Oakland paid for a camera network built to catch stolen cars, and then turned off the part that catches stolen cars. That is the short version of what happened, and it is every bit as backward as it sounds. The technology worked so well at firing off alerts that the police department could not keep up, so it shut a large chunk of the system down.
This is the kind of outcome that should stop a city council mid-signature. The whole pitch behind automated license plate readers is that they let thin police departments stretch their reach. Oakland’s experience flips that promise on its head.
A Firehose Nobody Could Drink From
A newly released Oakland Police Department report puts hard numbers behind the mess. The city’s Flock Safety camera network generated 1,099,837 hotlist alerts in 2025. More than 620,000 of those flagged stolen license plates alone.
That volume is the entire problem. The department says it did not have the staffing or the resources to chase that kind of flood, so it disabled the alerts for stolen vehicles and stolen plates outright. The feature these systems are sold on became the feature Oakland could not actually use…