Rios is director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program. He lives in Chula Vista.
In March, dozens of ominous cameras mounted on streetlight poles suddenly appeared throughout Chula Vista’s District 4 neighborhoods. These automated license plate recognition cameras are part of Chula Vista’s expanding surveillance network of enforcement tools.
In October 2023, the City Council unanimously rushed its approval of a $3 million grant from the California Board of State and Community Corrections to acquire 150 fixed automated license plate recognition cameras from the private company Flock Safety to target increased vehicle and catalytic converter thefts. Chula Vista’s Police Chief Roxana Kennedy described it as an “unexpected opportunity.”
The “unexpected opportunity” had an “extremely tight timeline,” so the Chula Vista Police Department provided barely any public notice. However, by the time of the reading of the agenda item, 125 e-comments were ed in and 38 in opposition. Those in included over a dozen recognizable Chula Vista Police officers, though none disclosed their affiliation in their comments. Other city employees or former employees also commented in favor of the proposal. Many others commenting favorably listed their first name with an initial as a last name. It is not known whether they also were current or former employees of Chula Vista, either of its police department or of other departments.
Six months later, 98 of the 150 cameras have been installed without review of the city’s Privacy Protection and Technology Advisory Commission. At the time of the grant approval, the city had not yet formed the commission. The city manager stated, “Once the commission is formed, city staff will bring the associated use policy and the surveillance and technology impact reports … to the commission for their review and recommendation.”
The commission has already met twice, but has not addressed any items associated with the Flock automated license plate recognition cameras.
This commission formed after community reproachment for how Chula Vista had previously used mobile automated license plate recognition cameras operated by Vigilant Solutions, which included sharing data with Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agencies. This violated the spirit of California’s Senate Bill 54, which prohibits state or local governments from using resources to assist federal agencies with immigration enforcement.
Chula Vista had received the notable designation as the first certified Welcoming City in California in 2019, for its inclusive policies and programs available to immigrants. During the Trump presidency, when vitriolic anti-immigrant sentiment was at an all-time high, community considered this as an important local achievement.
The commission is meant to advise and make recommendations to city departments on their acquisition and use of surveillance technologies, and to avoid unable processes that fomented community distrust of the Chula Vista Police Department.
The commission might consider, for instance, that Flock Safety’s own research claim that its automated license plate recognition cameras solve 10 percent of crime in the United States was questioned by a researcher consulted in the matter. “The information that is collected by the police departments are too varied and incomplete for us to do any type of meaningful statistical analysis on them,” Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University told 404 Media.
The American Civil Liberties Union has cautioned about Flock’s strategy, writing that “Flock is building a giant camera network that records people’s comings and goings across the nation, and then makes that data available for search by any of its law enforcement customers.”
In that October 2023 meeting, a police presentation noted that the cameras would be placed at “ingress and egress points of the city,” “major intersections,” and “hot spots” where crimes have occurred. The presentation anticipated that of the 150 Flock cameras approved, most would be concentrated in Districts 2 and 4, which are disproportionately lower income than other areas of Chula Vista.
In just a one-mile radius of my home in District 4, of the six cameras I have spotted, two are in front of local schools and another is near a church.
Margaret Baker, who lives in Chula Vista’s District 2 and leads South Bay People Power, a social justice group that promotes civic engagement, notes, “They are pushing us into a perpetual state of surveillance. Hundreds of my neighbors will be scanned twice daily just taking their children to Hilltop Drive Elementary, Hilltop Middle, and Hilltop High schools.”
Chula Vista’s public facing automated license plate recognition page does not currently list the location of the newly installed cameras.
For Chula Vista officials, ability and transparency measures must remain paramount in addressing concerns related to pervasive patterns of profiling. Increased reliance on surveillance systems with little to no guardrails will continue to pose a problem for the city in its pursuit of being at the forefront of the Smart City movement.
