Palmdale could expand plate-reading cameras

The Palmdale City Council on Wednesday is looking at extending and expanding the use of a license plate-reading camera system after the one-year trial proved useful.
The city contracted with Flock Safety in July 2023 for 50 cameras and the associated service to operate them at a cost of $157,000 for a year.
With that original contract expired, the city is considering a five-year contract for a maximum of $1.13 million over the five-year period; the cost for 2024-2025 is $229,950 and is already budgeted, according to the staff report.
The new contract includes an additional 25 cameras, for a total of 75, a need identified with the aid of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The Flock Safety cameras are used to capture images of vehicles as they pass the camera locations. This information can then be searched and used for identifying stolen vehicles or those suspected in relation to crimes, in near-real-time and at a later time; the data is retained for 30 days.
In addition to recovering stolen vehicles, the information collected can be used to aid in investigations into other crimes, such as missing persons, shootings and hate crimes.
In the year since they were installed, the cameras in Palmdale have read approximately 12 million license plates monthly and have been instrumental in investigating countless crimes, according to the staff report.
Flock Safety’s automated license plate reading cameras analyze vehicle license plates, vehicle color and vehicle make, as well as objects such as roof rack and hubcaps, based on image analytics, which protects against stolen/removed license plates. They do not record any personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, or phone numbers, according to the staff report.
The footage collected is available only to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and only authorized users.
The City of Lancaster also has installed the Flock cameras.