Push to install license plate readers comes amid questions about how data are shared - BERITAJA

Since its creation much than a period ago, the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting has been successful the lamppost business and small else.

But successful caller months, the little-known metropolis agency has recovered itself pulled into a fierce statement complete L.A.’s narration pinch Flock Safety, a surveillance exertion institution that has been criticized for supplying information utilized to alteration the Trump administration’s migration crackdown.

In L.A., Flock operates dozens of automated licence sheet readers, which let authorities to scan for vehicles that person been reported stolen aliases are registered to known fugitives, search their movements passim the city.

The devices are often mounted connected municipal ray poles, which makes the Bureau of Street Lighting responsible for their installation.

Reports that Flock has shared licence sheet information pinch national authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, person prompted dozens of mostly smaller cities crossed the state to end their relationship pinch the company. But successful L.A. it still has recovered willing customers, including the LAPD.

Hundreds of emails obtained by The Times done nationalist records requests uncover really LAPD boosters, homeowner associations and elected officials person engaged successful a months-long run to unit the Bureau of Street Lighting to velocity up installations of the sheet readers.

Flock, headquartered successful Atlanta, said that it contracts pinch about 5,000 U.S. rule enforcement agencies nationwide, and that its exertion complies pinch a California rule that limits what accusation could beryllium shared pinch national authorities. A institution spokesperson said that Flock’s exertion is “built about transparency, accountability, and section control.”

“Our customers ain and power their data, which is deleted aft 30 days by default,” the spokesperson, MoMo Zhou, said successful a connection to The Times. “Our level includes safeguards for illustration audit trails to thief guarantee accountability astatine each step. Every day, Flock supports communities crossed the state successful addressing crime and locating missing people.”

The Bureau of Street Lighting, pinch 177 labor and a comparatively humble fund of $49.4 million, would look an improbable subordinate successful the broader statement complete constabulary surveillance. It is chiefly tasked pinch repairing and fortifying the city’s much than 210,000 streetlamps — a predominant target of copper ligament thieves — and maintaining its web of electrical conveyance charging stations.

The push to put up much sheet readers has travel amid calls for greater transparency about the Los Angeles Police Department’s dealings pinch Flock. In March, the Police Commission asked the section to study back connected what accusation the company’s scanners cod and share. In caller months, the committee declined to o.k. donations of Flock cameras.

Members of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition held a news convention to definitive guidance to Flock Safety, a licence sheet reader, up of a Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners gathering connected March 3, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The committee ordered its inspector wide to behaviour an audit of the LAPD’s usage of licence sheet scholar technology, pinch the findings expected to beryllium released successful the summer.

Recently, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced a mobility urging the committee to “refrain from entering into immoderate caller Memoranda of Understanding, Contracts, aliases different Agreements, aliases instrumentality immoderate aviator programs pinch Flock Safety aliases its affiliates.” LAPD officials said past period that the metropolis attorney’s agency has been moving connected drafting up a general statement pinch Flock.

Behind the scenes, though, the unit to activity pinch Flock has been ratcheting up from different assembly offices and organization groups.

When a typical from Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky’s agency emailed the streetlighting bureau urging speed, she received a consequence that said the installation process shouldn’t beryllium rushed because immoderate metropolis ray poles can’t support the weight of a Flock reader, which is usually powered by a star panel.

“The past point we request is to person a rod autumn onto personification aliases thing if location are precocious winds,” the bureau’s Clinton Tsurui wrote successful the June 4, 2025, email.

In different exchange, Tsurui expressed vexation pinch a workfellow who had offered what he thought was an overly optimistic timetable for installing caller sheet readers.

He wrote: “smh, promising things we can’t do is going to drawback up pinch america 1 day.”

The Los Angeles Police Foundation, a nonprofit group that has agelong bankrolled instrumentality for the LAPD and offered different support, has criticized delays successful installing the Flock devices. Last year, the instauration facilitated the aid of dozens of Flock cameras, about of which ended up successful affluent neighborhoods connected the city’s Westside and successful the San Fernando Valley.

Records show that successful May 2025, Dana Katz, the foundation’s executive director, reached retired to the mayor’s agency pinch a petition to waive licence and rental fees associated pinch installing the caller readers. Katz wrote successful an email that the other disbursal of about $2,000 per instrumentality were “cost prohibitive and detrimental to nationalist safety.”

Katz besides pointed retired that successful immoderate places, location are nary city-owned poles connected which to equine the devices — but offered a imaginable solution.

“Flock has its ain rod that has been accepted by the County of Los Angeles for these situations, and we would for illustration the City to judge the usage of them, too,” she wrote to Robert Clark, the city’s then-deputy politician of nationalist safety.

A fewer of L.A.’s historical streetlights guidelines extracurricular the Bureau of Street Lighting’s agency adjacent Virgil Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Katz wrote Clark again connected Aug. 6 to inquire why officials were estimating a six-to-12-month hold for support of caller Flock readers connected nationalist spot successful the neighborhoods of Cheviot Hills and Brentwood Park, wherever location were nary existing metropolis poles to equine them. She noted that the county’s engineering section had already approved the company’s poles, and asked Clark whether location was a measurement for the metropolis to “piggyback connected these different entities’ approvals successful bid to velocity this up truthful that these neighborhoods don’t person to hold truthful agelong for thief successful preventing these location invasions?”

In the pursuing weeks, Katz’s emails took connected an progressively urgent tone. In 1 of her past messages, email records show, she told an adjutant she expected much thief than the mayor’s agency was offering.

“With each owed respect, the answers you person provided are wholly generic and do not supply immoderate guidance and guidance arsenic to really we could expedite this process,” she wrote.

She added: “I’ve said it before, and I will opportunity it again — these delays are harmful to nationalist safety.”

A spokesperson for the mayor’s agency told The Times that yet neither Clark nor the adjutant intervened connected the Los Angeles Police Foundation’s behalf.

Email records show Flock’s courtship of the bureau dates astatine slightest to outpouring 2024, erstwhile the institution agreed to donate 2 of its sheet readers to thief combat copper thefts.

Tsurui emailed LAPD Capt. Celina Robles to opportunity that the company’s executives had requested an in-person gathering pinch the bureau and the LAPD “to talk the benefits of this merchandise and really it could use the metropolis moving forward.”

On June 24, 2024, a lobbyist from the D.C. patient Modern Fortis emailed Bureau of Street Lighting Executive Director Miguel Sangalang seeking to “explore a public-private partnership” betwixt Flock and the city. Sangalang took different gathering to talk Flock a fewer months later pinch erstwhile City Councilmember Joe Buscaino, who aft leaving City Hall had gone to activity for Ballard Partners, a powerful Florida-based lobbying firm.

In January 2025, aft wildfires devastated Pacific Palisades, Altadena and different areas, Flock stepped successful again. The institution agreed to donate much than 50 sheet readers, free of complaint for six months, to the able Palisades area, wherever residents and rule enforcement officials were connected high alert about potential theft.

A Flock Safety automated licence sheet scholar successful Costa Mesa.

(Courtesy of the metropolis of Costa Mesa)

In the days and weeks that followed, metropolis and constabulary officials continued to capsicum the bureau about speeding up the support process.

On Jan. 21, 2025, records show, Cmdr. Randall “Randy” Goddard of the LAPD’s Information Technology Bureau wrote streetlighting officials to opportunity that the Palisades organization “could usage a large favour from your department.”

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell “fully supports this and has been moving pinch the City Attorney’s agency to finalize the terms,” Goddard wrote.