policy on the cameras, dated January 2024, says the data may be shared only with law enforcement or prosecutors. The other agency has to make a written request that names the agency, the person asking and the reason. The head of the Sheriff’s Office administration division, or a stand-in, has to approve it.
The Flock page also lists what the data may not be used for: immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment and personal use.
Clearlake unchanged, Ukiah down to 3
Clearlake police haven’t changed their list. Their Flock page, updated Wednesday, still shows 124 agencies. Lakeport’s Flock page shows no sharing list.
In Ukiah, the police department’s Flock page listed 318 agencies in September. On Thursday it listed three: the California Highway Patrol, the Cloverdale Police Department and the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.
Town hall Nov. 18 in Lakeport
The county’s town hall on license plate cameras is Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport. Questions must be sent in by Sunday, Nov. 15, through an online form at surveymonkey.com/r/853QQRT. The meeting will be recorded and posted to the county’s YouTube channel.
The county says “local law enforcement officials” will explain the cameras and “the policies and safeguards in place to protect individual privacy rights.”