Costa Mesa Residents Condemn the City's Use of AI-Powered Mass Surveillance at Marathon City Council Meeting Following Officer's Criminal Misuse of Flock

On July 21, 2026, after over four hours of public testimony stretching past midnight, the Costa Mesa City Council voted to continue the city's relationship with Flock and instead attempt amendments to a contract riddled with flaws, despite there being over 150 attendees and 73 public comments demanding that the city terminate its contract entirely and not replace it with another automated license plate reader (ALPR) vendor.

The agendizing of the cancellation of the Flock contract followed only after months of repeated advocacy from local community members who raised privacy concerns with the quiet introduction of Flock's indiscriminate, warrantless AI-powered mass surveillance infrastructure into the community. Residents had been highlighting the inescapable risks and harms caused by rampant misuse by both individual officers across the country (including a Costa Mesa police officer) as well as by Flock. Specifically, residents emphasized that Flock is a private company that is not subject to any public oversight or accountability and has a track record of unauthorized disclosures of residents' data to out-of-state and federal agencies, causing over 100 cities to lose trust with Flock and terminate their relationship. What's more, community members highlighted that Flock is backed by tech billionaire investors such as Peter Thiel (an architect of Palantir) who are openly anti-democratic.

Residents Iterate a Lack of Accountability and Transparency by Costa Mesa PD

During the council meeting, many residents raised their concerns that former Costa Mesa Police Officer Robert Jay Josett repeatedly used Flock and the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) to conduct unauthorized searches targeting his wife, his mistress, and his mistress's other romantic partners. Although Josett was placed on administrative leave in December 2023, his access to Flock was never revoked by the department. According to information presented during the hearing, he continued using the system as late as June 2024 for stalking. In April 2026, he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor offenses and was sentenced to three years of probation.

If those facts weren't disturbing enough, it was revealed during the police's presentation that Officer Josett's abuse of the system was not discovered through any legally required audits or automated detection of questionable database activity. Lt. Barnes told the council that investigators uncovered Josett's unlawful Flock searches during an internal investigation into other misconduct, not because the department's auditing protocols proactively identified his suspicious activity. Embarrassingly, CMPD's discovery of Officer Josett's misuse of Flock for over six months was discovered accidentally.

The council received no explanation of why existing audit safeguards failed and also neglected to further question the police as to why Josett retained access to Flock after being placed on leave, whether his credentials to access the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) were ever disabled, or why months of unauthorized surveillance were apparently never detected.

Instead, police officials merely assured councilmembers that they have now implemented stronger internal auditing procedures and begun using Flock's "Audit Assistance" feature. Many speakers highlighted that Officer Josett's misuse of Flock was not an isolated incident. According to the ALPR Abuse Index, an online database that tracks reports of abuse, misuse and civil liberties concerns related to ALPRs, there have been at least 70 known cases across 28 states of police abuse of ALPR technology, which existing laws did not stop them from committing.

Nonetheless, no councilmembers requested a comparison of past and present auditing procedures to ensure that this criminal conduct would not happen again, or for an internal review of Flock audit logs to ensure public safety.

Shockingly, when asked by council, CMPD's "Flock administrators" could not even provide an estimate as to how many people in the department had access to Flock. Alexis, a cybersecurity engineer at one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the country addressed this risk from a security standpoint, commenting that:

"Flock cameras are not secure. They have been found lacking in even the most basic security configurations. These cameras genuinely have some of the worst security I've seen on government and police devices in my entire career. On top of that, our police are not using the basic industry standard practice of least access -- being that only those who absolutely need access, get it. They are being extremely careless and dangerous with our personal data."

Several residents also underlined the city's refusal to release its Flock audit logs in response to public records requests. Specifically, residents claimed that given the breach of trust following Officer Josett's misuse, as well as residents' discoveries that CMPD made searches in other cities' Flock systems for out-of-state and federal agencies including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the burden was on the police to prove that no unlawful searches were being made by officers. Yet no council members echoed or urged any level of transparency from the police department.

CMPD's presentation claimed that its use of Flock was responsible for solving and reducing crime in Costa Mesa, reporting anecdotal examples. Tellingly, the police's presentation failed to cite any independent, peer review studies showing a direct causal connection between deployment of ALPR programs and a reduction in crime. A resident pointed out that ALPR programs have been utilized since the 1980s, yet independent studies have only shown that ALPR programs may increase the rate in which police detect stolen vehicles or identify individuals with outstanding warrants, but yield limited to no statistically significant reduction in overall neighborhood crime rates.

A speaker named Cynthia underlined the shocking level of inaccuracies of Flock's AI that was recently discovered by Los Angeles Police Department, causing them to allow their contract with Flock to expire. The speaker stated:

"the LAPD's internal audit found that the system mistakenly flagged vehicles as stolen resulting in 161 innocent drivers being wrongly stopped in just two months. When errors occur, real people can face the real consequences. … I should be able to have a reasonable expectation that me or my kids will not be pulled over and arrested for crimes we didn't commit."

Thereafter, no councilmembers asked CMPD whether they conducted any internal audits to determine if any errors in Flock's AI resulted in any dangerous felony stops by the police.

Despite this council meeting being the most publicized and well attended public meeting in Orange County to date, Flock could not even be bothered to send a representative to attend the council meeting (not even via Zoom) to answer the many questions that the police couldn't. Councilmember Gameros expressed his discontent, noting that Flock's absence signaled how little they valued Costa Mesa's account. He nevertheless made the motion to continue the City's relationship with Flock.

Residents Describe a Profound Breach of Public Trust and Concern Surrounding Ideological Targeting by the Trump Administration

The diversity of Costa Mesa was well represented that evening, with speakers from different backgrounds and walks of life homogenously conveying feelings of betrayal by the police and city officials who approved and expanded the mass surveillance network without meaningful public input or understanding of the civil liberties at risk, particularly amid the current political climate where civil liberties are under attack by the federal government.

Residents also questioned the placement of Flock cameras throughout the city, with several noting that more than one-third of Costa Mesa residents identify as Hispanic or Latino and expressed concern that surveillance infrastructure has been disproportionately concentrated in those neighborhoods, such as the Shalimar neighborhood in District 4.

One Spanish-speaking mother told councilmembers she now keeps her seven-year-old son indoors because she fears the combined effects of pervasive surveillance and federal immigration enforcement.

A Costa Mesa resident of 59 years chillingly told the council:

"I was born in a fascist dictatorship—Germany. I don't want to die in one. Cancel Flock."

A representative of Pride at the Pier, an Orange County LGBTQ+ political advocacy group described how ubiquitous surveillance is changing children's understanding of privacy:

"I want to talk about my nephew, who is currently reading his way through 1984 in school. And he came up to me... and said: 'I don't understand why this was such a big deal. Because we're all watched all the time, right?'"

These comments, among countless others, served as a disturbing reminder that mass surveillance of the people is not a hallmark of a functioning democracy. It is a hallmark of authoritarianism.

Many speakers linked this notion to the current and ongoing dismantling of democracy by the Trump administration. Speakers explained that the rapid expansion of AI-powered mass surveillance like Flock and other private vendors into communities quietly and often secretly, exacerbated broader concerns over the rise of fascism in America, the targeting of immigrant communities, and coordinated federal strategy outlined in National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), titled "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence", to target groups and individuals with ideologies deemed anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, and those with "anti-fascist" views as "domestic terrorists."

Allison Rubinfield, an attorney from the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, addressed such threats to civil liberties. She stated:

"Police have consistently used Flock to surveille First Amendment activity and recently used Flock to collect sensitive data about ICE protestors throughout the Southland using general terms like 'ICE' or 'protest.'"

She further emphasized that:

"last year, Orange County Sheriff Department, whose Flock policy mirrors Costa Mesa's and is authored by the same entity, was one of the 10 entities that searched its ALPR system on behalf of federal immigration agencies in violation of decades old California law enacted to prevent this very kind of information sharing."

Residents Reject the Notion that Mass Surveillance Equals Public Safety, and Urge the City to Address the Roots Causes of Crime by Funding Community-Based Programs

Furthermore, a repeated theme asserted by numerous community members was that the community gets to define safety, not the police, and mass surveillance does not make the community feel safe. Rather, taxpayer dollars should be invested in community-based programs that address the root cause of crime, of which decades of independent research has shown to be effective in reducing crime and making communities safer. Despite multiple residents expressing such sentiment, not a single council member mentioned investing in community-based programs as an alternative.

Seemingly irritable after hours of public comment against Flock, Mayor Stevens moved to reduce public comment time from three minutes to two minutes, with only Councilmembers Chavez and Gameros opposing the motion.

The one and only public comment in favor of keeping the Flock contract came from the former Costa Mesa Chief of Police, Ron Lawrence, via zoom, who initiated the city's Flock contract in 2022. All of the documented misconduct by Officer Josett occurred during Lawrence's tenure before his retirement in June 2025.

Costa Mesa's Contract with Flock was Procured in Secret to Evade a Public Hearing

After nearly five hours of overwhelming public outcry to eliminate Flock completely, Councilmember Gameros made a motion to continue the City's relationship with Flock but attempt renegotiations of certain contract provisions. This motion was seconded by Councilmember Marr.

Councilmember Reynolds made a countermotion to "cancel the Flock contract effective immediately" and in discussing her reasoning, she disclosed one of the most outrageous revelations of the night pertaining to the city's original procurement of Flock. She revealed that the original contract signed in June 2022 was for 31 cameras totaling a cost of $98,000—just $2,000 below the threshold that would have required greater public transparency under the City's contract procurement rules.

"I realized tonight that our original Flock contract actually wasn't made in public," Reynolds said. "We signed a $98,000 contract without transparency, without public disclosure."

She further questioned whether camera locations had been selected based on objective crime analysis, rather than a selection based on not surpassing the City's $100,000 procurement threshold. Curiously, the City expanded by 15 more Flock cameras in 2023, for a total of 46, via the City Council's consent calendar, which also did not require a separate public hearing. Surprisingly unbeknownst to the City Council, City Attorney, and police department, California Senate Bill 34 passed in 2015 requires the opportunity for public comment to be made at a public meeting before implementing any ALPR program. (See California Civil Code Title 1.81.23 Section 1798.90.5 et seq.)

Costa Mesa's procurement process reflects an increasing undemocratic sequence seen in cities across the country. Mass surveillance technology is purchased and deployed in communities avoiding public disclosure, policies are developed afterward (although inadequate), expansion occurs without community input, and public scrutiny comes last, often inadvertently or after repeated outcry from residents, as was the case in Costa Mesa.

With no other councilmember supporting Councilmember Reynolds' motion to cancel Flock entirely, her motion died. The council then voted on Councilmember Gameros' motion, which passed 6 to 1, with only Councilmember Reynolds voting against the motion. Despite 100% public outcry against Flock, six councilmembers disregarded their constituents' interests and made a policy decision based on the police department's interests.

But the City Council does not represent the police. They represent the community, who have made clear that they intend to continue demanding that their elected officials make decisions based on what the community needs to feel safe and holding them accountable for same.

Lacking a sense of urgency on an issue involving infringement of civil liberties, the Council agreed to give the City Attorney three months to make contract amendments. The City will hold a public meeting in October to discuss the proposed amendments to the Flock contract, only a month before four council members term out. In the meantime, the community will continue to demand transparency and mobilize an even larger presence in October.