When the Stockton City Council approved a more than $3 million expansion of its Flock Safety contract March 31, officials framed it as a public safety upgrade: six docked drones that could respond to calls in 30 seconds to four minutes, send live video before officers arrive and help stretch police staffing.
The amendment added Flock’s Drone as First Responder platform to Stockton’s existing camera system and extended the agreement through April 2031, bringing the contract’s total potential value to more than $5.4 million over five years.
Police Lt. David Padula said the system would provide “quick deployments” and “real time updates,” improving officer safety and situational awareness.
Mayor Christina Fugazi echoed that argument during her State of the City address Wednesday, calling drones as first responders “the future.”
“This is technology that allows public safety professionals to conduct real-time assessments without putting lives at risk,” Fugazi said.
But the vote also drew more than an hour of mostly opposed public comment, with residents raising concerns about privacy, immigration enforcement and surveillance. Some appeared unaware Stockton already had an operating Flock network.
Contract documents show the expansion also includes radar-based detect-and-avoid technology, Federal Aviation Administration regulatory support, training, 911 call integration and FreeForm, an AI-enabled tool that allows plain-language searches across license plate reader images and video streams.
The first year will cost $390,000, with $690,000 in recurring annual costs expected to rely on grants. The agreement allows the city to end the contract because of a lack of available money without financial penalties.
According to city documents, if those grants or money from the police department’s General Fund budget are not available in future years, the department would have to request additional funding or seek to terminate the contract.
That new layer builds on Stockton’s existing Flock system, which city officials said already includes about 120 automated license plate reader cameras which scan passing vehicles and record plate numbers, time, date and location data throughout the city.
The contract history of the agreement shows Stockton’s deal with Flock long predates the drone vote: the city’s paperwork lists an effective date of December 2021, a July 2024 amendment for 911 software, a November 2024 amendment for cameras, and the current amendment to add drones.
DeFlock, a crowdsourced project that tracks automated license plate reader cameras and other surveillance devices, shows 132 cameras in view in Stockton, including 105 listed as Flock Safety cameras. DeFlock describes itself as a community-driven project that maps surveillance devices and relies on public submissions. Because the map is crowdsourced, its findings are not an official city inventory.
The existing network matters because the central question is not only what the drones can see, but what happens to the data collected by the system already in place.
Flock Safety’s public position is that local agencies remain in control. On its website, the company states it does not work with ICE, that ICE does not have direct access to Flock cameras, systems or data, and that “by default, sharing with federal agencies is disabled.”
Flock also says it disabled its “National Lookup” feature for California agencies in March 2025 and later blocked federal agencies from discovering or requesting sharing relationships with California agencies.
In an email to Stocktonia, Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the company has “implemented controls that block out-of-state discoverability and prohibit federal agencies from accessing California data through our platform.”
Lewbel said local agencies “own and control 100% of their data,” that sharing is off by default and that every search is logged in an immutable audit trail. On the drone program, Lewbel said Flock DFR activates only in response to specific calls for service, that every flight is logged on a public-facing transparency dashboard, and that Stockton police will own “100% of the data” collected through the system.
Those assurances are central to how Flock now defends itself. But they also came after a series of controversies in other states that changed how the company publicly described compliance.
In Colorado, 9NEWS reported in August 2025 that Flock acknowledged a pilot program had given U.S. Customs and Border Protection a Flock account that could request access from local agencies after earlier public denials that immigration agents had direct access. Days later, Flock said it had paused all federal pilot programs.
In that Aug. 27, 2025 statement, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said the company had “communicated poorly” and had not created “distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users.”
He said the company’s chief legal officer would lead an effort to ensure users better understood how to control their sharing relationships.
Illinois officials made similar accusations days earlier. Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced Aug. 25, 2025 that a state audit found Flock had allowed CBP access to Illinois license plate camera data in violation of state law and ordered the company to cut off access. His office said the company lacked proper safeguards to prevent federal access.
The controversy has also extended beyond immigration enforcement. A 404 Media report showed that a Texas sheriff’s office conducted searches through Flock’s nationwide camera network between April and May 2025 as part of an investigation into a woman who had self-administered an abortion.
The case drew congressional scrutiny that summer. In an Aug. 6, 2025 letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, U.S. Reps. Robert Garcia and Raja Krishnamoorthi warned the technology could be used to “wrongly track and to potentially harm people” in violation of privacy and civil liberties, calling that use “a gross misuse and abuse of surveillance technology.”
The sheriff and Flock initially said the search was about the woman’s safety, but court records later showed investigators were conducting a “death investigation” and had considered whether criminal charges were possible.
In California, Mountain View suspended its use of Flock after city officials said several federal agencies accessed one of the city’s cameras from August to November 2024 through a “nationwide” search setting that had been turned on by Flock “without MVPD’s permission or knowledge,” according to The Mercury News.
Other cities responded by pulling back. In January 2026, Santa Cruz voted 6-1 to terminate its Flock contract, citing reports that out-of-state agencies had accessed its data and broader concerns over immigration enforcement and civil liberties.
Those concerns have also moved into court in California. A class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in February alleges Flock’s license plate reader system violates California privacy law by collecting and storing vehicle data in ways that can reveal movement patterns over time and by facilitating access to California data by out-of-state and federal agencies.
The complaint also alleges the company failed to implement adequate safeguards required under California’s Automated License Plate Reader Privacy Act, known as SB 34.
The complaint does not decide the case, but it shows what could be at stake if plaintiffs prevail. Along with damages, the suit seeks injunctive relief — in other words, court-ordered changes to how Flock stores, safeguards, logs and shares California data. It argues the company should be required to design its system so California data cannot be accessed in ways state law forbids.
Former Stockton councilmember and vice mayor Kimberly Warmsley said that while she understands why cities look for tools to address crime, the decision to expand surveillance technology raises deeper concerns about community trust.
“As a former elected official, I understand that you’re always looking for solutions in real time,” Warmsley said. “But as a city, we have to be intentional in the tools that we’re bringing in to safeguard our community.”
Warmsley said the scale of opposition during public comment signaled that residents were asking city leaders to slow down.
“When you have one hour of comments in opposition, that’s significant,” she said. “That’s the community asking the local government to take a pause and reevaluate.”
She added that expanding the program now, amid national concerns about data sharing and federal access, risks increasing fear—especially in a city with large immigrant communities.
“This just continues to escalate fear,” Warmsley said. “People are concerned about transparency, inclusion and accountability—and I’m not confident this technology increases that.”
For outside experts, the problem is not just one camera or one drone. It is the network.
Sarah T. Hamid, director of strategic campaigns at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group, said Flock’s cameras scan passing plates, turn them into searchable text and store that data with time, date, GPS location and vehicle images in the company’s cloud system.
“The bigger issue is that Flock’s business model builds a shared, nationwide network, so agencies can tap into data from many other jurisdictions,” Hamid said, “creating a dragnet that extends far beyond any one incident.”
She said adding drones changes the scale of what can be observed.
“When cities add DFR drones onto this infrastructure, they move from tracking cars to recording people, homes, and gatherings from the air,” Hamid explained.
Local advocacy groups have also framed the expansion as part of a broader shift in city spending priorities. The Stockton Community Check-In Booth, a grassroots organization that opposes immigration enforcement and policing practices — including monitoring activity at the city’s ICE facility to alert the community to enforcement operations — said the investment reflects a growing emphasis on surveillance over social services.
“It sends the wrong message,” the group said in a statement. “While our residents continue to struggle under the financial impacts of this administration and economy, Stockton continues to invest in militarization and surveillance.”
The group pointed to other recent public safety investments, including the city’s real-time crime center, new police vehicles and specialized equipment, arguing that those decisions come as other community programs face cuts.
“Meanwhile, Stockton has lost funding for its emergency food bank and cut education funding,” the statement said. “These actions aren’t protecting the city or improving people’s lives.”
Republican congressional candidate John McBride, who is challenging Rep. Josh Harder in the San Joaquin County-based 9th District, also criticized the technology, framing Flock as a privacy issue rather than a local public safety solution.
“Private organizations can control your data from those Flock cameras, and because they’re privately owned, you can’t even use freedom of information to find out what they have about you,” McBride said. He called the system “a total invasion of privacy” and argued that while the technology exists, “just because we have it doesn’t mean it should be used that way.”
Warmsley said those concerns highlight the broader trade-offs residents should consider as the city expands surveillance tools.
“People need to understand the potential implications of shared data and the risk of misuse,” she said. “There may be benefits, but the consequences are too overwhelming to ignore.”
That leaves Stockton with a local question other cities have already had to ask: not only what the new drones will do, but whether the city ever verified what happened with the system it already had.
Stockton police have not yet said whether the department conducted its own audit of existing Flock access logs, including whether any outside agencies accessed Stockton data before California-specific fixes were put in place.
Department spokesperson Omar Edah said the department would “hold off” on commenting until program logistics are finalized.
Councilmember Mario Enriquez, who previously promoted Stockton’s compassionate city ordinance, did not respond to a request for comment on how he reconciles that policy with his vote for the expansion.
For now, Stockton has approved what officials describe as a faster, more capable emergency response system. But it has done so with a company whose explanations have evolved under pressure elsewhere, and before the city has publicly said whether it checked its own system at all.
Warmsley said the gap between policy decisions and community understanding is where trust can erode most.
“Community members must be heard, informed and safeguarded,” she said. “When they’re not, it doesn’t build community. It takes us a step back.”