The recent debate over automated license plate reader technology, including Flock cameras, has generated significant opposition at Los Gatos Town Council meetings. As a longtime resident who grew up in Los Gatos, I would like to offer a different perspective.
Los Gatos is consistently rated one of the safer communities in our region. I would like to keep it that way. Maintaining public safety requires giving our Police Department effective tools to prevent and investigate crime. I believe the Town should retain its existing ALPR network and consider expanding it where there is a demonstrated public safety need.
This discussion is particularly important in the context of the potential expansion of police services into neighboring Saratoga. If the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department ultimately takes on responsibility for serving a larger geographic area and population, it will be more important than ever that officers have the technology and resources necessary to investigate crime effectively and maintain public safety across the communities they serve.
We can look to San Francisco for evidence of how this technology can help. In a recent San Francisco Examiner commentary, Supervisor Matt Dorsey highlighted the dramatic decline in vehicle break-ins following San Francisco’s deployment of a citywide ALPR network. Reported theft-from-vehicle incidents fell from 19,841 in 2023 to fewer than 5,400 in 2025, a 73 percent reduction. While ALPRs may not account for the entirety of that decline, the strong correlation between their deployment and the reduction in smash-and-grab thefts provides compelling evidence that this technology can be an effective tool for law enforcement.
‘We should be careful about taking our community’s safety for granted’
Los Gatos has fortunately never experienced property crime on the scale San Francisco has. But that is precisely why we should be careful about taking our community’s safety for granted.
I was particularly struck by some of the recent testimony from younger residents opposing the cameras. Having grown up in Los Gatos myself, I understand how easy it is to grow up in a safe community and assume that level of security is simply the natural state of things. I probably lacked some of that broader perspective at the same age. Public safety does not perpetuate itself. It requires continued investment, effective policing and appropriate tools.
There are legitimate concerns about privacy and misuse, and those concerns deserve safeguards. The recent case involving a San Jose police officer who improperly accessed Flock data and provided information to a relative involved in a domestic violence case is a disturbing example. But the officer was terminated, and San Jose subsequently tightened access to sensitive law enforcement systems and strengthened auditing procedures.
That incident demonstrates why strong access controls, auditing, transparency and meaningful consequences for misuse are essential. It does not demonstrate that the technology itself should be abandoned.
This does not need to be a choice between privacy and public safety. Los Gatos can establish strong safeguards for ALPR technology while allowing our Police Department to use a valuable tool to protect the community. And if our police department is preparing to serve an even larger area, now is not the time to unnecessarily limit the tools available to its officers.
*Adam Mayer is a Los Gatos Planning Commissioner but writes here as a private individual. The piece has been lightly edited.
Users of surveillance systems need *clear, carefully-thought-through and well understood* policies and they need to be transparency about data management:
What information is being collected? How is it being used? How long will it be stored for? Who is it being shared with? What will be the policy be regarding its re-use in a completely different context — will that be a legal thing to do? (In terms of the federal government’s use, it’s illegal under the Privacy Act, but there are tons of exceptions.) What if it’s used out of context or combined with other information to make judgements about us without our knowledge?
Here’s an issue brief and a place to start from the Center for Democracy and Technology: https://cdt.org/insights/cdt-issue-brief-automated-license-plate-readers-alprs/
For anyone who wants to understand more about privacy in the digital age, I recommend Julia Angwin’s “Dragnet Nation,” a book that explains “how the government, private companies, and even criminals use technology to indiscriminately sweep up vast amounts of our personal data. In a world where we can be watched in our own homes, where we can no longer keep secrets, and where we can be impersonated, financially manipulated, or even placed in a police lineup, Angwin argues that the greatest long-term danger is that we start to internalize the surveillance and censor our words and thoughts, until we lose the very freedom that makes us unique individuals.”