“Los Gatos is watching your car. Drones are circling downtown right now.”
That’s how San Jose-based Kip “Your Real Estate Dude” Barnard kicked-off a June 27 Instagram reel that’s racked up almost 2,000 likes since it was posted.
But is it true? We reached out to Barnard for comment, but didn’t hear back by press time.
According to the Town, the drone movements Barnard was referring to were part of a temporary parking study that ended back in October.
The posting nevertheless raises broader questions about surveillance technology in Los Gatos around temporary parking studies, license plate readers and a multimillion-dollar technology contract: what tools are being deployed, and how transparent are local municipalities being?
Every so often, the Council debates the merits of a paid parking program. And every so often, Council opts not to head down that path. Free spaces are largely limited to three hours at a time.
As part of a study tracking how long cars parked downtown, the Town dispatched drones flown by FAA-certified pilots. The Town says it gathered license plate information via enforcement vehicles, in addition to aerial photos, over the course of 30 days—ending last Oct. 15.
This Town adds data that was anonymized, then deleted.
This study was commissioned as the Town continues to look at ways to address the downtown parking demand—without installing parking meters.
Steps taken to relieve the common parking gridlock included efforts last summer to extend Downtown Employee Parking Permit hours into Saturdays, as well as installing wayfinding signage to guide visitors through Los Gatos.
In email correspondence, the Town said the data from the drone study revealed that most vehicles parked for less than three hours at a time. These findings, the municipality noted, suggested parking turnover was higher than residents may have assumed.
“Specifically, the data collection showed an average parking occupancy rate of 41% and an average length-of-stay duration of 2.68 hours during the data collection period,” the spokesperson said.
The study was meant to provide a baseline understanding of the parking situation to “help guide the future development of data-driven parking management strategies.”
Though it wrapped in October, the results of the drone missions have not yet been made public.
“A specific study report has not been prepared,” is how the Town spokesperson put it.
Meanwhile, the Town website for drone transparency only says, “COMING SOON!”
But while parking attendant robots might not be “circling downtown right now,” Los Gatos has been continuing to invest in new public safety toys.
A month after the drone survey concluded, the Council authorized a 10-year, $2.79 million contract with Axon Enterprise, Inc., expanding on a December 2023 deal for $800,000.
The company (previously TASER International) sells weapons and technology to law enforcement and the military. This latest agreement provides for body and vehicle cameras, tasers, drones and software for both VR and real-time mapping.
The Flock situation
As you might know, Los Gatos has another surveillance system in place.
The ALPR cameras operated by Flock Safety have spurred debate across the United States. Most recently, a Supreme Court decision restricting use of location data added oil to the flame of privacy concerns.
And cameras have been yanked from neighboring cities such as Santa Cruz and Mountain View, after reports surfaced about their data being accessed by out-of-state authorities.
The growth of these cameras has expanded in the past few years.
The current $295,000 partnership goes until 2029.
The Town’s law enforcers have backed the results of the Flock technology and sought to quell concerns about data privacy and over-surveillance. When the Los Gatan reached out to the Town to inquire about its current Flock Safety policies, a spokesperson replied only with a link to the Transparency Portal.
The link states that data is only retained for 30 days and it only detects license plates and vehicles. These webpages are operated by Flock and populated with data from each jurisdiction.
Taking a peek into surveillance transparency data, this is what we can see:
In a Sunnyvale City Council discussion regarding Flock Cameras in April 2026, staff gave a list of how many Flock Cameras were positioned in Silicon Valley Towns. Los Gatos-Monte Sereno was grouped into a category with the 37 previously established cameras (one per each 2.87 miles). In January 2025, the Monte Sereno City Council approved an agreement to install 19 cameras. “The majority of the cameras have recently been installed around the city,” was written in a Monte Sereno newsflash dated in August 2025.
However, their own Transparency Portal says that they hold on to data for “Infinity days” and share license plate information nationally. It also states that 0 Flock Cameras are in operation. Lon Allan, the mayor of Monte Sereno, told the Los Gatan this is an error, as their policies are in line with those of Los Gatos. “I’m a big fan of Flock cameras,” he said, noting the City Council vote on Flock cameras was unanimous. “It’s a hell of a deterrent to burglaries.”
Local residents are now left to contemplate their stake in the emerging network of surveillance systems. On one hand, the police assert confidence in the technology’s field-use for public safety. And some communities do have functioning transparency portals with information about drone and ALPR activity for their residents. It is left to the taxpayer to decide for themselves whether the benefits of parking enforcement—or crime prevention—are enough to overcome the serious privacy concerns with emerging tech that have been gathering steam across the country.
*With a file from Drew Penner
