On March 24, 2026, Mayor Adena Ishii and Council Members Lunaparra and Tregub announced they would not support City of Berkeley contracts with Flock Safety. In a Berkeley Speaks exclusive, we present statements from Ms. Ishii and Ms. Lunaparra.
Mayor Adena Ishii: “The public’s trust is compromised”
While I support the use of advanced public safety tools to assist first responders, I do not support our city contracting with Flock.
Everyone in Berkeley deserves to feel safe, but public safety is more than preventing crime. It includes the freedom to move without fear, to speak out without intimidation, and to trust that our city will protect its residents. Under the current federal administration, many in our community have legitimate concerns, and contracts are not always enough to ensure local laws and protections are upheld.
Flock’s track record raises concerns about data sharing and accountability. It becomes difficult to justify the use of Flock’s services when the public’s trust is compromised and there are legitimate fears that data could be used to target immigrant communities or suppress First Amendment rights.
There is no doubt that our first responders need effective tools to do their jobs. Surveillance technologies can play an important role in emergency response, investigations, and search and rescue. But their use must be balanced with strong protections for privacy, civil liberties, and compliance with local laws and values.
If no current alternative to Flock meets our standards, then we should wait for solutions that better reflect our community’s values and priorities.
I invite the community to attend two upcoming special City Council meetings regarding the Public Safety Technology item currently under consideration, which contains the Flock contract. On May 7, the Council will vote on this item and if necessary, come back on June 2 to finalize the contract.
I encourage everyone to learn more about the supplemental item I introduced with Vice Mayor Tregub and Councilmember Lunaparra.
Council Member Cecilia Lunaparra: “I am not comfortable with waiting for my neighbors to get deported before we shut off these technologies”
I am adamantly opposed to mass surveillance in our city, and I am especially opposed to extending and expanding the city’s contract with Flock. In the initial ALPR contract that Flock signed with the City, they promised that they would not work with ICE. Flock lied. They turned right around and started a secret pilot program with HSI, division of ICE, and only ended it after massive public backlash. Our Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance is very clear that Flock violated the laws of Berkeley and our contract, and I do not believe that accepting “whoops, we won’t do that again” and a relatively tiny fine for a multi-billion-dollar corporation is sufficient.
Even if we take Flock at their word that our data will be 100% protected, and that Flock ALPRs have been a useful tool for BPD to solve crime, I still have not seen any evidence that Flock has made a measurable impact at preventing crime in Berkeley. Every statistic I have seen shows that crime was going down significantly before the ALPRs were installed, including the presentations from both BPD and PAB at the March 24th City Council meeting. Yet, companies like Flock, which are funded by some of Donald Trump’s largest donors and have worked directly with ICE, are preying on our constituents’ fears to take our tax dollars and our data.
Donald Trump has overtly identified UC Berkeley and the City of Berkeley as targets. By approving these contracts, we would be making it easier for his administration to access footage and data of our community members who are disproportionately immigrant, queer, low-income, and activists. District 7 has a median age of 19 years old, and younger people are more likely to seek and access reproductive healthcare services like contraception and abortion, which are now under extreme attack. I am unwilling to put the lives of my constituents in danger. Our immigrant, queer, and activist communities—already targeted by systemic violence—should not be made to feel even more unsafe in their own neighborhoods. These communities are disproportionately impacted by surveillance, further eroding trust in institutions that claim to serve and protect us.
There is safety in numbers; communities are safer when streets are full of people. That’s why I support increased street and sidewalk lighting, public realm improvements, and more neighborhood events to increase foot traffic. The addition of new surveillance technologies in my district is contradictory to this goal because they deter many Southside residents, especially the vulnerable populations currently under attack by the Trump administration, from spending time in Third Spaces, which will cause foot traffic to decrease and make Southside less safe.
Even if I had full faith that this data could never be shared with the federal government, which I don’t, many of my constituents would believe this to be true. perception is reality, and even if these cameras were fully safe from ICE, many of my constituents would still frequent surveilled areas less often, which, again makes the intersection less safe. in a perfect world, these cameras might keep us more safe, but in reality, more cameras in my district will make my constituents less safe.
Flock keeps violating the law and getting caught in lies. How many “mistakes” will it take for us to learn that we can’t trust them? I am not comfortable with waiting for my neighbors to get deported before we shut off these technologies. As a city, we can do better. We can do better than mass surveillance, and we can do better than Flock.