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The City Council approved a measure requiring the Human Relations Committee to review the enrollment program on a quarterly basis. Medina said the commission is already overloaded, and has proposed the creation of an independent audit body to conduct inspections and liaise between residents and police.
He said an independent group could better monitor whether police are targeting certain neighborhoods, whether the cameras have been effective in reducing crime, and whether city officials can be held accountable. “How do you know that ALPR is not used in a particular community as a hyperpolice for specific communities and spaces?” he asked.
Pedro Rios, director of the U.S. / Mexico Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee, asked how police define “personal data”. He said California law prohibits law enforcement From sharing personal information with immigration agencies like ICE. But when Rios sent a letter to police arguing against sharing the data, police said the ALPR data is not “personally identifiable.”
“They basically acquitted themselves,” Rios says.
According to the 2021 budget, it is the CVPD the most funded department in the city, as is true in many cities across the country.
“The Chula Vista Police Department always supports community engagement, whether critical or supportive, and these are not mutually exclusive,” Captain Eric Thunberg, the department’s head of public information, told WIRED. “We believe we do a good job, but we always want to be better and we want to provide a fair, friendly and compassionate service to our community.”
The council’s management in a statement sent to the office stressed that the council’s decision was unanimous and introduced new safeguards, including periodic audits and policy reviews. “These efforts aim to balance the community’s concerns about privacy and the need for this important public security tool,” the email read.
The city has also asked the California Department of Justice for an independent audit and will stop sharing data with any federal agencies or police departments outside of California.
Proclamations against the ALPR system, amid a national debate over police and immigration, have prompted some residents to consider the city’s set of surveillance tools to bring about significant change after years of quiet acceptance.
At the town hall meeting, residents also expressed concern about the city’s drone program. Several noted that drones are often used for non-emergency cases, such as traffic jams or homelessness. sleeping on the bench or sidewalk. The most expensive drones in the city (two new DJI Matrice 210 V2 Drones) It cost $ 35,000 they require each and every officer to have the training to fly. They say the police have it used drones to answer calls for 1,300 services this year. Like the ALPR, they have no local oversight bodies. Police make public the location of the drone flights, but, as with the license plate readers, Medina and others cite concerns about equity.
Kennedy said drones could be sent before officers to determine whether a police response was necessary, and said he had chosen not to send police officers in nearly 300 cases.
Ia 1,600 state and local public safety agencies acquired the drones in March 2020, according to the Center for Drone Analysis. Chula Vista is the first city in the nation It has been given special approval by the FAA 100 percent of the city’s use of police drones. Other cities may follow.
In emails obtained Forbes, Skydio’s head of public integration, William Reber, a former Chula Vista police officer, told the city’s former police chief that one of the goals of the city’s specialized drone approval is to “get a format that will allow other agencies to replicate”.
Urban drones and ALPR systems continue, with indications that they may also appear in other cities. Although the city has promised to implement surveillance tools in a fairer way, there is little reassurance for residents who feel that resources would be better channeled elsewhere.
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