Mountain View council moves to end Flock ALPR contract after staff finds unauthorized lookups

Mountain View's City Council on Feb. 24 authorized the city manager to terminate the city's automated license-plate reader contract with Flock Safety after police found that vendor-enabled "nationwide lookup" and a similar statewide function had been enabled without the department's knowledge.

Police Chief Mike Canfield told council that Mountain View's pilot had been built with privacy-oriented settings (rear-only plate images, no facial recognition, 30-day retention and a required sign-off process for outside access) but staff later discovered access outside of the city's policies. "When we pressed Flock about how it could have happened, they told us that they no longer had records for how the system was turned on or how it was turned off," Canfield said, adding that he "made the decision to deactivate the cameras immediately" so staff could brief council.

City staff said the pilot produced operational leads: between August 2024 and December 2025 the department logged about 794 alerts for custom hot lists, 233 alerts for stolen vehicles, 51 "felony vehicle" alerts, almost 25,000 searches and operational results that staff linked to investigations including commercial burglaries, vehicle break-ins and the identification or arrest of at least 41 suspects. At the same time the department's audit work found that a nationwide lookup function and a statewide lookup function had been enabled for some agencies in August'November 2024; staff emphasized there was no definitive evidence in the record that Mountain View's ALPR data itself had been accessed in those searches.

The council heard several hours of public comment calling for permanent termination, reimbursement and litigation. Community speakers and civil-rights organizations said the vendor's record of out-of-policy access, security vulnerabilities and potential uses by federal agencies posed unacceptable risks to immigrants, protesters and other vulnerable people. One speaker asked the city to seek reimbursement for the roughly $154,650 the city spent on the pilot.

In council deliberations, members said they supported a swift contract termination, expedited removal of cameras, and follow-up reporting. Council Member Kamay moved to authorize the city manager to terminate the Flock contract and to avoid procuring a replacement ALPR system at this time; Council Member Ramirez seconded. The motion passed unanimously.

Next steps the chief outlined included creating a community feedback partners group, further audit work, additional reporting to the Human Relations Commission and coordination with legal staff about contract remedies and reimbursement. Staff also committed to communicating publicly when cameras are physically removed and to assessing options for narrow, query-only access if council later directs staff to pursue that path.

What the council approved: a staff-requested termination of the Flock Safety agreement and direction to city management to pursue contract remedies and to keep the public informed. The council did not adopt any new ALPR program or vendor tonight.

—Reporting by the Mountain View City Council record; quotes and figures come from the Feb. 24 staff presentation and public comments.