Mayor Daniel Lurieโs office on Tuesday announced a slew of policies to tighten San Francisco police officers’ use of Flock surveillance cameras, and said the mayor would work with state lawmakers to pass a bill cracking down on officers who improperly use or share data from the cameras.
The citywide changes will shorten the length of time that officers can access Flock data without a supervisor’s sign-off, require officers to list what investigation is linked to their search of a surveillance database, and establish more regular audits.
Lurieโs new policies will apply to the more than 400 automated license-plate readers throughout the city, all of which are currently contracted through the technology company Flock Safety.
Flock cameras, which are designed to scan license plates and track cars for officers, have been the subject of national controversy. The Atlanta-based tech company was recently the subject of a critical Senate hearing, and has been denounced for how officers use it to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But, while about 150 cities have either banned, deactivated or rejected the cameras, the mayor’s actions show San Francisco will stand by them; they are a popular crime-fighting tool for police and officials. The San Francisco Democratic Party voted last week to overwhelmingly reaffirm its support for Flock.
The Board of Supervisors will vote in February 2027 on whether to extent the city’s Flock contract.
The new policies also come the day after the San Francisco Human Rights Commission released a report looking into 1.6 million improper Flock searches made by out-of-state agencies between 2024 and 2025.
License-plate data has been used in immigration enforcement, and advocates worry local data can make its way into federal hands through Flock.
Though the report found that SFPD had not violated the city’s sanctuary laws against coordination with immigration agents, it recommended several new guardrails for police.
The policies put forward Tuesday included some of those recommendations. They will โprotect peopleโs privacy while keeping San Franciscans and visitors safe,โ Lurieโs office wrote.
The first change will prevent San Francisco police officers from accessing data from its Flock portal 30 days after it is captured without approval from “police leadership.”
Under the new policy, the officer must demonstrate the footage is needed for an active investigation and get sign-off.
Flock will have to delete San Francisco data from its databases after 30 days and transfer it to the department, which can hold it for up to a year. The move is meant to address worries that outside agencies can access city data on Flock’s servers.
In another change, all Flock searches must now include an incident report. Without one, officers cannot access data associated with the surveilled vehicle.
The final change will require SFPD to review its Flock logs every month while requesting that the Department of Police Accountability do annual audits.
The mayorโs office also announced that it is working with Assemblymember Matt Haney and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to put forward legislation to punish people who improperly use or share license plate data.
The move comes three weeks after news that an off-duty San Jose police officer used Flock to track a woman who had accused his cousin of domestic abuse, and then shared the data with the accused. San Jose officials then issued a disappointing update: There is no state law penalizing officers who improperly share such data.
The proposed state law, which was initiated by Jenkins, will ensure that punishment for “misuse of data” is “consistent with how we already protect other confidential law-enforcement information,” the DAโs office wrote. “San Francisco needs to catch up with the technology.
“It should be a crime to share sensitive information without a clear and lawful purpose,โ said Haney. โItโs unacceptable and dangerous that it isnโt already.โ
The law could be introduced in December at the earliest, and potentially passed next year.
โThese new measures will improve public trust and accountability as we continue to use technology to reduce crime across the city,โ wrote SFPD chief Derrick Lew. โIf anyone commits violations with our technology, we will have stronger policies and laws to hold them accountable.โ
Lurie and other city officials will release more information about the changing policies at a press conference at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the San Francisco Police Department would have to delete Flock footage after 30 days. Officers will simply need internal approval to access it after 30 days.
Nothing but BS. Lurie, Jenkins, and the guys who run this city like Larsen have absolutely no intention of holding SFPD accountable. They have said so time and again, and even campaigned on the issue. Except for a brief time in 2015-2017, the SFPD has not been held accountable for its repeated violations of the โlawโ, as documented by the departmentโs own 2015 report. Given the embarrassing SF Dem cave-in, I guess some kind of PR stunt was necessary.
Similarly, the idea that Flock will gladly acquiesce to the requirement for record deletion is either a lie or disqualifyingly naive – when a private company can install over 500 cameras (According to Deflock) in 49 square miles without any process of public approval or pronouncement, why should we ever take them at their word? Even if the data is no longer searchable, you can guarantee that it is being fed back into their training sets, meaning our habits, behaviors, and movements are all being used to advance the project of a private corporation.
At least we were able to vote on the red light cams.
Flock does not delete the data. We know that because they tried to give the city of Sheboygan five years of their data when it was supposedly only retained for 30 days. The retention limit is when they take it down from the cloud database. The data is not purged, destroyed, or gone. The company still has it. Indefinitely. We need to have a real, not a PR, conversation about automated license plate readers.
Flock surveillance cameras help catch vicious criminals who would otherwise get away Scott free, so instead of getting rid of them, add more of them