In June of 2026, Visalia Police Department decided they no longer wanted the public to know why they were accessing the Flock Automated License Plate Reader system.
Let’s look at Visalia PD’s “Transparency Page” .CSV file for two different 30 day periods this year. Here’s the one starting on May 5, 2026, which contains the “reason” field in the log.
From the left to the right, we see the following ; an ID number, apparently coded. The “user ID” is merely asterisks. No public idea who is accessing the data. Next is the date and time, in “Zulu” time, which is UTC, which is Greenwich Mean Time. (London, England) Next is the number of “networks” being searched. I don’t know if this means number of cameras, or number of agencies, businesses, and organizations. The final field is “reason”. Each search of the database requires a reason for the search. They’ve told us each access requires a case number, but it’s never been listed on the public facing page. As it is, some of the “reason” entries are simply meaningless. More on that in a bit.
Now, starting sometime in June of 2026, VPD has removed the “reason” field from the file. I’m going to assume it’s visible on their side of the site (all of this stuff sits on Flock servers, requiring users to log in and access the information remotely), but we can no longer see it. Our “transparency” is becoming more opaque.
The transparency page .CSV file now. From left to right, the mystery ID, asterisked userID column, the date-time, and the network count. No reason provided.
Other agencies in the area still present the “reason” field. Porterville and Bakersfield have continued to post theirs. Porterville looks to be following Visalia’s lead on “reason” labels, but a few actual case numbers seem to have slipped in. Bakersfield’s is more informative.
Porterville, California
Bakersfield, California
While no case numbers are/were visible on Visalia’s website, “reason” is required to be logged for each inquiry. The reasons in Visalia’s data accesses leave much to be desired. (They were bad enough before, but now they’re gone completely. It’s a serious case of “trust us, bro”.)
Let’s look at the “reason” given for some searches. This is for the 30 day period of May 5, 2026 through June 3, 2026, from the .CSV file I downloaded before the column was removed. I ran the file through an AI to extract the numbers. I’ll add comments to each reason to try and explain what it means. VPD accessed the database 484 times in the 30 day period beginning May 5, 2026. The reasons given are listed from most used to least, and with their percentages of occurrence.
Tally Breakdown (Most to Least Frequent)
Multiple Occurrences (>1)
Investigation: 151 (31.20%) Of what? No idea. About as vague as you can get. And out of 484 inquiries to the system in that 30 day period, this “reason” is the most popular.
836: 71 (14.67%) The second most popular “reason” is this one. And it’s vague as hell. Penal Code section 836 is an officer can arrest someone without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe a public offense occurred in their presence, if the person committed a felony out of their presence, or if the officer has probable cause that a felony was committed regardless of whether it actually was. It’s used, at least in my 25 years as a law enforcement dispatcher, as a prefix on a charge: 836 – 245 (suspicion of assault), or 836-187 (suspicion of homicide). Just 836 by itself is meaningless.
10851: 66 (13.64%) Ok, now we’re at number 3, and at least it’s specific. This one at least makes sense. Stolen vehicle.
PC29800: 29 (5.99%) makes it a felony for anyone previously convicted of a felony, certain prohibited misdemeanors, or active narcotic drug addiction to own, purchase, receive, or possess a firearm.
criminal justice: 20 (4.13%) Again, another meaningless category. (Maybe it’s clear on their end what they use it for, but not on ours.)
Stolen: 19 (3.93%) What’s stolen? Probably a vehicle, but that should be 10851.
wanted: 17 (3.51%) for what? Another meaningless heading.
245: 16 (3.31%) assault with a deadly weapon.
VC (violent crime): 16 (3.31%) another meaningless heading. Which violent crime? They all get their own numbers in the Penal Code, so why not use that?
theft: 15 (3.10%) again, meaningless. Theft of what? Misdemeanor, or felony?
Stolen vehicle: 8 (1.65%) Should be the same as 10851, just to have the records be consistent.
felony: 7 (1.45%) Felony what?
PC 215: 7 (1.45%) Carjacking.
suspect vehicle: 6 (1.24%) suspected of what? The crime involved should be the entry.
836 273.5: 4 (0.83%) OK, suspicion of spousal abuse.
other: 3 (0.62%) Is other against the law? And our running around in a car?
2800: 2 (0.41%) failing or refusing to comply with a lawful order, signal, or direction from a uniformed peace officer.
Single Occurrences (1 time each)
The following 27 terms appeared 1 time each (0.21% of total queries per term):
243e1 – domestic battery
273.5 willfully inflict physical injury on an intimate partner, spouse, cohabitant, or child’s parent, resulting in a traumatic condition.
484 – defines the crime of theft in the state of California. It covers taking property that belongs to someone else, tricking or lying to get someone’s property (fraud/false pretenses), or misusing property that was given to you in trust (embezzlement).
burg – burglary
CRIME – yeah. What crime?
Disorderly conduct – a rather vague entry for an often vague crime.
felony vehicle – Which felony?
hit & run – traffic collision, but the vehicle code section would probably be a better entry.
investigation AOA – They’re checking their cameras and those they have access to for somebody. Who and what we don’t know.
locate – Locate what? A missing person? A stolen car?
locate suspect – Suspect of what? What’s the “legitimate law enforcement reason”?
locate susp for Lindsay pd – That’s weird. Lindsay has eight of their own cameras, and should be able to access any that VPD can.
narcotic sales – rather vague, but closer.
officer safety – Really vague.
outstanding suspect – Suspect of what crime?
PC 215 AOA – Helping out another agency on a carjacking case.
PC 417 – Brandishing a weapon.
PC 29805 – makes it illegal to own, purchase, receive, or possess a firearm for 10 years after being convicted of certain specified misdemeanor offenses, such as domestic battery, assault, or brandishing a weapon.
PC 30605 – makes it illegal to possess an assault weapon within the state without a legal exception.
probation – Trying to find a probation subject who hasn’t checked in?
search of susp veh – You want to search it, or you searched one and let it go?
suspect – of what?
suspect search – suspect of what?
test – Did you pass?
veh related to poss susp – possible suspect of what?
vehicle ID – I have no clue what this one means.
weapons offense – Could be more precise.
So that’s the list. The list that is no longer there. The transparency, such as it was, has been reduced. One noticeable thing about this list is it means nobody tried to create a consistent, logical set of codes to use. A cynic might think that’s deliberate, as it makes accurate data retrieval much more difficult.
Within the past year or so, Visalia Police have gone to encrypted radio transmissions. An increasing number of license plate readers are bracketing the city, and recording everything that passes in front of them, 24/7. Informational fields have been removed from previously available “transparency” web pages.
There are ongoing reports, growing more numerous each day, of abuse of the system by law enforcement officers. Arrests have been made of officers abusing the system. Over 85 law enforcement agencies and municipalities have quit their Flock systems (as of 8/6/26). Los Angeles Police Department is one of the most recent.
It is important to remember, also, that all of the data collected does not remain under the possession and control of each agency. The cameras upload the data and images to Flock cloud servers, and is maintained by Flock Safety. Users do not own the cameras, the servers where the data is stored, or ultimately have control of those servers. Flock has sold this system on the business model of having these subscriptions paid for by state and federal grants. Communities, like Visalia, get about four years of “free” service. Flock insists the data is the property of the agency, and that they will not sell it to a third party. They don’t promise they won’t *give* it to a third party, only that they won’t *sell* it. Their contracts also make it clear that if a Federal agency subpoenas them, they’ll turn over anything the Feds want. While ICE can’t log in and see data from California due to state law, they can easily circumvent that with a “subpoena”.
Overall, the Flock Safety Automated License Plate Readers are the solution to very few problems. In the time period we studied, only 13.64% of the inquiries were for stolen vehicles. None were for missing persons. The highest violent crime, 245, was only involved in 3.31% of the inquiries. The vague term “investigation” was invoked 151 times, or 31.20%.
It’s the remote nature of this system that I find unacceptable. If VPD installed these cameras, and held the data on their own secure servers, allowing access only to authorized staff, I would find it much more acceptable. California agencies could set up systems like this, and allow each other to either have direct access, or send a teletype message (frequently used for official requests and other contacts) requesting the data be checked for them. We really don’t need to have a private company that has been caught numerous times lying to the public and to their own customers, controlling so much information regarding our daily activities.
Here are my previous blog posts on Flock ALPR systems:
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