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September 4th Newsletter

Hi Neighbor,

We are working to start having a newsletter in your email every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month packed with local and national updates, action items, and upcoming events in the Greater Sacramento area that are from allied organizations or opportunity to interact with local representatives outside of the council chambers. These newsletters will come with scripts and talking points to help you form public comment off agenda. Even when we do not have the ability to have big crowds regularly at city council and board of supervisor meetings, the consistent and persistent comments help lay the groundwork for when the time comes for when the contracts come up.

HOPE:

Let some of these community wins in other cities encourage you to keep the pressure up.

Summit County, CO: Citizens in Summit County Colorado have provided public pressure that lead to the Sheriff’s office suspending their contract for 30 days while they review existing policy and relationship with Flock Safety. The community presented a petition of over 850 signatures calling for the termination or non-renewal of all ALPRs in the county while both community and county commissioners raised questions to both the SSO and Flock Representative, Lily Ho, who is also an elected committee member for the San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee. In a statement from the commissioners’, they wrote, “for all the potential upsides, we remain unconvinced that this unregulated technology is in the best interest of Summit County.” Read more about the concerns raised in Summit County, CO in this article.

Oceana County, MI: The County Road Commission voted to revoke permissions for camera installation after the Sheriff’s office decided to end it’s trial after significant community push back. After only 11 days of a trial period, the undersheriff submitted a memo to the county board of commissioners announcing the early ending of the pilot program. The County Road Commissioner Andrew Heykoop proposed the legislation and is quoted by the local Fox 17 to say “I talk to a lot of people every day in our county. They want a voice. They elected us to be their voice. We are their voice, and this is me being that voice.” You can read more in the previously mentioned Fox 17 article and this article from their local ABC 13.

Both of these stories show how public pressure can lead to change from the law enforcement offices and the elected officials. Please be inspired by that to continue to pressure our officials to remove all ALPRs from our streets.

REASON:

All across the country, officers have been facing consequences for improper usage of ALPR data. So much so that the Institute for Justice have built a database to help log these issues. Here, we are highlighting a few recent ones.

Richmond County, GA: Two officers have been arrested and charged for using the ALPR system to search for license plates for reasons unrelated to law enforcement activity. Reports do not state who they had been searching for, but they were not the first ones from the Richmond County Sheriff Office to be arrested and charged. Earlier this year, 4 other RCSO deputies were arrested. Investigator Sean Morrow and Deputy Jose Ferrer still misused the cameras after watching their fellow deputies get arrested for doing the same. Morrow’s use is logged as stalking in the IJ database. You can read more information about the original 4 in this article and about Morrow and Ferrer in this article.

‘Own the Narrative’: Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech by 404 Media: 404 Media reported on the coaching that Flock is now giving to police to speak to city council about ALPRs and surveillance technology. They are guiding them to have these conversations before there is every a public hearing on the usage. The guide states that agencies who are able to keep or introduce Flock systems, “brief city managers early. They meet with council members before votes occur. They share policies proactively and answer questions before public comment periods become the first introduction to the program.” You can read more from 404 Media’s article here.

Action:

Please use the talking points below to build your own public comment or submit the script below to city and county elected officials. If you work, shop, or visit any city within Sacramento County, we encourage you to lobby each council. Cities want to be visited by outside residents to spend their money in the city, your voice still matters even when you do not live in the city limits.

  • ICE/DHS related:
  • Surveillance does not make us safer.
    • There’s no independent research proving that ALPRs can reduce crime. Headlines and supporting studies claiming otherwise are often produced by the companies selling ALPRs and the police agencies buying them. More info here.
  • Law enforcement agencies are notorious for quoting Flock marketing materials and cherry picking data points to sell lawmakers on surveillance. But “public safety” efforts that come at the expense of the safety of marginalized groups in our communities are completely unacceptable. See the 404 article about how Flock is training police to do so.
  • ALPR’s often misread license plates. Locally, Roseville made NATIONAL news for being inaccurate 71% of the time. See Secure Justice’s efficacy document for more information.

Contact information for all local elected officials can be found on our website
Script:

Dear Councilmembers:

Flock cameras and automated license plate readers approved by our city council and installed by our police department are being used by California police and in cooperation with ICE and federal agents to conduct clearly unconstitutional immigration “enforcement” activities. They have even been used by law enforcement officers to track women who have had abortions with the idea of charging them with a crime, to track ex-romantic partners and to stalk women for personal reasons.

We are quickly becoming a mass surveillance nation. Is this what we really want?

Residents of this county and nationwide, on both the left and the right, already feel their data is unprotected and exposed: to all levels of government and to private, even multi-national, companies across the globe. Residents of Norfolk, West Virginia are suing their city for ALPR installation, in alleged violation of the 4th Amendment (unwarranted search). Removing these cameras is one small but significant step we can take to push back on mass surveillance.

Flock is a private company with one goal, to make money. It is partially funded by Peter Thiel’s “Founders Fund,” which also bankrolls Palantir, a sophisticated data surveillance tool used by ICE and Border Patrol to target migrants. Our data is simply not safe in Flock’s hands. They have been caught in national reporting making one false statement after another about their technological controls and security. Flock’s CEO claimed that Flock was limiting cross-state-border access, after data breaches across state lines were revealed by journalists – but El Cajon, CA continues to share data with out-of-state agencies. Concerns were recently raised in Marietta, OK at a city council meeting where a Flock representative joined via zoom. According to local news, they shared that camera data is actually retained indefinitely. This is a HUGE concern, since we have retention rates set that they are therefore not following.

Your job is to protect our population, our Constitutional rights, our privacy, and our safety – and that includes our travel data and our right to privacy. The only acceptable option is to cancel the contract and remove the cameras.

Thank you,

Name

Local Highlights:

There are a lot of really great organizations across the Sacramento Region doing great things. We want to highlight a few for you here.

  • Norcal Resist Labor Day Diaper Drive – September 7, 2026 10 am – 1 pm
    • drop by donations of all diaper sizes or wipes and food items such as beans, rice, cereal, sugar, Maseca flour, canned foods, salt, pasta, and other non-perishable foods.
    • NCR office is located at 2775 Cottage Way #15, Sacramento, CA 95825
  • Sacramento Chalk It Up festival
  • Sacramento County Budget Hearing
    • Join Decarcerate Sacramento and the Sacramento Anti-Death Penalty Coalition in attending and making our voices heard. See toolkit at bit.ly/DS26Budget-Tooklit
  • NorCal Resist Migra and Court Watch training
    • Learn how to become a part of their rapid response network.
    • September 10th, 7 pm tinyutl.com/ncrsept10

Make sure to sign our petitions at https://c.org/XbmBXxLqvg and https://c.org/B2rtgCd29r

In solidarity,

Deflock Sac Metro Community

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