Pasadena Vice Mayor Jess Rivas, who voted to approve the city's Flock camera contract in 2023, now wants to end it without renewal.
Rivas made the declaration Saturday, Sept. 12, at a DeFlock teach-in in Monterey Park, where a watchdog group presented 15 months of camera-access logs showing what it called widespread audit failures. She said at least two other Pasadena council members are also considering ending the Flock deal, though she did not name them.
Rivas said Pasadena's roughly 60 cameras are not concentrated near the Rose Bowl, as she originally expected. "They're across the entire northwest part of the city, which is my neighborhood," she said at the event, reported by the Pasadena Star-News. She described that neighborhood as historically Latino and Black.
The city's Public Safety Committee, which Rivas chairs, is scheduled to meet Wednesday, Sept. 16. The committee has not taken up the Flock cameras since a May 20 session where members split. At that meeting, Rivas favored termination. Councilmember Steve Madison supported continued use with adjustments. Councilmember Tyron Hampton backed switching to a different vendor whose system would store data locally, and Councilmember Justin Jones raised concerns about data sharing with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and camera concentration in District 3, according to Altadena Now.
Two subsequent committee hearings were canceled. An April 15 meeting and the Aug. 19 session both fell through for lack of a quorum.
Audit findings that shifted the debate
The DeFlock Monterey Park group's analysis covered logs from May 2025 through July 2026 for Monterey Park's 34-camera network, which costs the city $97,500 a year. The group found 188 traffic-enforcement searches it said were prohibited by contract, 281 searches with no stated justification, and 4,799 queries that lacked required case numbers, according to the Pasadena Star-News. Some queries referenced out-of-state agencies and a private investigation firm.
"At this point, the city's auditing process seems to be the honor system," DeFlock Monterey Park member Hrag Balian said at the event.
Pasadena's own camera program drew a more favorable internal review. Independent Police Auditor Teresa Magula found in a July 2026 report that the Pasadena Police Department's system was generally compliant with state law, with no evidence of immigration-enforcement use. The review found no evidence that camera locations were chosen based on race or ethnicity.
Growing pressure on the contract
The Pasadena City Council approved the original Flock contract July 17, 2023, for cameras at 17 intersections. The network has since grown to 61 fixed cameras, and the department has requested 11 more.
Advocacy group Pasadena Privacy gathered more than 2,700 letters urging city leaders to cancel the contract, the Pasadena Star-News reported in August. More than 100 residents rallied at City Hall on Aug. 19 to demand the cameras come down, according to Colorado Boulevard.
Hampton told the Pasadena Star-News in August that he believes the city should remove its Flock cameras and consider other vendors with stronger privacy protections. Rivas has sharpened her stance over the same period. At the Aug. 19 rally, she called the surveillance system "unnecessary and … creepy as hell," according to Pasadena Now.
Flock has said its cameras helped recover 30% of vehicles stolen in Pasadena, totaling about $700,000 in stolen property, according to the company's statement to the Pasadena Star-News. Criminology expert Carlena Orosco of Cal State L.A., who spoke at the Sept. 12 teach-in, said the evidence linking license-plate readers to reduced violent crime is often lacking.
No public response from Pasadena city officials or the police department to Rivas's call for termination appeared in city records as of Sept. 15.
The Public Safety Committee meets Wednesday, Sept. 16. Organizers say the Flock contract comes up for renewal in September, though the exact expiration date has not been publicly confirmed.
