Crescent City’s police chief convinced policymakers Tuesday that the automated license plate reader cameras installed in his department’s patrol vehicles are not the Flock Safety cameras residents raised concerns about last month.
Richard Griffin told city councilors that the Axon ALPR devices the Crescent City Police Department uses helped a dementia patient get home to Southern Oregon and a MythBusters host recover a stolen vehicle.
They’re not stationary like the six Flock Safety cameras the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office has posted throughout the community, he said. Any agency that wants access to the data must go through him.
“They have to come to Chief Richard Griffin and explain, this is why we want to search the system,” the police chief told councilors. “Our information is not sold to anybody else, it’s not shared with anybody else. Nobody else has access to it, period.”
Crescent City councilors unanimously approved CCPD’s continued use of Axon ALPR devices, deciding that the data should be retained for seven days.
Griffin said his department was initially able to retain the Axon data for up to 365 days, though he changed that retention rate to zero ahead of Monday’s meeting. He recommended councilors allow CCPD to retain Axon data for seven days, which would allow it to be accessed as evidence for a possible search warrant.
Zero days would enable CCPD officers to identify any license plates associated with warrants, missing persons, stolen vehicles or any other incident listed with the National Crime Information Center, he said.
“A key difference between Flock and what we use, the officer has to be there operating (the ALPR device),” Griffin said. “It’s not the officer contacting dispatch and saying, ‘Hey, run this plate for me.’ It automatically runs that plate against the same query the dispatcher would be running it against, that same list.”
The City Council’s decision regarding how long to retain Axon ALPR data comes nearly three months after councilors approved a 10-year contract with Axon Enterprise Inc. for more than $1 million. That contract allows CCPD to use Tasers, body cameras, dashboard cameras and allows for data storage through Axon.
At the City Council’s May 18 meeting, Griffin called Axon “the best company out there,” touting the automatic activation of their body cameras and dashboard cameras when a Taser activates or if a vehicle is in a collision.
According to Griffin’s staff report on Tuesday, the ALPR technology comes with the dashboard cameras.
“The city has not installed nor authorized another agency to install any stationary ALPRs within city limits,” Griffin wrote.
About a month ago, Griffin found himself answering questions from the public regarding a Flock Safety camera the DNSO installed at the corner of Northcrest Drive and Washington Boulevard.
The Del Norte County Board of Supervisors had authorized the purchase of six Flock Safety cameras in May 2025, entering into a three-year contract for a not-to-exceed amount of $18,000 per year. Sheriff Garrett Scott said he stationed the devices at the gateway of some of the more populated areas of Crescent City in order to monitor its exit routes.
Operating 24-7, they allow law enforcement to zoom in on vehicles that match the description of any that may be associated with a recent crime, Scott told Redwood Voice Community News on Aug. 6.
The sheriff argued that the devices are an extra set of eyes for an agency that only has three deputies on duty during a shift. But, following last month’s City Council meeting and a budget workshop where he fielded questions from county supervisors, Scott said he’s working with KFUG Community Radio to hold a town hall meeting on Oct. 8 at the Del Norte County Fairgrounds to address the community’s concerns. He’s invited Griffin and California Highway Patrol Lt. Franco Castro to participate.
“Flock and Axon are very similar companies, but there’s little differences,” Scott said. “So I think it’s important that each leader talks about their organizations.”
Scott said he would also talk about how Flock cameras have helped his agency as well as the tight restrictions that are on the use of that data.
“My main priority in getting those was really the children,” he said. “We have over 90 sex offenders in Del Norte County and if something does go wrong, that tool is probably one of the best tools I’ve seen.”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Flock’s automated license plate reader cameras record and track every car that comes into its view and then uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to catalogue its make, model, color and license plate number along with any bumper stickers or scratches it may have.
That information is uploaded to a national database that “any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search,” the ACLU states.
On Tuesday, city councilors said they trusted their police chief not to misuse what could be a valuable tool to go after those who would “harm our citizenry.” Councilor Jason Greenough said that he appreciated the safeguards Griffin put in place by recommending ALPR data be retained for up to seven days.
Mayor Pro Tem Candace Tinkler, arguing that the purpose of license plates is to identify a vehicle’s owner, said a system that check’s people’s plates isn’t new. She acknowledged people’s concerns about authoritarianism and the potential degradation of people’s civil liberties, but she’s not worried about misuse from the local police department.
“It’s the accumulation that’s a concern for many of us,” Tinkler said. “I did do my research and the ACLU also recommends the same thing you’re telling us — seven days — you’re completely in line with what the recommendations have been nationally.”
According to an ACLU “Get The Flock Out Toolkit,” recommended regulations for ALPRs include limiting data retention to “hours or days, not weeks or months or more.” The ACLU also recommends prohibiting sharing data to an agency or entity unless they have a warrant for a felony crime. Limiting ALPR usage to felony investigations, missing persons cases, identifying unregistered or uninsured vhicles or “certain limited non-enforcement scenarios” like toll collecting.
The ACLU also recommends requiring annual usage reporting.
Despite the Crescent City Council’s trust in their police chief, some members of the public were as skeptical about ALPRs on Tuesday as they had been last month when they asked city officials about the DNSO’s Flock Safety camera.
Jake Borja, a Crescent City resident who created the DeFlock Del Norte Facebook page, acknowledged Griffin’s recognition that people don’t like the way Flock cameras work. But, as a “civil liberties person,” zero retention is better than seven days, Borja said.
Borja also noted that there are apps that make tracking Axon ALPRs and Flock ALPRs easy, making law enforcement officers vulnerable.
“I don’t mean any disrespect to anybody, but this seems like a ridiculous thing to talk about since us as people have talked about not wanting these technologies here in the first place,” he said.
Another resident, Jodi Mangum, said she’d hate to see Crescent City turn into a “smart city.”
“Once it gets started it’s hard to put the brakes on that kind of stuff,” she said.
There were two people who supported CCPD’s use of the Axon ALPR devices. David Garcia, a county resident, said he appreciated Griffin’s thorough staff report, which included CCPD’s policy concerning ALPR use as well as Axon’s own literature. He also pointed to the City Council’s goals about supporting law enforcement and being efficient and providing a value to the taxpayer.
Another county resident, Heather Taggart, said she saw the ALPRs as a way of holding adults accountable for how they treat children.
“There’s actually a case in California right now where a father has abducted his 14-year-old daughter,” Taggart said. “They could not send out an Amber Alert because they could not confirm that the 14-year-old was with her father. Well, the camera with the license plate (reader) was able to confirm that.”
On Aug. 31, the Los Angeles Times staff writer Iris Kwok reported that Monterey County deputies were searching for a 14-year-old girl and her father after finding a newborn on the side of the road. Authorities say the teen gave birth by the side of the road and are accusing her father of incest, child sex crimes and concealing her.
According to the article, Flock cameras helped detectives identify a vehicle of interest associated with the case.
Authorities issued an Amber Alert for the teen on Sunday, Times writer Jasmine Mendez reported.
