Pasadena residents plan to rally Wednesday, Aug. 19, at City Hall to demand the city remove its 61 Flock license plate reader cameras, a protest that took shape after the Public Safety Committee canceled the very meeting where residents expected to speak.

The press conference begins at 4:45 p.m. on the West Steps of City Hall, 100 North Garfield Ave., with the rally following at 5 p.m., Colorado Boulevard reported. Vice Mayor Jess Rivas, Pasadena NAACP President Brandon Lamar, ACLU senior staff attorney Mohammad Tajsar and full-spectrum birthworker Sabrina Jimenez are scheduled to speak. Lamar is also a candidate for Pasadena City Council.

The committee's Aug. 19 meeting was canceled Aug. 12 for lack of quorum, according to a city notice signed by Eligio M. Diaz of the City Manager's Office. It is at least the second time a Public Safety Committee meeting with Flock on the agenda has been scrapped. An April 15 session that had drawn dozens of resident emails opposing the cameras was also canceled at the last minute, Colorado Boulevard reported.

The rally is organized by DeFlock Pasadena, a campaign under the community group Pasadena Privacy. The group wants the city to disable all Flock cameras, cancel the contract, refuse any replacement ALPR vendor and redirect the money to community-based safety programs.

Nearly $1 million in cameras

Since September 2023, the Pasadena Police Department has purchased and installed 61 Flock cameras at a cost nearing $1 million and has secured funding for 11 more, according to Colorado Boulevard. The cameras capture an average of one million images of Pasadena drivers each month. PPD shares that data with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center that distributes information across local, state and federal law enforcement.

Community organization Grupo Auto Defensa has said the cameras are concentrated in Districts 3 and 5, areas where ICE has conducted enforcement operations. In a May 28 opinion piece in Colorado Boulevard, the group wrote: "There are no trustworthy safeguards around how this data is used or shared, especially with outside agencies like ICE."

California law (SB 34) bars state law enforcement from sharing license plate reader data outside the state, but violations have been documented in multiple jurisdictions.

Regional momentum against Flock

The Pasadena rally comes amid a wave of Flock cancellations. Neighboring South Pasadena voted in March not to renew its contract for 14 cameras, citing privacy concerns and reports of data sharing with federal immigration agencies, LAist reported. The LAPD suspended its Flock relationship in July, and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said Aug. 6 that the company had "lost the trust of Angelenos," according to the Los Angeles Times.

More than 50 agencies nationwide have canceled, suspended or rejected Flock contracts since January, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, a national grassroots group, as the Times reported. On Aug. 13, Flock announced platform changes including cutting its default data retention from 30 days to seven and making misuse-detection audits mandatory. The ACLU called those changes "retreads."

The next Public Safety Committee meeting date has not been publicly announced. Residents can monitor the committee's schedule at cityofpasadena.net/commissions/city-council-public-safety-committee.