Millbrae council approves 23 new surveillance cameras 

“We have been waiting way, way too long for this,” said Councilmember Gina Papan. “Public safety is a huge issue that we have taken an oath to ensure.”  

Neighboring cities including Daly City, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo and others have or are planning on installing ALPRs, placing cameras in either fixed locations or on law enforcement vehicles. 

According to Millbrae Police Chief Christina Corpus, people involved in organized crime are informing their decisions based on which cities have surveillance cameras and which do not. 

“We have been plagued regionally with organized crime, the organized crime is more sophisticated now,” said Corpus. “These individuals are out there doing their research, and they’re coming in groups.”

The number of serious crimes reported, including homicide, rape, assault, theft, robbery, and arson, has declined in recent years in Millbrae, according to the county Sheriff Office’s figures. Fiscal year 2018-19 had 786 such crimes reported, the following year had 681 reports, and the most recent fiscal year 634 reports were made.

According to Corpus, however, the city and surrounding areas have seen a recent jump in auto and residential burglaries.

Photos of passing vehicles collected by the new system will be cross-referenced with a “hot list” of vehicles suspected of being involved in crimes. If there is a hit, police in the area can quickly be notified. Police can also use the database to search for vehicles after the fact, potentially narrowing down the location of suspects

Millbrae’s cameras will be provided by ALPR startup Flock Safety, which offers a subscription service for $2,500 yearly per camera. The five-year cost to Millbrae, including initial setup fees, will be $293,000. The cameras are solar-powered standalone units that can be easily moved, meaning unlike other designs they do not require supporting infrastructure — a key aspect in skirting Caltrans’ permit requirements that had previously hindered the city’s effort. 

Flock salesperson Aaron Nichol lauded the technology’s benefits to councilmembers, pointing to neighboring cities that have used the cameras to aid in solving crime. The cameras, he said, can reduce human bias in policing as they rely on “objective evidence” and are not designed to record an image of the driver or passengers. 

The data would be stored by Flock for 30 days before deletion, he said, emphasizing that local law enforcement would own and control the information, and that it would not be made available to third parties including federal agencies. 

Per the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office policies on ALPR use, however, data collected could be transferred elsewhere before deletions from Flock storage and stored for up to one year. In cases where a vehicle is suspected of being involved in a crime, data could be retained for longer periods of time. 

The city could set up a website for public access to data collected, much like Piedmont, which is also in contract with Flock. Piedmont has five cameras that have recorded data from 51,294 vehicles in the last 30 days, 92 of which were flagged as suspected of being involved in crime, and in five of those cases a “search” resulted, according to the city’s portal.

Data sharing and storage has recently been a point of contention for the increasingly used cameras.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, this year authored legislation aimed at tightening up ALPR regulations. The law, which was put on hold, would require the deletion of data captured within 24 hours in addition to restricting data sharing. A state audit commissioned by Wiener found that last year agencies in the state using the cameras had shared data with police nationwide, and retained data for more than five years.

Police in Pasadena and Long Beach were found to have shared ALPR captured data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year, despite the state’s sanctuary law and despite police specifically pledging not to do so, according to Wiener’s office.

Others have questioned the ability the technology affords police to track the movement of people, even those who are not suspected of being involved in crimes.

The cameras in Millbrae will likely be up and running within a few months.

corey@smdailyjournal.com

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