UKIAH, CA., 11/5/26 — Since at least February, people have brought up Ukiah’s license plate cameras during public comment at City Council meetings, according to council minutes. On Wednesday night, police told the council they had cut off nearly every outside agency from the cameras’ records.
The city has 14 cameras made by Flock Safety, a company that sells them to police departments. They photograph the license plate of each car that passes and keep the pictures for 30 days. Officers can search the pictures later to look for a car tied to a crime. The system also sends an alert when it reads a plate on a list of stolen cars or Amber Alerts for missing children. In the last 30 days, the cameras read 128,474 different plates, according to the department’s public Flock page.
Until this fall, Ukiah police weren’t the only ones who could search those pictures. Other police agencies could log in and search Ukiah’s records too. Police call that sharing.
Lt. Max Brazill, who is acting as police chief with Chief Thomas Corning out of state for an extended training, told the council the department has “completely revoked” sharing with all law enforcement agencies outside nearby counties.
“This is a dramatic reduction from the approximately 250 agencies within our original contracts,” Brazill said.
Agencies in Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Humboldt and Marin counties, and the California Highway Patrol, can get access back. First, they must sign an agreement. Brazill said access “will be revoked if any misuse is found.”
The agreement is posted on the police department’s website. An agency that signs it may use Ukiah’s data only for police work. It may not use it for immigration enforcement, to harass anyone, to target people for their race, sex or religion, or for personal reasons. Each search has to carry the officer’s name and a case number, or a detailed reason. The agency must check its own searches at least every 60 days. It can’t pass the data on without written permission from Ukiah police. And Ukiah can cut off any agency “for any or no reason at all,” without notice.
Brazill said the department will also check its own officers’ searches every week. Officers must be trained before they get access, and must retake the training every year.
The department’s Flock page, updated Thursday, lists three agencies that can now search Ukiah’s data: the California Highway Patrol, the Cloverdale Police Department and the Lake County District Attorney’s Office. In September, the same page listed 318.
The cameras are staying. Brazill called them “a valuable investigative and public safety tool.” He said the changes came “in response to the concerns raised by community members.”
Brazill said the department will put out a press release with more details. He invited anyone with questions about the cameras to set up a meeting with the department.
Mayor Susan Sher asked whether agencies that don’t sign the agreement lose access. Brazill said they do. “We removed everybody from our sharing list,” he said.
Sher said some residents had been “very vocal” about the cameras.
“So this doesn’t bring about a dismantling of the program, but I think it does go a long way in addressing some of those concerns,” Sher said.