Richmond, CA Flock Contract

Who approved this?

Approved 4-3 by Richmond City Council on March 17, 2026.

The Richmond City Council voted 4 to 3 on March 17, 2026 to switch the Flock Safety cameras back on and extend the contract seven months, through December 31, 2026. Jamelia Brown, Soheila Bana, Cesar Zepeda and Vice Mayor Doria Robinson voted yes; Claudia Jimenez, Sue Wilson and Mayor Eduardo Martinez voted no. The city owns 96 automated license plate reader cameras and 65 pan tilt zoom cameras. Police Chief Timothy Simmons had shut the system off in the fall of 2025 after finding that Flock's national lookup feature exposed Richmond data to outside agencies, a problem for a sanctuary city under SB 54; Flock has since disabled that feature. Council directed staff to build stronger limits against sharing data with outside agencies and set the contract for re-evaluation at the end of 2026. Neither newsroom published a dollar figure for the extension, though both note the service began in 2023 at about 1 million dollars a year with a further 1 million dollar expansion in January 2025 for drone and detection technology. Richmondside dates the vote to the evening of Tuesday, March 17; Piedmont Exedra dates it March 18, which reflects a meeting that ran past midnight, so the Tuesday meeting date is used here. This is Richmond in Contra Costa County, California.