The Richmond City Council postponed a vote Tuesday over whether to resume using license-plate reading technology, even as an active search for a juvenile human trafficking victim unfolded during the meeting.
While police officers searched the streets for the endangered child, city leaders remained undecided about the future of the Flock Safety camera system. The Richmond Police Department (RPD) said it knew the victim was in a vehicle moving through the city due to phone pings, but they lacked the tools to pinpoint the car’s location.
“If we had this technology up and running right now, we would know exactly where that car is,” Police Chief Timothy Simmons told the council.
The cameras, according to the chief, capture still photos of the rear or front of a vehicle and do not capture personal identifying information such as race or gender, facial recognition data, audio, or video. They have been dark since November 2025 following the discovery of a “national lookup” feature that allowed the potential for outside agencies to access data. Although police stated there is no evidence data was accessed improperly and the feature has been removed, the technology remains caught in a political stalemate.
Mayor Eduardo Martinez and Councilmembers Doria Robinson, Sue Wilson, and Claudia Jimenez, who are aligned with the Richmond Progressive Alliance, opposed continuing Tuesday’s meeting to resolve the contract. After hours of testimony, the meeting hit a mandatory 11 p.m. deadline. Councilmember Zepeda moved to continue the meeting the following morning, but the motion failed in a 3-4 vote.
The East Bay Alliance for Public Safety criticized the decision, arguing that a trafficking victim should not wait for help because of a policy stalemate. They noted that before the shutdown, the system assisted in 319 felony cases in 2025 alone. Since the deactivation, the RPD has identified 48 cases where the cameras would have helped investigators, including two homicides and eight shootings.
“A trafficking victim is not just a case number,” the alliance stated. “She is someone’s daughter whose safety depends on how quickly police can find her.”
Councilmember Brown expressed her frustration as the meeting concluded.
“We have a young person who is being trafficked and whose phone is pinging in our city and this is what we chose to do,” Brown said. “I am shattered knowing we had an opportunity to act and didn’t.”
How RPD Uses Flock Safety
According to Chief Simmons, Richmond’s Flock Safety suite includes license plate readers (ALPR), closed-circuit television (CCTV), and a drone program (DFR).
The City of Richmond owns all captured data, which is stored in an encrypted cloud environment meeting federal law enforcement standards. To protect privacy, data is purged every 30 days unless required for a criminal investigation or court order. The RPD currently maintains a transparency portal and has proposed further oversight through monthly reports to the Community Police Review Commission and annual third-party audits.
