Police Department changes procedures related to our Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) program after discovering a vendor-based configuration error by provider, Flock Safety, on February 23, 2026.
This agreement violation allowed unauthorized out-of-state law enforcement agencies to query our system. Ventura currently utilizes 23 Flock Safety ALPR cameras strategically placed throughout the jurisdiction to assist in criminal investigations involving violent offenders, stolen vehicles, missing persons, and other serious crimes.
To ensure privacy, the system is designed to capture images of license plates and vehicle characteristics, not drivers or passengers, and store that data in a fully encrypted cloud environment for 30 days before automatic deletion. While the images are deleted, any inquiry made into the system becomes a permanent record, allowing us to maintain a transparent audit trail. Whether or not any data was provided through those queries, this directly violates our strict privacy protocols. Because of configuration issues with the system at the time of the unauthorized queries, we are unable to determine if vehicle data was provided to the outside agencies…