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Palo Alto has found an auditor to review its Flock license plate cameras, which are facing scrutiny after numerous data breaches across the Bay Area, with the goal of presenting findings to the City Council after the summer recess.
The city’s independent police auditor, which has performed audits of the city’s police department and use of force investigations since 2006, will now be tasked with auditing the city’s 30 ALPR cameras operated by Flock Safety. The OIR Group, an independent firm that performs the police auditing function, has seen its scope expand in recent years, as the city directed the auditor to include internal complaints and incidents in which handguns are burnished in its regular reports.
Now, the council is preparing to add Flock’s surveillance technology to OIR Group’s audit list. The scope of the audit will include “operational assessment of Flock’s policies and procedures around security, transparency, sharing compliance, and reporting of system features and changes,” according to a report from PAPD Chief James Reifschneider.
The audit will also assess PAPD’s internal policies and procedures, the report continued.
The City Council plans to hold a study session on the license plate camera technology at its next meeting on June 1. The meeting comes on the heels of a Weekly investigation that found that hundreds of out-of-state and federal agencies searched Palo Alto’s license plate camera data, despite claims to the contrary by Flock Safety and local officials. The search of ALPRs by any out-of-state agencies was made illegal by the state of California back in 2016.
Reifschneider said at the time that while Palo Alto appeared in nationwide searches, the data was not actually shared with other law enforcement agencies. He added that the police department was not aware that the searches were happening until December 2025 — over a year after Flock disabled the out-of-state search ability for Palo Alto.
“The feature did not enable targeted searches of any specific agency’s data,” Refischneider wrote in an April statement. “These searches could only be performed system-wide when a full 7-digit license plate number was known and only based on the articulation of a legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
Now, the police department is proactively publishing two types of reports that Flock automatically generates each month. The first is a network audit, which shows all searches conducted by other agencies into Palo Alto’s network. The second is an organizational audit that reports all searches conducted by Palo Alto officers.
But concern over unauthorized access and data privacy has been brewing in Palo Alto since the city first penned a contract with Flock in 2019. Since then, neighboring cities like Mountain View have shut down their cameras and terminated their contract with Flock following reports of unauthorized searches.
Other cities, though, have doubled down on the technology. In East Palo Alto, a split City Council last month decided to maintain its three-year contract with the company instead of severing ties or shortening the deal.
The variety of regional responses to Flock cameras, especially with their capacity to share sensitive data in service of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and reproductive rights, caused Palo Alto leaders concern. In early March, the council Policy and Services Committee was prepared to approve an audit of Palo Alto’s cameras by the City Auditor.
However, the city auditor responsibilities are performed by consulting firm Baker Tilly, which also maintains Flock as a client. Baker Tilly recused itself from the audit, citing a conflict of interest.
“As the city and the vendor coordinate to set the scope for the assessment, we can assist as needed by recommending specific firms that would be able to conduct this work,” City Auditor Kate Murdock told the committee. “Baker Tilly will also commit the previously identified funds for the proposed assessment from the city auditor’s contracted budget.”
Those $30,000 in identified funds may not be necessary for the IPA audit, which will conduct its review within its existing contract with the city.
While city officials initially hoped the audit would return before the council break, the delay caused by Baker Tilly’s recusal means the report will not be ready until after the summer recess.
While it remains unlikely at this time that Palo Alto leaders will terminate the Flock contract as other cities have in Santa Clara County, Reifschneider’s report outlined two means of doing so. Under the existing contract, the city could terminate for convenience, which requires a removal fee of $500 per Flock camera — $15,000 in total for all 30 ALPRs in Palo Alto.
The city could also terminate the contract by citing a material breach, such as out-of-state searches, but this would require the city to provide a 30-day notice and give Flock the opportunity to fix the breach of contract.
Flock would be responsible for refunding a prorated portion of the prepaid fees in either case, according to Reifschneider.
Reifschneider said the department has been using Flock cameras “to great effect” and cited numerous instances in the past 22 months in which the cameras helped the police recover stolen vehicles, locate missing persons and apprehend suspects. This included a case in which two suspects who committed an armed robbery in another city were tracked by Flock cameras after they committed another armed robbery in Palo Alto. Police ultimately caught them after issuing Flock alerts in several jurisdictions, according to the report.
The department selects locations for cameras based on factors such as crime statistics, common thoroughfares for drivers and traffic volumes, he wrote.
“The cameras at these locations have proven to be effective at providing officers with real-time alerts when vehicles of interest enter or flee the City via the most common ingress and egress points,” Reifschneider wrote.
