May 7, 2026 · 6:00 PM

Segment 1

Hello, everyone. Good evening. I'm going to have you quiet down, please. Thank you. Okay. I'm calling to order a special meeting of the Berkeley City Council. Today is Thursday, May 7th, 2026. It is 5.09 p.m. Clerk, can you please take the roll? Okay, Council Member Kisarwani? Here. Taplin? Present. Bartlett is currently absent. Trageb? Present. O'Keefe? Here. Blackabee? Here. Lunapara? Here. Humbert? Present. And Mayor Ishii? Here. Okay, quorum is present. Okay, so folks, tonight we have two items on our action calendar. One is the Public Safety Technology Surveillance Technology Ordinance and Police Equipment Ordinance Approvals, Policy Updates, and Contract Authority. And 1B is the Social Justice Implications of Contracts with Immigration Data Broker Flock Safety, which came from the Peace and Justice Commission. This is a continuation from a meeting that we had on March 24th, 2026. A few things I want to say before we get started. One, I know there are a lot of folks here and there's a lot of energy in the room, but I really want to ask you all to continue to be respectful as people are speaking and allow them to speak. Of course, you're welcome to cheer and clap and stuff when someone speaks and says something you want, but I ask you not to boo. It's both disrespectful and against our rules of procedure. So the other thing is that as we are going this evening, if you have public comment and you're coming with a group, we encourage you, you don't have to, but we encourage you if you're speaking in a group that you speak, maybe have one person and then the other folks come up if you agree already with what they're saying, because that will allow for more people to speak this evening. Okay, so last meeting, one of the things that we did was we heard from our Berkeley Police Department, we heard from our PAB, our Police Accountability Board, and then we heard all the different supplementals that were presented from the last meeting. So we don't have any presentations tonight. What we're going to be focused on are first the questions, first the questions from the Council, and then we'll take public comment, and then we will have Council comments and any motions that happen. So just so folks have a sense of what's going to happen this evening. That's our little roadmap, and so what I do want to do is just go ahead and start if anyone from the Council has any questions. Come on, I know folks have questions. Okay, so I will start with a question, and one question that I had from last time was the, sorry, my question list got adjusted. If you could, if BPD, if you could speak to the difference between our current our current Community Registry Program and the proposed CVS. Our current Community Registry Program and the proposed CVS. Yeah, absolutely. So CVS, Community Video Streams, it's our proposal to, it's really an expansion and a deepening of our current camera registry program. So currently what we do is if a business has a set of cameras that they want us to be aware of in the case that we're investigating a crime that occurs nearby, then we know that that camera is there and we can more quickly obtain the evidence that we need to do the investigation. So the Community Video Streams proposal would build on that and would give businesses the opportunity to opt in to a system where we could directly access that video footage if they allow us to. And so our proposal for that program would be that we go through an inspection process of the cameras before we would connect to them to make sure that they're not pointing anywhere that we shouldn't be able to have access to. We would publish on our website the location of all those cameras and we would require appropriate signage near those cameras so that the public is aware that they are connected to to our system. Can I just, I want to add one more thing. One of the challenges we have with our current camera system, the way it works, is that a lot of times we'll be investigating a crime, we'll be in the moment of investigating the crime and the manager is the only person that has access to the room that has the camera or there's a reader that's associated with being able to download the file and then view it once it's once it's taken. So this would allow us to both have that access regardless of whether or not there was a manager on site but also not run into the challenges we have with evidence collection. Right now we're forced sometimes to use a phone and videotape the screen as it's playing. Obviously there's a degradation of the evidence when we do it that way. Thanks Chief and a follow-up question on that. Can you speak to the community video surveillance process? What has been done so far to help the community understand what this system would look like? We've gone through the surveillance technology ordinance process as required by 2.99 and we've submitted use policies, acquisition report and that's what council is considering today. And if you remember we talked about it at both two community meetings. Additionally we covered it in a presentation talking to PAB about what that technology looks like. We've had a number of neighborhood watch meetings where we've gone and talked about the different technologies really and we showed that in the March 24th meeting with council when we talked about that technology. Thank you and I'm going to go ahead and jump to my council member colleagues since they've now joined the queue and I might have some more questions later. Let's go to council member Trakob. Thank you. I want to delve into the unmanned aerial system policy 1303. Could you speak to your perspective around if there were limitations in the policy that were restrictive around the ability of such UAS systems, I guess this is DRFDs, to surveil areas of mass gatherings like protests other than subject to exigent circumstances which would be something like a medical emergency or an active shooter situation? I'm sure I'm not sure I'm completely tracking your question. Is your question that would we use this technology to oversee a lawful gathering or a protest action absent there being an exigent circumstance? The question is I actually trust you that you wouldn't. However, in my reading of the policy it does not specifically preclude a future PD from doing that. Could you speak to the policy? Sure, so 1303.3 prohibited uses. UAS shall not be used to conduct random or arbitrary surveillance activities. This prohibition includes but is not limited to first amendment assemblies in accordance with policy 428 first amendment assemblies. So there's a specific prohibited use that would be a prohibited use. Okay, elsewhere in the policy 1303 there's mention of yeah so there's examples to respond to active criminal activity at mass gatherings or special events. Is there a place for active criminal activity mass gathering and special events are defined? So as you know there's a lawful assemblies happen and we're guided by number of people are there maybe the issues that they're discussing and our officers respond to those and have a goal of keeping the peace and when a critical incident occurs right there's a language defining what a critical incident is an event that occurs that is beyond normal capacity or normal responses and so those are industry standard terms some of those are embedded in different places in our use of force policy and are embedded in our 428 first amendment assembly policies as well. Okay, thank you. I have one question for the city attorney in terms of the amount for violation that the council if the council chooses to go that route would it be a policy decision for us to say maybe not 75 and maybe not 150 but maybe looking at Richmond's 290 or Oakland's 200k for violation? Yes that's squarely a policy decision that you get to make. Okay and my last question for now has to do with the and I think this might be for the city manager but let me know on the staff supplemental for procurement there is mention or there's language that says FLOC's full catalog is available for purchase on the Region 4 ESC contract. How if at all does this relate to FLOC's promised discount if the procurement was completed by July which is something that I also read elsewhere in the document or in a different document? Yeah so that procurement had the price and terms that FLOC proposed via the procurement they are always free to you know negotiate discount however they wish with any potential vendor. Okay and right that was my penultimate question this will be my last question can you speak to what this piggyback contract was based at based on I did hear or it was my understanding that it was based on a school district in Texas and if so how may that can you speak to the comparisons between a USD in Texas with probably different operational needs than a medium-sized city like Berkeley? Yes thank you for the question our finance director is also on the line so he may want to chime in here but essentially when you're piggybacking off a contract you're looking at the the product in this case that you're seeking to procure and the price and so as long as it's the same product and they bid it out at a competitive price then you're then and there's a process that they went through an RFP process and put that forth then if our securing that product complies with their it's the same product that we're trying to secure that they bid for when that satisfies it so and this is a common practice in the city where we will procure things like a earth mover or a truck or something like that from a procurement that is either could be from a state could be from a county somewhere in the country excuse me for the purposes they do a procurement and they say here's all the price in terms that here's the terms that we're looking for the use and the product if that entity applies to the solicitation and the product that we want to procure is what they proposed then we have the ability to procure it so just because like for example an earth mover that a school a big school district procurement was part of doesn't mean that like the fact that they're moving earth on a school ground rather than a park doesn't make a difference the fact that they're procuring a camera to do security somewhere in their school district doesn't mean that we couldn't procure the exact same camera to do a security in the city thank you council member keith thank you thanks for going first council i wasn't quite ready um a couple questions for um berkeley police representatives um i just would like to ask you a couple questions to get on the record um hopefully a greater understanding of the nuances of the way the data is shared of the different kinds of data that are at stake um so first of all the alpr data generates like a searchable spreadsheet of um license plates and locations and times essentially is that correct yeah so the alpr data allows us to to search across exactly a database of those images that have been captured and identify whether that plate appears um you know within our retention period of 30 days uh-huh right yeah 30 days um thank you and can you uh briefly describe the process that um let's say another officer in a just in a jurisdiction that we share our data with um by the way if you could also just say quickly like who we share with and what the rules are about that and then i'd also love if you could um walk us through what it would look like for an officer from one of those jurisdictions to search our data so so first we only share uh with agencies within the nine bay area counties in sacramento county um an agency within the those counties and if they've signed a letter of agreement with us agreeing to comply with state law and our sanctuary city uh ordinance um once they've sent that letter we will give them access to search across our network um and if they have a a lawful reason to search they will input a case number um they'll select a statute that the investigation is associated with um and they'll define the the networks that they want to search across and so if it includes ours then um that search will occur and it'll appear on our audit logs so we'll be able to to verify the information that they submitted okay and what are their options like do they just type in whatever reason they want or what the they're required to give a case number they're required to select a statute and then they have the option to write in additional information okay and are there i i think i i just want to confirm this with you there's no immigration related justification right because that's none of the statutes or no that's not available on the drop down reasons it it's also against state law and against our local policies right so all of the given reasons they would have to stay are all in compliance with our sanctuary laws correct thank you for clarifying that and then can you talk a little bit about how that differs from the data that would be recorded by the um the video cameras which you're proposing to to acquire because that's that's different yeah that's uh completely different we we would not be sharing that um with other agencies in the same way uh except for in the same way that we share other types of evidence when there's an active investigation they come to us they ask us do we have this piece of evidence if we did have some some footage that was relevant then we would download that and um and process it in the same way that we would with any other piece of evidence that we'd share but just to be clear it would be only um Berkeley police officers who would be actually doing the searching and be in complete control of the data sharing correct there would be no case where another agency was uh given access to search through um our footage that we have yeah and just like because it's like not really searchable you can't really type in a face right so it's not exactly the same yeah exactly i think it's important to clarify the different kinds of um different kinds of data that we're talking about and how they differ in terms of um exposure um those are my i think i might have some more questions later but those are my questions for the police i did want to just pivot a little bit and say i i did actually have a supplemental that wasn't um presented last time and if i could just it's not like a big one so it would be okay madam mayor if i just talked about it for a minute um i proposed it's it's published in the packet it was published yesterday um some minor changes to the um the drone use policy um i don't we don't have it up or anything but i could you can read it into the main changes into the record um the idea with my supplemental was i i don't i'm not personally comfortable with the drones being sent out for every call or just kind of for no reason like i think that that was the vision that was presented and i i think i understand it but i think drones i'm not really interested in normalizing them as a police tool yet i think that would be a big change it's a kind of surveillance that we don't have now and i'm open to exploring it and i can see that they have a value in um certain situations but i i would like i'm proposing in my supplemental that we restrict the times when they can be sent out to i'll read this um times when the suspect is believed to be on the scene or in the immediate area of the scene and could reasonably cause harm to those present so this is sort of a emergent safety situation or a crime involving suspected physical violence or there's an imminent risk of physical injury due to a crime or a medical issue so basically the the vision here is that we do send them out but only when it it really could make the difference in a in a really um really critical safety situation and not as was previously described when um you know just to sort of check out a call to see if it's see what's going on which i i do understand the utility of that but i'm not personally comfortable with that so that's one of the big changes my supplemental and then um just to mention it also says no microphone or audio sensing device will be activated at any time and i think that's already understood as part of the expectation but i did want that written into the law because i don't think that drones should be able to listen to people that's another kind of surveillance we do not have right now and i don't want to invite it into our city so that's my supplemental um we can you know table that now but i wanted to get a chance to present that and um yeah i might have more questions but i will i will yield to other people thank you so much thank you and i appreciate you mentioning that apologies for leaving that out and we did resubmit our supplemental as well but mostly just to reorganize it so it was more aligned um structurally with the staff so it could make more sense when we are comparing them um so i'm curious actually is flock uh representative is there a flock representative on uh he is on his way oh okay so because i think there are some folks that have questions for them so folks please all right um so go ahead to council member bartlett thank you thank you um and it's gonna be back gonna be back um question this my questions really at this point are around um the video cameras the the fixed cameras and particularly i guess so walk me through the process of how they're used we're just high level briefly are you talking about the fixed ptz cameras right so uh you know if you recall originally they were placed in intersections um that was pre us deploying the aoprs um into the community and what we realized um after that first deployment at sixteen university was that uh they weren't uh able to capture from the distance they were capturing really capture pedestrian activities and things like that we came back to council and explained uh one we had uh power related issues around putting them with pg&e around the visual on cameras and two we wanted to place them in pedestrian heavy areas in our business districts to provide that ability to deter crime and solve crimes that occurred in those areas so they would be deployed in the locations that council approved with signage that says that the camera is there and that it's recording um it would be a tool that we would use access pursuant to the policy for very specific uses that would then provide us with another investigative tool and a deterrent tool okay so i guess so there's an incident robbery or what have you uh we know it's this this time this location so then when you go you rewind you go into the footage to that moment yeah that's correct if we believe that there's evidentiary value on that video the detectives would go and and go through a process to um create an audit trail that they're looking at video at a certain certain camera certain time for a certain kind of crime so at that point and this is what i'm going to get getting out here is the um the facial recognition uh software are we deploying that at all no we're not okay thank you thank you i also wanted to make sure folks knew that our interim director of police accountability kathy lee is also sitting at the table so just so folks know who you are since you weren't here the last time thank you for thanks for joining so if you have some some big kathy fans okay so if you can um also if folks have if folks have any questions then you can ask her as well um okay so moving forward to oh council member luna para but really quickly i have apparently someone dropped a set of keys and a credit card outside um so if you have dropped your keys or a credit card um maybe give a a wave on this side of the barrier and um we'll try to get back to you okay all right so um council member luna park go ahead thank you um and thank you for being here um can you explain why the nova software doesn't have a use policy or acquisition report yeah so uh that software uh just collates information that we already have access to so since it's not adding a new sensor or a new collection of data um then that doesn't qualify for the the surveillance technology ordinance thank you um as brought up by the pab can you explain the scope of prohibition on first amendment assemblies if for example a crowd doesn't disperse is that criminal activity that would warrant the use of drones um are there other instances of criminal activity at protests that would warrant the use of drones so no we would not deploy a drone because a crowd didn't disperse um the drone would be deployed if there's a risk of injury or there's ongoing injury uh felony violence occurring against someone in a crowd uh then they would absolutely an active shooter um people being assaulted we would absolutely want to have the drone up to be able to go and record um identify who they're responsible are some of the things we've learned in past activities like this is that the safest way to resolve instances like that is to figure out who the problematic person is and then when there's a safe space to be able to take that person and arrest them without negatively affecting the lawful assembly and that's a goal and so having that recording of the criminal activity that's happening for a prosecutable case as well as identifying in a and apprehending someone in a safer manner with that tool but that's the kind of situation where i would expect that you would see um drone flying in that and we would not be flying to um uh simply be at a first amendment protest or a mass gathering just to collect who's there at the location i think it would be helpful to add to be more specific in the policy to make sure that we know when when they could be used and when they couldn't um can you elaborate on the six officer positions that are associated with this technology are those positions currently staffed yeah it's it's a great question and it got a lot convoluted because if you recall we brought this first item much earlier in the budget process and so if you look at just how much it would cost for this technology in comparison to salary and benefits of an individual officer it's roughly two officers and however in conversations with the union who we consult with when we're making decisions about staffing levels and and and work status where we discuss like hey we want to come to the table we know these technologies will bring us efficiencies we'd like to propose that it could it could do the work of six positions and so that's how we landed in the six the number six was in that kind of discussion so that's what we brought forward we've already moved past the space in the budget process where the city manager has made a proposal that identifies unnecessary cuts to our staffing so we instead are now looking to what would be affected by bringing on this technology and what you would see is instead of officers having to go physically to a location to gather video or to do neighborhood canvases or to we'd have to have more officers on staff because you can't clear calls for service because you have to go individually to calls we believe that we could recognize the savings in overtime and reduce our overtime budget to the equivalent of and in addition to the costs that we would save by the implementation so that we're in a different space in the budget and that's why we're talking about different different numbers of officers and different cost savings so to clarify the cost savings would be in in overtime not in positions well the proposal that's up already sees a reduction of police officers positions so those are happening separate from funding a technology process and so those positions are either going to be preserved or eliminated pursuant to this council's desires around the budgeted positions for the department if we are looking for ways to pay for a new technology that's going to cost money the place that i will be looking at to pay for it is not from new funds which our city doesn't have right now but from a reduction in my existing overtime budget okay um last year the police department went over the overtime budget um how how does this how how would this play into into those numbers would it cut the overall budget allocation or the actual spending both both i think you would see both i will share that uh our driver of that uh overage in our in our overtime was almost all directly related to our severe staffing shortage in the communication center and so right now the amount of money we're spending on overtime to ensure that we have the ability to answer calls that are coming in from the public it's uh you know you lose it's it's one and a half percent or one and a half times an opposition a dispatcher position that you're charging in overtime in order to to fill those spots and so we saw almost an additional two million dollars this year we're anticipating in overtime as a result of that shortage and so we know there's going to be that reduction then once we bring technology on board and we have these greater efficiencies we're able to reduce our minimum staffing number as we deploy and patrol with the technology we can drive that number down even farther obviously we can't control things like special events or emergency situations that happen that sometimes unexpectedly raise our overtime but looking at the numbers and the way our shift extensions have run in overtime we believe we can drive that down with minimum staffing level changes that are only possible with technology that supports those that that reduction okay thank you um i'm curious what the training requirements are for operating drone technology.

Segment 2

There are certain requirements from the FAA for drone pilots, and then we'll have additional training available to anybody that's going to be operating a drone, be it a drone as a first responder or a patrol trunk-deployed drone, to safely operate in those situations. Will that be required? Yes, yes. Okay, thank you. What protocols are in place to prevent the misuse of drone technology, such as unauthorized surveillance, beyond the specific deployed use case? So, I mean, there are several layers here. One is the hardware limitations and how they're set to, for example, to point at the horizon as they're flying to a scene, and only to point down when they arrive at a scene. Another layer is our policies, and another layer is the logging that occurs of each flight, and that gets published shortly after the flight, so the public will be able to see where a drone went shortly after it comes back. And so there's a number of layers of scrutiny available to each drone deployment so that we can investigate any complaints, but also monitor as these drones are getting used. Okay, thank you. And my last question is, do all of the law enforcement agencies within the nine Bay Area counties that share our data have written sanctuary city policies or sanctuary policies? I'm not aware of every single agency. I know many of them do, but that was certainly part of our intent by limiting the agencies that we share with to the local region to maximize public safety value without exposing ourselves to other agencies whose policies we're not in control of. And just to be clear, we are a sanctuary state. We have laws that protect us as a state. Every single law enforcement agency in the state of California has policies in place that says you cannot violate state law. Folks, please. Thank you. Yeah, I know our local sanctuary is stronger than the state's, which is why I asked. Thank you. Those are my questions for BPD, but I do have more for FLOC. I think just to clarify real quick, so in order for another agency to look across our data, they have to agree to follow our sanctuary city policy, not whatever their city sanctuary policy is. So, yeah, we hold them to that higher standard in order for us to share with them. We would cut off access if they were doing something that did not comply with our city sanctuary city policy. Thanks, Chief. Okay, so we're moving on to Council Member Blackaby, but I know there's a lot of folks standing. If you would like to sit, there are some seats throughout. Don't feel bad about asking someone to move their belongings. I just want to make sure everyone can sit if they want to. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, thanks, Madam Mayor. Can I ask, is the FLOC rep here? Oh, awesome. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. From the outset, no worries. I'll start with questions. Okay, folks, please. That's not appropriate. Mayor, we need to take a five-minute audio-visual break to check on some things. Okay, sorry about that. All right, we will be taking a five-minute break for audio-visual reasons. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Audio is fine on the Zoom. Test, test, sound check. Testing, testing, sound check. Testing, testing, sound check. Testing, testing, sound check. Will you go in there and talk to him? Rose, will you go in there where Ned is and ask him if it's working? Test, test, test, audio test, test, test, test. BCM audio test. Can you hear me, David? Okay. Okay. Okay, test, test, test, test, test, test, test. Okay, Rose is saying that Ned has thumbs. Okay. All right, so I think we're okay to resume. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hello, testing. Okay, folks. You can hear me clap once. If you can hear me clap twice. If you can hear me clap three times. Very good. All right. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. I'm so sorry. It seems that we are back up and running again. So, I will call this meeting back to order. All right. And where we left off was that Council Member Blackaby was just about to ask his questions. Five minutes back. All right. Go ahead, Council Member. And we've just also introduced a new person to our table, too. So, perhaps you want to introduce yourself. Yes. Mayor and Council, my name is Trevor Chandler. I'm the Senior Director of Public Affairs at FLAW. Thank you. Okay, folks, please. Respect. Go ahead. Great. Chief Lewis, Deputy Chief Tate, Mr. Malmberg, I just want to appreciate you being here, bringing the path forward. I wanted to say from the outset that I fully support your effort to provide our officers with the tools they need to keep us safe. But I do have questions about who we choose to contract with and how we build the public trust around the process. So, I want to start with a couple of questions for the department, and then I have some questions for Mr. Chandler. I wanted to focus on the community video streams piece of it, because I think that's the part we've talked about, I think, not as much as some of the others. And just from my understanding, what are the circumstances under which you will activate those cameras? Are there protocols around when you use them, when you don't? Are they always on? Are they not always on? How does that part work? Yeah, only in response to a specific incident or active investigation. So, we won't just be monitoring them. It will only be in response to something specific. Okay. So, in the RTIC, so the idea is not, here's all the community video stream cameras and running all of it. It's basically, hey, there's an event happening at the Apple Store. We need to activate the cameras to monitor what's going on. Correct. Okay. So, it's some particular event that activates. Okay. How does this kind of video access, you know, how does it compare with how we're monitoring the other fixed cameras? Is it a similar, how do you think about that? Is it a similar approach in terms of when they're activated? I'm just trying to kind of square the cameras that the city would be operating versus the ones that we'd be asking partners about. Yeah, they're very similar use policies that we've proposed. Okay. So, they would be under the same permitted uses and prohibited uses and so on. Okay. And the retention time, is it the same retention period for both? So, with the community video streams, we wouldn't be retaining any footage. This would just be whatever that, since these cameras already exist, right, the organization's already paying for them. So, whatever their retention policy is, is how long they would retain that video footage for, and then they would decide whether to give us access to only the live footage or to any period of the retained video. So, if there was some evidentiary value from something, you might take that and hold on to that for the purpose of doing an investigation. I'm sorry, but otherwise, go ahead. Yeah, think about it this way. So, if we learned there was a robbery at a business and they had video, we would capture that video. We would log and capture that video. It would get uploaded into our evidence collection system and held pursuant to the retention period for that kind of crime. Right. If, for some reason, we learned that a crime happened at that particular business a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, we would contact them and say, you know, do you have video going back that far? And if the answer is yes, then we would be able to collect it and get that information. Okay. So, there's some kind of real-time monitoring in the moment for an event, but it's just turned on for a particular event and then turned off when you don't need it. And after the fact, you might ask for footage and then use it for evidence. But, again, so you're only retaining the footage of stuff that has evidentiary value. Is that right? Correct. Okay. And are there any circumstances under which you'd be sharing any of that video with other jurisdictions or not? It's the same situation with our fixed cameras that we own. Yeah. We would never allow access to another agency to get in and do some searching, but if we got contact and said, hey, we're working this series of robberies, we believe somebody was in that store that fits the description of such and such, right, then we would access and understand whether that evidence was there and would only turn that evidence over to them if it fit within the parameters of, you know, related to an investigation. Right. And similarly, it's like so you have rules in terms of who you do or don't share with, and, again, never shared with for immigration enforcement purposes and all that. Absolutely. Okay. And if another jurisdiction needed access to information at, like, oh, again, maybe they have a suspect from their jurisdiction who is involved in something at the Apple store in Berkeley, do they come through us? So how do they get that footage? Again, does it come through you guys making that request, and then you decide whether or not to share it, or do they go directly to that business? I would say either. I mean, there's nothing that precludes them from going to the Apple store and saying, hey, we're investigating this case, can we have it? And a private business would share in whatever manner they wanted to. But if we were approached and asked for evidence from someone in our city, it has to go through a review process. The captain of the investigations would approve the collection of that and the release of that to another jurisdiction. Great. Thank you. A couple questions for Mr. Chandler. And, again, thank you for being here in the hot seat. From the outset, I just want to say, because I think this is something I've felt a while, and I think a lot of us feel this, that I've just been really disappointed and frustrated to watch how FLOC has sort of handled the sort of drip, drip, drip of complaints and reports about problems with unauthorized data sharing with sort of the mistakenly checked checkboxes, with pilot programs, with CBP, and sort of other agencies that give them access to these broad lookup features without the permission of the local agencies. And I'll just say, you know, as someone who before I had this job, I've spent a lot of years in public affairs and politics. It's, you know, it's really been a case study in, like, crisis communications done poorly, just to be perfectly frank with you. Anyway, so, again, my frustration is that rather than getting out ahead of it and taking responsibility, it's been kind of put on the local jurisdictions to sort of defend what's happened, which I don't think has really been fair to a lot of these local jurisdictions. And in a lot of cases, I thought the first response seemed to be, you know, blaming these agencies for faulty configuration without acknowledging that, you know, one error is a user error, but multiple errors is a product flaw. You know, that's a FLOC issue. So, again, I'm not doing, I'm just doing this because, you know, I feel like we need to get this on the table, because, you know, that's a frustration. I think we all are feeling as policymakers who are being asked to make this sort of decision. So, my question, I know we've talked about this in the past, but are you willing, can you acknowledge today that, you know, FLOC has made, you know, these mistakes? These have been mistakes. These aren't just jurisdictions kind of making a mistake. This has been a FLOC piece, too, and I just wanted you to kind of talk about that and help us understand how you view that. Absolutely, and I genuinely appreciate those remarks, Counselor, so thank you for bringing it up. We have made, and our CEO has made public that we could have and should have done many things better. When we started addressing these issues a little over a year ago, up to that point, we had been providing compliance, the tools to be compliant, rather than simply mandating compliance like we could have and making it just easier for all of our customers, especially here in California and other states that have laws that would have just been easier for us to do that. We have since shifted in our entire business model to start to mandate compliance. Now it is not possible for a single California agency to share outside the state. In addition, to make sure that is not allowed, we've also put in place immigration search filters, we've put in place reproductive health search filters, and we've removed all and any sharing with any federal, whether it's a national park, whether it's the post office. And so these are things that we acknowledged. One, we could have communicated the compliance features better, and that's on us. We take full responsibility for that. And we could have done compliance as default, rather than simply providing the tools and letting agencies go on a case-by-case basis. So we're extremely proud of what we've done last year. Now we have probably, I will say definitely, of all the LPR providers, we are the only LPR, major LPR provider, without a contract with ICE. I think that's very important to note. There is no relationship there. That distinguishes us from Axon, Motorola, everyone else. There is no contract with ICE. We are the only one without a contract with ICE. And we have put in place groundbreaking and industry-leading transparency and accountability features, including additional audit transparency, that proactively provides potential misuse, potential irregularities, so people don't have to wait until they run their audit next. I'm happy to go through more of that. But, yes, I appreciate your comments. There is much we could have done better, and we are working to earn that trust by doing even more than that. I appreciate that. One of the things we talked about, I know, in the past was I think in March, March 2026 there was a blog post that outlined a lot of those new safeguards. So this is the California agencies can't share out-of-state or with the feds, that the federal government is not part of the California state lookup network, that you require the offense type in sort of the drop-down to do a search, and that the cities, again, this is a confirmation, this is the city's data and not, you know, block's data. When did those safeguards actually go into effect? Like when did those come online? I believe those, most of the, they came online in various iterations. I believe most of them came online in August. And I can get the specific dates for you. So it was like August of 25, plus or minus, and then sort of there was some communication about that, I know, in March. Yes. Okay. Since those safeguards, a lot of my questions are around like the timeline of this process, because if you look at sort of news reports about flock and what's going on, a lot of what happens is we're also talking about things that may have happened a year ago, right, because it's an audit that cuts it. So my question sort of is, since those safeguards went into effect, you know, have you, have any customers reported issues that those, you know, so safeguards went into effect, you locked down this sort of piece, what's happened since the safeguards, and what can you look at in terms of the track record since that time? We've been notified of no instances where the previous examples have happened again. So I know that's the case. I was just on a call with the other day with another California city with 100% clean audit. There are no issues, and I've not been made aware of any additional issues since these fixes have been put in place. Let me pivot a little bit to some of these kind of operational questions. Part of these are, you know, in the draft contract. Part of it is in, and I'll try and be judicious with my time. Question about, you know, if the FBI comes to you with a judicial warrant asking you for access to some of Berkeley's data, what's the FLOC's operating procedure now? Council Member, you can have some of my time. Okay, I'll be just, I think, a minute or two more. We are contractually obligated to notify the city of Berkeley of that request, and internally our process is to let that subpoenaing authority know that we do not own the data, because contractually we do not own the data, and direct them to the city of Berkeley. Okay, and then back to the Chief. So if that comes to you, then what's kind of the city's response? So, you know, if FLOC comes to us and says we've got this subpoena, just again to kind of confirm how the process would work from there. Right, so the minute that we got that subpoena, we'd be in consultation with the city manager and the city attorney's office about the proper ways for us to fight that subpoena. Okay, and then similarly, if instead of the FBI with a judicial warrant, if it was ICE with an administrative warrant that came to ICE and asked for access to Berkeley's data, how would that play out? Is that any different? How does that play out if it's an ICE administrative warrant versus like an FBI judicial warrant? For us, there's no difference. We would still direct them to you, and we would alert you to that request. Okay, and then it would be a similar process for us. That's correct. Okay, great. Okay, good. Well, thank you. I appreciate your being here and wanting to sort of answer those questions, and I appreciate this discussion. I think as we move forward and I'm interested in hearing from colleagues, interested in hearing from the public, I do want to make sure that we're really thinking about who and what we're contracting with whom for what as we move forward, and so that will be something I think I want to come back to later just to make sure that we're making the best choice and I have full confidence in what the department's doing. I think we need to make sure that our tools meet those expectations as well. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. So there are follow-up questions, I think, from Council Members Traigub and O'Keefe for you, so the FOC representatives. So Council Member Traigub, do you want to go first? Thank you so much. First, I actually did want to directly thank you for being here. My first question is for you. I know it's been some time since March. Could you recapitulate the four principal concerns from the PAB, and has anything changed on that front since the last time this was discussed? Thank you. So from March, the concerns broadly were about the MSA with FLOC, the policies governing drones, the policies concerning drones, community video streams and fixed cameras, and the drone acquisition report, oh, sorry, and the integrated platform of surveillance services in one vendor. Those were the four concerns from March. Since then, there's been additional research done about the procurement process, and that's what the PAB's letter to you of May 4th, which is in the Supplemental 2 packet, outlines. I don't know if you want me to go into that right now. Yeah, maybe a little later, but I do want to make sure I have time to ask Trevor some questions, and thank you for being here. So my first question is, and this might also be for staff, there's been a lot of discussion about this lookup tool, and are you willing at this point to make a commitment that if Berkeley was to enter into a contract with FLOC, it would be disabled entirely? Are you talking about national lookup? Yes. Yes, absolutely, it's already done. It is impossible for any agency in California to enter into the national search feature, and we are willing, if you would like to put that in the contract, absolutely, 100 percent, we would be comfortable with that. As of what date did that change on your end? Approximately around August, so I can double-check on the specific date, but that change has already been made. Okay. What is the highest for violation term if there is a breach of contract that you're willing to accept? Richmond's is $290K. Oakland's is $200K. We have on file the response from FLOC that you're willing to accept $150K. I'm wondering if just your thoughts around, there's actually no monetary value that can be placed on a human life being impacted on this, so I just wanted to ask. Was that a question? What is the highest for violation term that you're willing to accept? I can't speak to the highest. As you said, we have the examples of Oakland and Richmond, and I imagine we could be amenable to a similar per-violation standard here. Thank you. Folks. I believe it's important to note since implementing those, we have never been subject to any of those fines for any potential mis-sharing. Okay. Thank you. I think this—okay. Do you currently—I appreciate what you said about not working with ICE. That counts for a lot in my book. Do you currently have any contracts, able use or other agreements with other federal agencies such as CBP? We have federal contracts but not with CBP. Can you elucidate on other federal contracts that you do have? Yes. Absolutely. We have national park contracts, United States Postal Inspection Service, those sorts, yes. But we do not have a contract with ICE, and we do not currently have any contracts with entities under the Department of Homeland Security. Okay. What was the date at which any of those contracts were discontinued? We never had a contract with CBP. We had a pilot agreement.

Segment 3

I'd like to start by asking about the 2015 article in the Berkeley City Council's document. That lasted for approximately four months and was focused on human and fentanyl narco-trafficking, and that was suspended around September of 2025. I can get a specific date on that, and that's an estimation. This might be a question for actually both the Chief and Mr. Chandler. There has been discussion around, well, let me put it that way. Council member, I'm just curious how many more questions you have, since I think this is your second period of questions. This will be my last question. Okay, thank you. I understand that FLOC is currently testing out the utilization of machine learning as part of its system. Can you speak to how that would be prescribed? Are there, would you be agreeable to terms in a contract or MOU that might preclude the use of machine learning specific to Berkeley? Yes, thank you, Councillor. So, we do use machine learning to increase accuracy. So, as new vehicles come onto the market, a new Camry, any number of things, we take accuracy very seriously, because we want to minimize misidentifications of vehicles and license plates as much as possible. As new license plates come on the market, we use machine learning to improve that accuracy. We have, such as in Oakland, some cities have decided they want to opt out of participating in that, out of it, an extra abundance of caution. And we would absolutely be amenable if Berkeley would want to opt out of the machine learning process. Obviously, we want to continue to hopefully improve. But if that's something that Berkeley doesn't want to be a part of, then we would absolutely opt the city out of it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council member O'Keefe. Thanks for giving me another bite of the apple here. First of all, I want to say, Ms. Lee, I'm just so happy you're here. And I'm just, thank you so much. It's really important. You're an important voice. And just welcome to this, welcome to this world, back to this world. And I guess there's not going to be a presentation from the PAB. Is that right? Are you prepared to? No, I'm not. I'm not aware that we will have any other presentations. OK, I guess I don't have specific questions. But I am curious to hear more about your perspective on the issues that were raised by the PAB letter. So I think Council member Trager also asked about that. But you're going to ask more later. You're asking about the recent PAB letter. Yeah. So, yes. Director, if you could speak to that recent PAB letter. Yeah, I'd love to hear your current thoughts. My take on it? I would agree with it pretty much substantively. There was a lot of research done, a very deep dive into the series of contracts that the department had entered into. And how it seems that we ended up sort of piecemealing the various components. And a concern that is noted is having an integrated architecture without a real sense of really analyzing whether that's needed. Whether it needs to be provided by one vendor. And the research that the PAB members did revealed that there are other jurisdictions that do use different surveillance technologies from different vendors and use some other type of platform to integrate it all. And I think there is a concern to me about having everything rely on one vendor. And this is really, and I want to emphasize that this is really separate and apart from FLOC as a vendor, all the procurement issues. And having a single vendor provide all of your systems, as the memo outlines, could be a great danger if something fails. That means everything could be failing without any sort of backup. And so that is a major concern. Sorry, just to clarify, you're talking about the technology itself failing, like not working anymore? Right. Or a breach of security. What do you mean by failing? Actually, it could be either. Okay, right. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much. And yeah, we might have, I hope you're involved in the continuing discussion. But I really appreciate you being here once again. Two more questions. Actually, this one is for, I actually want to thank Council Member Blackaby for asking the great questions of our FLOC representative. I think that was really helpful. And I think after hearing about that, I would like to hear a little more from our police about our auditing process. How often is it done? What do you check for? If you could just help us understand how that looks a little bit more. Yeah, so our policy requires that we audit our LPR system twice a year. And so that entails going into those logs of when other agencies have searched across our network and evaluating the reasons and the information that they've provided, as well as looking at the searches that we've done internally and making sure that they comply with all of our policies. Yeah, I just want to share that's our formal auditing process. But we have three administrators that have access to change any features in the FLOC system, the LPR system. Those users are in the system on a regular basis, whether it's every day or every other day, certainly during the business week. That's how we caught that one issue that we had that we located where we had a term that we weren't sure about. And then we were able to chase down. So it's not like we're waiting till the end of a six month period and then looking back. We're in that system regularly doing that informal auditing, looking for irregularities, looking for connectivity issues and things like that. Thanks so much for clarifying that. And the last question, I'm sorry, I think somebody may have already asked about this, but I wanted to get it clear. And actually, maybe our FLOC representative can comment on this as well. It has to do with the facial recognition for the video cameras, which I understand there's machine learning for recognizing the images of cars. But I think there's a lot of concern about facial recognition. So can you clarify if we use facial recognition, if what it says in the contract? And then I'd also be interested in sort of the technical ways of managing whether that's on or off. Sure. By policy, we do not allow facial recognition technologies. OK, and then can you explain how that's achieved? FLOC does not have facial recognition. Don't have it. So it can't even be turned on or off. It does have individual recognition because some of these cameras. What does that mean? So if a if a goose were to fly in front of a camera, we wouldn't want your law enforcement to constantly be getting alerts about, you know, a goose flying in front of a camera. So some of our pan tilt zoom cameras, they do can identify that there is a person there. So or they can look for, you know, you can look for a yellow shirt, but there is no facial recognition. OK, that's that's helpful. Can you say a little more when you say yellow shirt like that does sound like it's describing some aspects of the person. Can you say a little more about where is that line? So I mean, put it frankly, there is no facial recognition. There is none. There is there is the ability to recognize that there is a person in front of a camera. So if you are looking for a suspect with a yellow shirt, these these searches do not base on gender or race. They are on characteristics such as is there someone wearing a hat? Is there someone wearing a yellow shirt? So that is what is able to be detected. But there is no facial recognition. OK, so it's just to make it I'm trying to make sure I understand you. So would it be fair to say you can ask for descriptions of color and items of clothing? Yes, but nothing more specific than that. Correct. You cannot ask for gender or race or protected characteristics. OK, or well, that's different than what I said. What I said is is the limit of the search terms. Is it limited to things like color and clothing item? Yes, that's it. Yes. OK. All right. And that's just to confirm that's we our version of the system has that ability or will. I guess we don't have this yet, but is that right? Or do we have this turned off also? Yeah, we don't have that feature on on the current cameras that we run, nor do we turn that feature on. So the question comes up about, let's say a new camera exists next next week, right? Or next year. And it has that capability. But we don't turn those features on. Right. So that's how we we're guided by our use policy. And so if technology moves past what we originally acquired and a capability exists on a technology now, we don't we will either turn that function off. Right. Or if there was no way to turn it off and it was going to become part of what would be a routine thing we would see, then we would come back to council and say, hey, this thing that we have now has this extra feature. Do you want us to stay using this technology and expand it or do we need to look for a new vendor? OK, but. So we're talking about the use policy for the Pantel zoom cameras we have now, and of course, right now we're discussing whether we're going to be acquiring these flock cameras. So I guess my question is, if we were to get these cameras that have this ability for to search for, you know, basic descriptions of people, would would that that would not be allowed under the use policy if we acquired these cameras? Is that what I'm understanding? No, we would we would be able to use a feature that allowed us to say in this footage right here, can you find us a suspect that was wearing a yellow shirt? OK, we would not they don't have and we would not use even if it was available, any kind of facial recognition or. Yeah, got it. OK. Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate that clarity. Those are my question. Thanks again. Thank you. Moving back to council member. Thank you. I have a some more questions. I have some questions for for representative. Can you speak to FLOC safety's obligation to their investors? I'm specifically interested in FLOC's biggest investor and the firm's and founders launch letter, get her and its founders, anti-immigrant, anti-DEI and pro-Trump views and support of surveillance deregulation, how that may influence FLOC's practices and obligations. Is there a specific investor that you're referring to? It's a we have we have a number of investors. I'm more curious about how how FLOC safety engages with its investors and to what extent the views of the investors is going to affect how the company operates. The company operates within the law, and that's that's the most important aspect. Just like folks, just as here in California, where we have SB thirty four, we have we have fully shut off any sharing or any disabled, any sharing outside of the state or with federal agencies that we are guided by the laws of the country, of the state and of the localities that we work in. Those are the people we answer to are the legislators. You know, I was just going to say, I don't think that she was asking whether or not FLOC operates within the law. She's asking you about how you interact with your investors. So could you speak to that, please? Yeah, I mean, we interact with our investors similarly to any company. We have board meetings where we provide earnings reports. So that is that is how we interact with our investors. Same as any other company. OK, there there there are federal and state and local laws that don't necessarily align and that have conflicting perspectives on the law. So how how does FLOC take that into consideration? Exactly. Thank you so much for asking that question, because I think California is the precise example of that. Where California has a very explicit law with SB thirty four that this state prohibits the sharing of license plate reader data outside of the state. So we have prevented that from happening. We are additionally providing groundbreaking industry leading again. I want to say industry leading because no other license plate reader provider has implemented the additional changes above and beyond what we have, which allows cities and states to be able to choose who they share with and how they share with and how they share with the state. Including, again, if there is a sanctuary state law, if there are limits on data sharing regarding reproductive health information, we have put in groundbreaking, in many cases, not even required by law guardrails to make sure that community values do not have to come at the expense of community safety. And what's happened here in California is exactly that. We have completely shut it off so that no state, no city in California is able to share with the federal government. Okay, well, I'm that that I'm honestly not satisfied by that, given that FLOC already has violated or allowed cities to violate state law. So my next question is, is similar to council member Chase. And how much money do you think the city should be awarded if it is violated similar to council member Craig? Okay, so as I mentioned, we have an agreement with the city of Oakland. That's $200,000. So again, I would just provide to you all. You are the legislators. You are you are the city council to have that conversation about what is what you view as necessary. How would you define an individual violation? So those are outlined in the contract as well as under state law. So that would be a violation of sharing that FLOC is responsible for that goes against the yeah, I guess I'm asking if if there is a violation of the contract that that ends up with multiple people being affected is each individual persons being affected. Is that each individual instance of violation or are they all one violation? I will yield to your city attorney on that specifically when it comes to the legal interpretation of the contract. I understand. I'm curious what FLOC's interpretation is. I again, I would yield to your city attorney because I know our attorneys have been talking with your attorneys and I would feel that that would be a question that's better answered by the attorney. So you're not willing to answer. I would prefer that your city your city attorney answer that question. Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions. Okay. Council Member Barley, did you have follow up questions? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Mr. FLOC. Sorry. Sorry. Mr. Apple. Thank you, Mr. Apple. Meet the FLOCers. So now that you're here, I just want to ask you quickly. So this comes up a lot in conversation. The Foreign Intelligence Service Surveillance Act, FISA warrants or other other sort of secret federal directives. What's that process like for in our situation? So the FISA warrants are the same for any company everywhere. These are typically confidential warrants that I personally do not have any knowledge of. What I can say and what many experts in the field have said is if someone if there was something of importance of a FISA warrant is an exceptional warrant. It goes significant process. If someone is going through if someone in the government is going through the process to acquire a FISA warrant for something, a point in time image of a vehicle that is potentially 30 days old is not likely the most effective use of situation like that. Obviously, I can't speak to every situation, but it's more likely that it would be used on a phone, on a laptop, on something that someone carries with them all the time, not a 30 day old picture of a point in time of a particular vehicle. Okay. All right. And then so regarding the third party platforms involved in the FLOC ecosystem, what are the steps you can describe for us to take care of our data so there's no data leakage from one of your partners? What do you say partners? Well, I think about the Amazon Web servers and the servers, the camera companies, the transport companies, the, you know, there's a whole host of application providers that make up any product flow, including yours. So I'm curious, just, you know, how do you maintain operational security with these players? Absolutely. So we make all our own cameras. These are not, we don't, you know, buy from a Nokia factory or a camera factory. We make all of our cameras in-house. In addition to our software, all of it is in-house. We do use Amazon Web servers. We have a robust data security mechanism, including our new chief of information security officers. We have a new partnership that does penetrative testing on our servers. We have SOC 2, Type 2, ISO 27001. We go above and beyond to make sure that the data that we are protecting stays protected. And that includes regular audits, independent audits, which we make available on our trust website for all of our customers to download. And we update regularly. Most of them are annual. Some of them are more than annual, but it's something we take extremely seriously. Thank you. Thank you. So at this time, if there are no more questions, I'd like to move us on to public comment. There are a significant number of people in this room, and there are some folks online as well, but we will be limiting public comment to three hours. That will be two hours in person and one hour online. So I would ask that if you have public comment on this item, if you could please come forward. And a reminder to folks, if you didn't hear me say earlier, if there's someone that's speaking on behalf of your group, you're welcome to have that person speak and stand behind them. And as usual, you can also give your minute of time to folks. Could you please be quiet while I'm giving the overview so that folks can hear? Thank you. So as usual, you can give a minute of your time to another individual, only one time, and one person can speak for up to four minutes. So that means three people would be giving them a minute of their time. I ask that you please try and organize that ahead of time so that we're not trying to figure out who's giving you the minute in the time because it eats away from the comment period. So, yes, did you? Sorry. Yes. So I would like to make a motion to suspend the rules and limit the comment period to three hours and a second from Council Member Trejo. OK. Can I ask one question? Yes. Is there a mechanism? Do you want to all in person, person and online? Or it will be yet. I was saying so two hours in person, one hour online. Is there any interest in doing any alternating? That's the only other thing. Is anyone interested in not? I don't know. I'm willing to go with your discretion within. Yeah. Yeah. I'm willing to go. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. OK, go ahead. Can we take the roll, please? OK. On the order. Any public comment procedures? Council Member Casarwani? Yes. Kaplan? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Trejo? Aye. Council Member O'Keefe is currently absent. Blackie? Yes. Lunapara? Yes. Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mary Ishii? Yes. OK. Motion carries. OK, thank you. Please come on up. So 640. Evening to everyone. My name is Brenda Grisham and I just had to make one statement. This is my second time here and I have never heard anybody ask how many lives have flock saved? How many girls have they stopped from being trafficked? How many businesses they have recovered their property? Haven't heard any of that. We all care about the immigrants, but there are residents here that want safety. And we want you guys to take that account. My daughter and my grandchildren live here. And I want to be sure that their lives and the things that go on with them is important. My son was murdered in Oakland. His case is unsolved. And I guarantee you, I'm fighting for flock cameras in any city I can. Thank you. Thank you. Come on up. My name is Veronica Fooksen. I want to thank all of you for the questions you've asked. I think all of you mean well. You care about all of us in this community. You're committed to this community. I think, however, it's naive to be listening to what has been said to you and think that cities have canceled because there's no good reason. Cities have canceled El Cerrito last night. Last thing I want to say, the very last thing I want to say is that flock needs Berkeley more than Berkeley needs flock. Flock needs Berkeley, a sanctuary city as a poster boy for a community that people care in, in which people care about their population to do business with this company. Flock is not the only company. Please be thinking about this. We don't want to be a nepotism. Thank you. Come on, Linda. Come on up. Good evening, Council. My name is Linda Livenbaum, and I'm reading a statement from Friends of Adeline, which let everyone from Friends of Adeline please stand or wave. Thank you. Friends of Adeline strongly opposes the Berkeley Police Department's proposed expansion of its flock surveillance camera network. This proposal represents the largest expansion of surveillance infrastructure in the city's history and directly undermines Berkeley's long standing commitment to being a sanctuary city. Approving this contract moves Berkeley toward a more militarized model of policing with serious and disproportionate consequences for the people of our black, brown, and immigrant communities. Expanding surveillance does not make our communities safer. It increases the risk of over-policing, data misuse, and civil rights violations. Flock's track record raises significant concerns despite what we've heard tonight. It is well documented that this company shares data with federal law enforcement agencies. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Linda. Hello, my name is Sally Nelson. You're right to be concerned about providing safety for all of Berkeley. The recent announcement by the ACLU reveals that Flock now claims that all data gathered by its surveillance belongs to Flock and not to the city of Berkeley. Flock may then share that data with any agency or person of its choosing, including ICE and the CBP. This makes all of us less safe. Whether we are people of color or undocumented immigrants, naturalized citizens, or citizens by birth whose beliefs may be too progressive for Flock's opinions, we are all at risk for being detained, imprisoned, or subjected to violence. We all want Berkeley to be more safe and the contract with Flock. The safety of your constituents depends upon your voting no on having any contract with Flock. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Thank you. Hello. I'm Jane Scannilberry from the.. If you could speak into the mic, please. Jane Scannilberry from the Commission on Labor. And in a meeting recently, we unanimously voted to urge the city to suspend its contract with Flock and to halt any further expansion of the program because due to the company's well-documented use of overseas sweatshop labor. These are some examples from the letter. First of all, just about the sweatshop procurement ordinance. In 2009, the Berkeley City Council passed the sweatshop free procurement ordinance. While the ordinance is specific to the procurement of apparel, the wording is an expression of Berkeley's fundamental values as a municipality. The city of Berkeley.. And this is from the ordinance. The city of Berkeley recognizes a public interest in avoiding payments to vendors who maintain sweatshop.. This person is giving our minute, too. Thank you. ...including below substance wages, excessive long working hours, et cetera. As documented in both international media and academic studies, Flock outsources much of its work to low-paid gig workers in the Philippines. These contractors do data annotations, often referred to as crowd work, in which workers view thousands of hours of video annotating the data to help train the AI algorithms. This is low-wage, monotonous, yet high-pressure work, and the workers doing this analysis are exposed to substandard labor conditions, including extremely low rates of pay and lack of labor rights and protections. To outsource much of its data analysis to low-paid workers in the Global South, companies like Flock can maximize their own profits by evading U.S. minimum wage and working condition protections. Thank you. My name is Martino. I know that some of you will be voting against this contract extension, but that most of you will probably vote for it. And I want to say that what that means is you are standing in opposition to the momentum of other cities in this area that are voting it down, and that you are standing against the tendency in history to get rid of this kind of socialist whatever it is, and that you are standing in the way of history. And I want to say to you that if you are going to vote for this contract extension, what you need to do is resign. Thanks so much. Hello, so my ally Rhonda is actually going to be giving me a minute. Oh, there you are. Okay, go ahead. All right, cool. So, hello, my name is Manny. I've actually been a part of taking down Flock in six jurisdictions, and I hope that you can be the seventh. All right, so I'm going to start off addressing the lie that he said. Their patent, their own patent that they filed to the U.S. patent office, clearly states that their technology is capable of categorizing people based on height and weight, race and gender, clothes and accessories worn, and animals and bicycles and cars, which is how they might advertise themselves. Furthermore, their 2021 DHS policy actually requires that all ALPR vendors, including Flock, not leave a trail of ice in any audit logs except in audit logs made available only to them.

Segment 4

So when you go and do an audit and you don't find ICE in there, that's a false negative. Furthermore, in Section 4 of your contract, there is a worldwide rights clause. And like my ally alluded to earlier, the reason why it's there is because they send the data overseas so that Filipino gig workers can analyze it for the training of the AI system. Also, another lie that he said was that no more California agencies are sharing data nationally. That is not true. El Cajon is very much still sharing data nationally, and they're actually countersuing the state of California because they want to keep sharing nationally. And if you guys want an anecdote on how Border Patrol has used this technology, an elementary school teacher named Marimar Martinez was tracked and hunted down using flock cameras for over two weeks. They shot her five times and then bragged about it with each other over text messages, saying that they shot her five times and she had seven bullet holes. Put that in your book, boys. Why do we have to wait for someone in our community to be harmed by this technology to get rid of it? We should just get rid of it. Please vote no on flock. Is the city of Berkeley really going to pass a mega plan to create a surveillance city? That's what we're really asking here today. I want to read a quote from Edward Snowden. No system of mass surveillance has existed in a society that we know of to this point that has not been abused. And so we can expect that kind of thing. And when the police say this is going to save us money, how many police officers are going to get laid off so that we can pay for this project? You know, none are getting laid off. It's not saving us any money. And those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. That's Ben Franklin. So we should think about that. This is Big Brother here in the latest expansion of the surveillance state. This is an investor driven plan, much like the expansion of the prison state in the 90s. So let's be clear. Flock is the hardware that shuts down free speech. So when you guys vote for this, you're shutting down free speech because this is going to be a surveillance system on all of us. Thank you. Hello, my name is Johnny Kutcher and I'm a member of Bay Area Juice for Justice. And I'm here today to reject the proposal to urge you to reject the proposal to use FOX surveillance technology. In April 2025, the California Highway Patrol conducted a search on behalf of ICE that simultaneously reached 845 separate California agency databases through FOX sharing network. Because of how far FOX architecture works, it connected to all connected agencies and function as a drag net, touching the camera data of nearly every California law enforcement FOX customer, including communities throughout Contra Costa County. This is a centralized Orwellian drag net surveillance technology that makes our immigrants less safe. This is a and it's against our sanctuary city policy. I urge you to vote no on this contract. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Karina Jagra. I'm a resident of longtime resident of District 2, nearly 30 year resident of Berkeley. It's heated and we live in a really polarized world right now. And it's really easy for folks to back into their corners and entrench and kind of plug your ears and start, say, you know, entrenching in your position. Right. And I want to we're not all on the same side. We have a real substantive difference of opinion, but we are all here because we care about this community. We care about each other and we want Berkeley residents to be safe. And the question is, how can we best do that? It is an absolutely false dichotomy to set up this, you know, safety versus civil liberties. We deserve and we can have both. And so when council member O'Keefe here is saying that she doesn't feel personally comfortable with certain elements of the drone usage, there's a whole lot of people that aren't comfortable with many parts of this. Thank you. Thanks so much. I'm Rebecca Kenny, the suspect in the yellow shirt. I live in El Cerrito, but I grew up in Berkeley. My parents still live here. My partner works here, and I maintain deep connections to the city. On Tuesday, the El Cerrito City Council voted to end its contract with Flock. And here are some concerns our council members cited. First, our city was initially presented with a new contract, which we were told was better. But then our police chief recommended we retain the old contract instead with no reason given. Clearly, Flock did not negotiate in good faith. Second, we live under an authoritarian federal government. The Supreme Court could change the law at the drop of a hat through the shadow docket to compel Flock to share data. California law won't protect us either. The state is currently being compelled to share information about undocumented immigrants with driver's licenses. If the state can't protect itself, how can it protect us? Is this political environment a safe time for using experimental mass surveillance? Third, Flock only fixes issues after other groups call out their failures. They do not make proactive fixes. Fourth, Flock claims its product is the cameras, but it's actually the mass aggregation of data. General Cerrito, cancel the contract. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Erin. I am a resident of District 3. I am angry. I am embarrassed that we even have to be here because our council might prioritize the interests of Flock's corporate tech and police brutality over the constituents who voted for you. If BPD won't even be honest about basic facts about Flock, we have no reason to trust how and why they'll use it. Two PAB members resigned, citing BPD actively makes their job impossible by obstructing records of BPD misconduct. Frankly, I don't trust Flock to be held accountable if BPD refuses to be held accountable. BPD has made it clear that they do not represent Berkeley laws and safety. Council members, know that a vote for Flock betrays the people of Berkeley in favor of your own comfort of safety that doesn't even exist. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm just going to be really honest here. I don't think anyone wants to be here tonight. We've been doing this for months and months and months. So please just do your job and listen to your constituents. We have been telling you for months to not vote for this. So if you don't do your job, we can always not reelect you. If you're not up for reelection, we can recall you. So please, just do your job. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. My name is Megin Wasad and I'm a small business owner in Berkeley and a long-time resident. The reality is that militarized policing and surveillance technologies only assist to our slide into fascism. As we know by the plight of the Palestinian people as in Gaza, the quick murder of educators, organizers, and key figures in Gaza in cold blood within the matter of a few months was only possible through surveillance technology. The Israeli fascist government operates by exterminating those. And what separates us from Gazans? We are people just like they are. And with the slide to fascism that is quickly descending upon us, I don't trust any of these surveillance technologies and I don't trust the future of a militarized police state. I hope you vote no against this. Thank you. How many people in this room are for FLOC? Who's for FLOC? Who's not for FLOC? Who's not for FLOC? All right. So we know we have a council member that went to the 47th inauguration and it seems like y'all are trying to be fascists right here in Berkeley. And we're not accepting that. Are we accepting fascism and surveillance? So, no to FLOC. We know you can't trust what anybody up here said except for this one person on the end here. For the PAB. Otherwise, I don't know if Mr. FLOC is lying or what, but he's been called out. So don't believe the hype. No to FLOC. Say it with me. No to FLOC. No to FLOC. Would anyone like to give me a minute? Yeah, one, two, three. I think that's all I need. Thank you. Oh, who raised their hand real quick? There's one, two, three. Wait, sorry, are you taking how many minutes? Are you taking three? I'm just taking three. Okay, so sorry. One, two, I missed the third person. Three total? Okay, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor and council members. Thank you, former council member Cheryl Davila for your testimony. Thank you, council members Bartlett, Tregub, O'Keefe, who isn't here, and Blackabee and Lunapara for your testimony. I appreciate it. This is really about whether Berkeley normalizes a future where ordinary public life becomes permanently searchable. We're told that these systems are narrow, temporary, and only for serious crime, but history shows us the same pattern again and again. Today's exception becomes tomorrow's standard. And meanwhile, the underlying conditions people are actually struggling with remain unresolved. Surveillance doesn't lower rent. It does not house people. It does not fix inequality. It does not rebuild trust in public institutions. Thank you. Technology is not a substitute for good governance. What it does do is expand systems of monitoring over ordinary civic life. And when cameras are placed on Telegraph, Bancroft, and Durant in District 7, this is no longer some narrowly targeted security measure. These are major public corridors, bus stops, economic streets, and some of the most accessible civic spaces in Berkeley. Students, workers, immigrants, unhoused residents, organizers, shoppers, and neighbors move through these spaces every single day. Privacy is part of public safety. A democratic city should not normalize mass data collection without strict limits, independent oversight, public transparency, and proof that these systems actually improve public safety instead of simply expanding surveillance infrastructure. And if I'm being honest, they really shouldn't be used at all. The burden is not on the public to accept being watched. The burden is on government to justify why it should. Thank you for your time and your testimony. I do want to say really quickly that I do believe that surveillance technology should be limited. I do believe the city of Berkeley should be the ones that own this technology and encrypt it end to end. I do believe that the facial recognition should be scattered. The data should be poisoned. The AI should be off the table. You all have a chance and a right to make the right call this day. Vote no. This city is not ready for the artificial intelligence that's going to come in the next round of flock data. This city is not ready to hold guard blocks in place if that data is hacked by a malicious actor. And so I think this city is ready to take it seriously that no, we do not want flock. No, we do not want surveillance. We are a sanctuary city. And that means we protect everyone regardless of whether they're a criminal or not because they have due process and need to be seen in a court of law. So I thank you for your time and your energy. I thank you all for your energy and your time. And if anyone wants to hear more, again, my name is Aiden Hill. I'm running for Berkeley City Council District 7. So I really look forward to working with all of you on this. And again, our city deserves sanctuary. Thank you. Thank you. I was given an extra minute. All right. Hi, everyone. So I agree that it's a false dichotomy that we can only have civil liberty protections or safety. I do think we can have both. But when it comes to police doing their jobs, I do think they deserve a lot of support. However, history has shown again and again that the federal government has very little regard for our constitutional rights. So the assurances made today about contractual obligations and processes are not persuasive to me. And we can think about COINTELPRO, when the FBI surveilled, infiltrated, and sabotaged Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panthers, and the anti-war movement, the Church Committee's revelations about the CIA and NSA spying on American citizens, the NSA's mass warrantless wiretapping after 9-11, exposed by Edward Snowden, the NYPD's documented surveillance of entire Muslim American communities, FBI infiltration of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and the Standing Rock water protectors tracked by private contractors working hand-in-hand with police. There's just a very long history of inevitably this data getting into the Fed's hands. So I know the police need assistance, and they deserve assistance. I know that all of you council members are here just trying to do your jobs, and I really appreciate your time. This resistance, I'm sure, is inconvenient to many, but I think we need to recognize the broader context that we're in. And I think that this may be a monkey's paw. I think many people here ultimately have no confidence that a company like this actually has the technological capability to actually keep the federal government out. We heard tonight that they have new security professionals, but I don't think many respectable information security officers would take a job with a company like this, so I ask that we find another way. Thank you. Good job, everyone. Thank you. Sorry, who's got .. One minute? I have two minutes. Two minutes. Two extra minutes. The city attorney told you, Flock's seeming willingness to agree to major overhauls the city proposes, coupled with widespread media reports of other jurisdictions canceling their Flock contracts, which likely has put financial pressure on the company, suggests that Flock may be willing to agree to major changes to secure a deal even though its technical team will not in practice be able to implement those changes, said your city attorney. And from Flock Safety's own website, here's how it rewards its top salespeople, a one-week group vacation that they call Eagles Club, and this is what they say. Eagles Club isn't a participation trophy. You have to outperform, outwork, and out-execute in a room full of elite sellers. Eagles Club is not something that appears at the end of the year as a surprise. It becomes a steady motivator throughout. For James, that motivation extends beyond the individual. He said, It's always in the back of my mind. My wife's asking, Where is it this year? We're both invested in getting there. This job brings the whole household into it, the winds, the stress, everything. It's a culture thing. Everyone's thinking about it. It's competitive, but in a motivating way. That shared energy pushes people to raise their level over time. That's their story. It pushes people to raise their level over time. That's their salespeople. These are the people that are telling you how much FUT cares about keeping our data secure. They're top salespeople, salivating for a contract with progressive Berkeley. I once worked for a company like that where the salespeople sold systems promising that they could do things that they actually couldn't do. That company did go out of business, but it took a long time. Thanks, Kit. Thank you. Good evening. I'm John Koehner, the CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association and a 36-year resident of Berkeley. We went through a strategic planning process last year, and by far, by far, safety was issue number one with all of our stakeholders in our community survey. Copies for all of you. You're in receipt of emails from University Avenue merchants. Visit Berkeley. The importance of safety is paramount for employees, customers, residents, and visitors. Today, I had a conversation with a merchant who's been 45 years in the downtown, said their employees don't feel safe. Their people are being assaulted. They're asking for help from our ambassadors and PD. We are implementing next year in January the cost of $250,000, $60,000 a year, a safety ambassador program because our stakeholders don't feel safe in our downtown. These systems have proven track record. Look at Berkeley Scanner. Please do the right thing. Provide BPD, the tools, to provide a safe community for all of us. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Abigail Lesperance. I'm speaking on behalf of the Berkeley Immigration Collaborative, or BIC, where five Berkeley-based organizations with decades of experience serving immigrants and asylum seekers in the Bay Area. I am also a District 5 resident. I was also born and raised in Berkeley. My kids go to Berkeley schools, and I work in Berkeley. This city council has heard from the BIC extensively about the dangers of contracting with FLOC. At this time, we want to make one thing clear. If you vote yes on this contract, you're breaking your commitment to sanctuary, that commitment you made last year in September. And you're also doing it in the exact moment in this country's history when sanctuary matters most. You all voted on that. This technology is harmful to immigrants, yes, but it's also harmful to unhoused neighbors who already live under surveillance and constant displacement. It's harmful to Black and brown residents because this technology is documented to be racially biased, and the people it misidentifies are the people who are already over-policed. It's harmful to the residents in this room who leverage their privilege to show up as observers and as protesters. It is harmful to every person in Berkeley who might one day stand up to an authoritarian federal government. This is not a symbolic battle. It is a battle to protect sanctuary and democratic control of our city, our technology, and our privacy, and our private data. 79 jurisdictions to date have already canceled their flock contracts. They did it for a reason. In some, the police chiefs themselves led the effort. Just this week, El Cerrito chose sanctuary over flock. You can, too. The tide is changing, and the council can now choose to be on the right side of history or to bear the responsibility for violating our rights and our safety during the time of authoritarian overreach. The time is now. According to public records requests, the federal government accessed Berkeley Police Department's flock data 86,000 times in two years. You say that the contract terms will protect us, but our own city attorney is telling you that no contract terms will completely protect Berkeley's data, and it will expose Berkeley to between $30 and $60 million in legal liability. I was surprised to hear nobody ask the city attorney any questions about that. If you approve this contract tonight, you are doing so against the advice of your own council. This is a new attorney. That is not good governance. Yesterday, Sarah Hamid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told El Cerrito City Council how FLOC's network architecture is broad, searchable, multi-jurisdiction network where local data is repurposed, relabeled, and reached through side doors that will make it impossible for cities to monitor. What this means is that we do not and will not know the extent to which Berkeley's data is being used by FLOC's AI modeling or federal agencies. The Police Accountability Board found that no other jurisdiction uses one vendor for all of its surveillance technology and warned you against fully integrating all of Berkeley's data with FLOC in this way without first analyzing the vulnerabilities. To conclude, I want to leave you with the story of Marimar Martinez that another gentleman referenced. She's a U.S. citizen who is a teaching assistant who ICE tracked using FLOC, and they shot her five times. Luckily, they didn't kill her. Martinez said she would see bullet scars for her life, but she said in her congressional hearing, and I quote, but perhaps even worse, the mental scars will always be there as a reminder of the time my own government tried to execute me. Thank you. Applause Madam City Attorney, Madam City Attorney, did you want to share your statement? Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. Our office is aware that a privileged memo from our office was leaked to the press under established California law. The attorney-client privilege rests with the city council, the governing body of the city, and unless you choose to waive it, it's preserved because you haven't waived it. We will not discuss this leaked memo and urge the council members and commissioners and staff to similarly refrain from discussing the contents. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. Hi, I'm Andrew. I'm a District 2 voter who has voted for some of you up here tonight, and I'm really hoping I didn't make a foolish decision. I needed to make sure I come here tonight and remind you that many people fought and died for my First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendment rights, and I'm not here going to be negotiating with some tech company over them. Many people behind me with ethics can and will make great points regarding how mass surveillance violates their First and Fourth Amendments rights, and I'll make a case for the Eighth. If your history teacher was as good as mine, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Every animal, except maybe the honey badger, will have a natural stress response to being followed, stalked, or if it feels a prey animal is there. Humans have the same response. If you set up cameras everywhere, you're creating a giant psychological torture device. This violates the Eighth Amendment. I'll repeat again. I am not going to negotiate over my First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendment rights. Cancel the contract. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Ishii and council members. My name is Musa Wodkar, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and we want to express our opposition to the proposed FLOC expansion and any ALPR alternatives. To start, FLOC is patently unsafe. FLOC's hackable nature makes Berkeley liable for SB34 violations. FLOC has been proven to be hacked within 30 seconds due to 51 security vulnerabilities. In one instance, a user was able to access a 24-7 live stream of a children's playground in the Bay Area. That is terrifying, and that is unconscionable. FLOC and ALPRs are a threat to Berkeley residents at large. Berkeley residents need to know that when they drive to seek legal assistance, when they go to their place of worship, or when they attend a protest opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza, that they need to know that they won't be surveilled, kidnapped, or killed by ICE. Berkeley residents should feel safe enough to move through their city without a large shadow looming over them. Please meet the moment. Say no to MAGA mass surveillance. Thank you. Thank you. Please stand up for public safety and for fact-driven data. What's true is over 6,000 cities and communities chose FLOC because they are effective, because they help stop crime, because they work. Less than 1% did not back out of FLOC, so you represent the constituents that elected you, and they are moderates. They are not the extremists you see here that were rejected across the country and came to Berkeley because the beacon of radical extremism. Stand up for your constituents who could not stay here till 2 in the morning because that's how long your meetings last, last time, and they have to go to work. So vote with the 99%. Stand up for public safety. There was a child trafficker, rapist, that tortured a girl and lit her on fire and FLOC put him away. That person was in Berkeley. Thank you. Shh. Hold on. Before you speak, folks, you need to be respectful and let folks speak. That impacts the time that everyone has to speak, so please let them finish. It's also disrespectful. Go ahead. Thank you. So my name is Grant Thompson. I'm a District 6 resident. I raise my kids here. I'm a lawyer here. I am not an ideologue. I'm not an extremist. I'm your constituent. I wanted to comment. I saw an editorial that the pro-FLOC council members had written, and I wanted to address a couple of points that they made in that editorial. I asked if they think about it. So it said, as a defense to FLOC, FLOC does not directly give data to ICE or other federal agencies. I'd like for you to sit with that a second and think about how you're going to feel about defending that to a woman who has seen a loved one taken away and abducted by ICE because it was indirectly shared. That's an admission that these paper restrictions that you're talking about aren't going to work. We all know this data is going to get out, so you can cancel it now or you can wait until you get sued and people start getting abducted. Thank you. Thanks so much. That's going to cede me one minute. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. My name is Louis. I live in Berkeley, and I had a lot of points I wanted to make today, but I just want to respond to some of the points that Mr. FLOC made in response to Council Member Blackaby. He said that if FLOC receives subpoenas from the federal government, that they inform the federal government that they do not own the data and they also immediately inform the local agency that the data is being requested for. That ignores the fact that there are many well-established pathways for federal subpoenas that include a gag order, and that also directly ignores the fact that federal subpoenas are not for the owner of the data. They're for anybody who has access to the data, and there's a reason that FLOC maintains this massive database of all of this data. A single subpoena from the federal government to FLOC can track the license plate of someone across the entire United States, including all of California, and there can be no way of a local agency or jurisdiction being made aware of that. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, there were hundreds of thousands of national security letters, which are these kind of subpoenas, sent by the FBI over the last decade. 97% of them included this kind of gag order, which would mean that the person being subpoenaed cannot notify anyone else, and it's patently ridiculous to think that they are going to be able to just say, oh, well, Berkeley technically owns the data, even though I have access to all the data right here. That's not what's happening. FLOC is not the company for us to be trusting with this kind of thing. There's a reason that they have this massive dragnet of data, and also there's a reason that FLOC said they have immigration and reproductive filters. They don't block immigration requests. They have filters because they specifically market their services to jurisdictions that are using this to crack down on abortion seekers and crack down on immigrants. And when Berkeley gets invaded like Minnesota did, there's going to be nothing we can do to stop this because it's already happening now. Your time's up. Thank you.

Segment 5

Police overtime is already eating up millions of dollars, while critical safety net services are under threat. You cannot in good conscience allow, for example, health housing and community services programs that prevent crises, create real public safety, and instill dignity to be placed on the chopping block while increasing militarized policing and racial profiling to target the already most over-policed community members. We need to balance our budget, not gamble on a bad decision that's extremely unpopular in Berkeley. The 1021 CSU board, COPE delegates, and concerned members oppose the FLOC contract. Prioritize Berkeleans over billionaires, services over surveillance, constituents over corporate contracts, and workers over waste. No FLOC. Thanks, Jocelyn. Thanks, Jocelyn. I have a couple people seating in time. I have one, I have two, and I have one back there. Okay, yeah, just so I see this person here, and then the person with the pink, and then Tosh. Okay, got it. Three. All right. I'm not quite sure who you counted, but.. Okay, my name is Andrea Pritchett, and I'm with Berkeley COP Watch, and I just want, and I'm also a District 2 resident, and I just want to assure you all that you do not care about our safety more than we do. So we're not here saying we don't care about safety. We're here because we care desperately about our safety, and we perceive the threat differently than you do. What I want to say also is that, let's be clear that the crime rate in Berkeley is going down. It was going down before you employed all the ALPRs and the, I'm sorry, the FLOC, the new FLOC cameras. So that's a trend that's already happening, and I do, I would defy anybody to come up with an independent research that says that FLOC cameras are associated with crime declines. What we have is FLOC representatives and cops telling you that. Where is the reliable research? Where's the reliable data that's independent? We are fully aware that we're being asked to trust FLOC. I want to, I want a comment about national lookup. According to CBS, the Venturas County Sheriff's Office said it had disabled FLOC's national lookup feature in June 2023 to comply with California's law borrowing, barring local agencies from sharing automatic license plate reader data with out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies. However, earlier this month, deputies learned that several California law enforcement agencies reported that the national lookup feature had somehow been reactivated without any explanation. My question, whether it's deception, deviousness, or incompetence, how, if this was a job interview, would you hire them? Would you hire them? I'm asking you also to consider that the people of Minneapolis who protested, they were told that the authorities will be investigating everybody who participated in in the protests that, that, and they've got 300 FLOC cameras. The CEO of FLOC recently referred to organizers with a group called DFLOC as domestic terrorists simply because they're doing what we're doing right now. If our current government, we have, we have this, this, we've given this council a clear mandate about how we want public safety to look. We did it five years ago and we have not lost track of that vision. We want public safety. We want to reimagine it and we believe that if there's a crisis with cops and there's not enough cops, we already told you. We need a non-police response to calls that don't require somebody with a gun on their hip. That is a clear way forward that will leave the pressure on these guys and make us all feel a lot better. And, and you go back and read the city auditor's report. This is not new to you. Also, the issue of liability is real. As you well know, leaks happen. And if FLOC had leaked data, that would be a liability that could cost this city millions of dollars. So you see how easy it is. I also want to make you aware of a bill called the Surveillance Accountability Act that is currently before Congress. And what they propose to do is to restrict warrantless government surveillance by requiring judicial warrants based on probable cause for accessing personal data, including information from data brokers. If that legislation goes forward, then the fundamental premise of this whole totalitarian FLOC infrastructure gets the floor taken out from under it. Instead of a cop casually like, where's my girlfriend, and going in there and and checking FLOC's database, they would have to get a judicial warrant. And that fundamentally alters what is being proposed here today. Thank you. I've got one minute from, yeah, the person in the back. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council, our beautiful community, and Mr. FLOC. I am Solly Albert, Chair of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, speaking in my own capacity. I'm speaking tonight in opposition to any relationship between the City of Berkeley and FLOC surveillance. I think that we shouldn't do this because it's a reckless, irresponsible thing to do during Trump's reign. When ICE has shown it is willing to use every tool in its disposal, legal or otherwise, in order to assault our immigrant community. But even if that weren't the case, this no-bid contract is a massive boondoggle for a city facing a multi-million dollar deficit. The draft budget proposes to lay off city workers, cut services, and reduce funding for affordable housing, which, unlike FLOC surveillance, is actually the number one priority of Berkeley voters and every poll that we've ever done. This, this is a multi-million dollar no-bid contract. And even apart from that, the minute the city approves it, you're going to be sued. And that's a multi-million dollar lawsuit. And even apart from that, the minute those cameras go up, they're going to be targeted systematically for, you know, for for decoration. Yeah, and that's not a threat for me. That's not, I'm not urging that. That's just a reality. We've seen that already throughout the country and in our neighbor in Oakland, right? So how is this council going to spend public money? There are going to be multiple measures on the ballot this November, including potentially one from the city council proposing a unfortunately regressive sales tax, where the people will be asked to tax themselves to fund city services. Is this council really going to throw the public's money into surveillance that we do not want, then get sued for multiple millions of dollars, more of the public's money, and then have those cameras all destroyed, and then tell the public, will you give us some more money and raise your sales taxes? I think that's a really stupid idea. Thank you. Hi, I believe I have two minutes from a friend over here and over here. Thank you, three minutes total. Hi, my name is Leah Martins. I'm a Berkeley resident of District 3. I'm a local pastor. I'm also an organizer with East Bay Singing Resistance, and I'm here to call you in through song again. Last time we had comment on this, you may remember I sang to you an invitation to change your mind. If you were supporting the FLOT contract today, I'm going to sing for you a new song and invite any others here who want to sing to join me. And this is an invitation to affirm that how we spend our money matters, and budgets have moral implications. And we as a community are calling you to spend our money in ways that honor our community's values, which are being named here very clearly tonight. So, you've gotta put your money where your heart is. Fund the world you long to see. It's time we put our money where our heart is. Toward every human, toward every human, living healthy, living free. Let's try that together. Gotta put your money where your heart. Fund the world you want to see. Fund the world you long to see. It's time we put, it's time we put our money where our heart is. Toward every human, living healthy, living. Let's do that verse one more time. Gotta put your money where your heart is. Fund the world, fund the world you want to see. It's time we put our money where our heart is. Toward every human, living healthy, living free. Amazing. So we're going to do it a little bit more. But now we're going to say it isn't flock that keeps us safe. It's you and me, right? Yeah, so that goes like this. So you can put your money where your heart. It isn't flock. It isn't flock that keeps us safe. It's you and me. It's time we put our money where our heart. Toward all our neighbors. All our neighbors, living healthy, living free. Well, it's time to put your money where our heart is. It isn't flock. It isn't flock that keeps us safe. It's you and me. It's time we put our money where our heart is. All our neighbors, living healthy, living free. All of Berkeley. All of Berkeley, living healthy, living free. Every human. Every human, living healthy, living free. All our families! All our families, living healthy, living free. All our neighbors! All our neighbors, living healthy, living free. One more time! Every human! Every human, living healthy, living free. Thank you friends! Okay George, follow that up! Wait and see. I got a minute from the crocheter. Okay. Thank you. Catherine, okay. So, George Lippman, I'm a member of the.. George, talk into the mic. Member of the Peace and Justice Commission and I'm speaking with the, at the request of the Chair, Pastor Dwayne Phillips, who sends his regrets. In this complex issue, there are some things that are very clear. We now know that the city's own attorney raised strong concerns about the liability of 30 to 60 million dollars if we go forward with this proposal. Council, you're responsible for the fiscal health of this city. To go forward with this contract expansion would be a gross failure of your fiduciary duty. We love Berkeley and we want to help keep it safe, physically as well as financially. Please take seriously your responsibility as well. Then, send this troubling contract back to the drawing board. In a larger frame, this is a time when the hard one reimagining public safety initiative, essentially finding positive solutions to social problems, is on really hard times. The specialized care unit is no more. BurkDOT never got off the ground. I want to share at this moment a few of the findings and functions that are contained in the Peace and Justice Commission's mandate. Findings. H, the lettered. Our best protection lies in initiating, devising, and promulgating peaceful and just policy alternatives. Finding J, it is the responsibility of one and all to labor hard for peace and justice within forums of appropriate scale. And two of the functions. Function C, help develop proposals for the city council and the school board for actions in furtherance of the goals of peace and justice and help publicize such actions in the community. Function F, develop ways to resolve conflict which do not involve violence and which may be applied on a local level as well as a national level. This is now the 40th anniversary of the Peace and Justice Commission. Please reach out to Peace and Justice Commission for help creating positive solutions. Strengthen the police accountability board and stop undermining it. Reach out to the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission. We are here to help. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I have three minutes. Right here. One, two, sorry. Three. Oh just three total. Got it. Three total. Yes. Thank you. Good evening city council. My name is Moni Gangopadhyay. I'm a resident in district one. I'm also a candidate for a city council in the same district. Before me are the representatives of one of the most knowledgeable, educated cities. Not just in the country, in the in the state or the country but the world. So it is surprising to me that a contract with FLOC would be considered, proposed rather and then be considered for a vote given all that we know about FLOC. The data is before us, right? All the data that we need. We've heard it from people who came before me and at the other meeting. I also want to address two things that I didn't hear addressed. We know from the city attorney that FLOC reactivated the national lookup feature after Ventura County right here in California deactivated it to comply with state law. FLOC did this without notice or explanation. So I wonder how we can trust FLOC around this feature when when asked about it earlier today. The other thing we know is that cities and towns who have asked to deactivate FLOC cameras, those cameras were not deactivated and they had to cover those cameras up. I didn't hear, forgive me if I missed it, but I didn't hear anything anything to address that. So I'm just wondering how we could go forward with an actor like FLOC with all these breaches of contracts, with all these civil rights violations and human constitutional rights violations that we're seeing across the country. I'm also seeing a lot of people working extremely hard to represent themselves before you and that's very painful to see because we elected you to represent us. And I'm not seeing that right now. I better move because I only have 30 seconds. Since I could not find a single reason, a single good reason to contract with FLOC, I came up with another list of reasons to contract with FLOC. I'd like to share them with you. Can I have another minute from someone? I'm so sorry. Thank you. I'd like to share my list with you. If we want to fall behind cities, big and small, we should contract with FLOC. If we want to bring the shame of choosing corporate rhetoric over community safety to our city, into our city, we should contract with FLOC. If we want to be on the wrong side of history in 2026, at a time we are living under a fascist national regime, we should contract with FLOC. If we want to support the goals of that fascist national regime and its unraveling of our civil rights, we should contract with FLOC. If we want to dishonor and undermine the struggle for free speech and the struggle to establish Berkeley as a sanctuary city, we should contract with FLOC. If you, City Council, want to turn your backs on the proud immigrants, people of color, queer, elders, youth, and disabled residents, and residents at large, you should contract with FLOC. Thanks. Thanks for your time. You have the power to save the soul of Berkeley, to be shining leaders, to be on the right side of history again. Your time is up. Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna take, are you gonna get extra time? Okay, can, can, I think we need to take a break, so I don't want to interrupt your time. So let's just take, yeah, we're gonna take, we are just about at almost one hour of two minutes shy, so we're gonna take a 10-minute break that does not count for the public speaking time. Thank you. Oh wait, sorry folks, sorry, one more thing. If you're standing in line and you're trying to keep your line, we've got cards and we're gonna give you numbers so that you can remember which order you're in. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. All right, are we starting back up? We are starting back up, folks. Please, please come back. We lost Nathan. I think Nathan is, was first in line. Yeah, it looked like it was Nathan, myself, then Moni Law. Kate Crusader. Okay, Nathan, come on up. Okay, everyone be quiet. It's Nathan's turn to speak. Nathan, how many minutes do you have? I think I got three. One there. He already yielded. One here. Two. Sorry, wait, the third one here. Oh, Ida. Okay, thank you. Who's the third? He raised his hand for somebody else. No, I got Ida. I got, no, no, you, you didn't raise your hand for someone else. I haven't seen you yet, so yeah, you're good. And Miss Betty. He was sitting over there before. I know, but I'm, I'm writing down who. Someone else switched, okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, so that's four minutes total. Go ahead. All righty, Madam Mayor and City Council, my name is Nathan Mizell. I am a rent board commissioner speaking as an individual. I am the former vice chair of the Police Accountability Board. I was the chair of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, and I served on the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group. The facts are not much different, folks, than they were when I spoke to you about two months ago. All of y'all know the facts. They've been told to you by the many public speakers here. They've been told to you in the many memos you've written. They've been told to you in the news reports. They've been told to you by your own city attorney. I want to mention here, I was quite critical last meeting of the city attorney's office. My bad, you, you've nailed the analysis on this one completely. Some of these paragraphs I would have written myself. Everyone with the qualities to understand the information, whether they're professionals, attorneys, activists, regular people in the public, folks who don't usually come to these meetings right here because this is important to them. Everyone understands there is no pace, no place for flock in our city. And I know at least four of you up there understand that too. I'm hoping for five, and you know, I saw the op-ed four of y'all put out. That's y'all's opinions. I don't think it's very well written, you know. I, I'm sorry. I gotta be honest. But I'm, I'm hoping that for the one council member we don't quite know yet what they might do, that there's some room for convincing. Because nothing's going to change these facts, folks. I've heard so much conversation, of course, around the numbers, and this prevents crime, and the chief tells you it prevents crime, and the guy paid by a flock to tell you it prevents crime is here as well. If you take the numbers from the op-ed, Lance, I think it was 52 confirmed reports. And again, every crime in the city, obviously serious crimes are serious, right? I've worked on these issues. I've been in courtrooms with folks who've been victims of crime. I take that seriously as well. If you take all of that at face value, no analysis of the data, it accounts for 0.52 percent of reported crime last year. That is the difference we are talking about with flock. This is not some miracle technology. It's not making a 20 percent reduction in crime, 10 percent reduction, not even a five percent reduction. It's making zero reduction. It's not what it does. The technology finds things after the facts. 0.52 percent improvement in clearance rate. 0.52 percent. A decimal percent improvement is what we're willing to sell out our values for in this city. I am not resigned to a future where fascist surveillance is the norm. I am not resigned to a future where our trans and immigrant neighbors are surveilled by a technologies company and their investors who support the orange man upstairs or maybe downstairs. I am not resigned to a future where a city that once dedicated itself to reimagining public safety, I was there, trust me, now decides that the only public safety we can be afforded is a mass surveillance network in the hands of a police chief who constantly violates city law. I am not resigned to a future where the voices of your constituents are profoundly ignored and are taken for granted and our safety is devalued for a technology company that doesn't give a damn about this city beyond signing a check. Thank you. Moni. Y'all can make the change. Nathan, it's Moni's turn. Thank you. You can make the right decision. Moni, it's your turn. Thank you, Mama Ayanna. Mayor, council, staff, and community, I speak in my personal capacity as a resident of Berkeley, a proud graduate of UC Berkeley, Go Bears, proud mom of Matthew Law, oh wait, I have to stop the clock. I forgot to get my extra minutes. Oh, I had some people offering. Can you please raise your hands with all those who offered? One, two, wait, wait, who's the second person? That's one. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't see you, Grace. I couldn't see you around. Grayson. Okay, I guess I just have two and that's it. Oh, I have another. What's your name here? Sorry, could you stand if I can so I can see? Yeah, thank you. Okay, I don't know your name. Thank you. So that's a total of four minutes. Yeah, I was going to say your honor. I'm an attorney in practice of 25 years. You've used 20 seconds so far, so you've got three minutes 40 seconds left. Go ahead. Thank you. I have a plea to each of you on the dais to follow the wise words of Maya Angelou. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. I also speak as a proud employee of the city of Berkeley and a member of SEIU 1021. It was one of many employees who received a letter a couple of weeks ago saying I'm on the chopping block after 15 years with the city, which I love working for. So I may be retired earlier than expected, but I have bumping rights. But I don't want to eliminate a newer employee and have them lose their job so I can keep mine. I ask you, is this worth it to pay for this and to lose good city employees, to lose the wellness, the heating, a warming center that's on the chopping block? Other things are on the chopping block that are essential cares and needs of the city. I ask you and I ask you to think of this finances. Flocks cost is too much in litigation, prior trial lawyer of 25 years continue to go practice in Washington state. Other cities, 50 other cities have contracted and ended their contracts for reasons of irregularity and illegality and exposure to federal offices of police that should not have had our information, but they did. Why would we subject ourselves with financial losses under litigation as well, as well as not being safe? What's the safety? I helped start the Berkeley Community Safety Coalition with a number of community members here. The definition of safety is that we feel no harm, we feel no loss, we feel community connection, we feel no danger, we feel no injury. There are many people who have been harmed by flock and we should not be among them. Finally, we have Berkeley values that I plead to you to sustain. In Berkeley, I was proud to be part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and Nelson Mandela thanked the people of Berkeley for our work. He would not be happy with you going with flock. Also, our city, Mayor Gus Newport blessed him and had a loss, a lack of tear gas, police dogs, and helicopters. They did not bring us safety, but community did because he hired people that were black community members, community members for the groups that were all part of the force of safety. Again, not for harm or danger, injury, or loss, but for safety. Finally, there are words I'd like to share in my last minute. I lost my sister six weeks ago to cancer and she was a lawyer as well and my parents taught me to stand up for justice. They taught me the words of Micah in the Bible, 6-8, to walk humbly, to act justly, and to love mercy. That's the city of Berkeley that I am proud of and hope that you will sustain by your proper vote tonight. No on flock, please, dear God, please. Thanks, Monique. I'm getting another minute. Oh, okay. Sorry. I have 34 seconds. Oh, I don't. Oh, error on the clock. She saw 30. I don't think you can give your.. You were finished, right, Monique? I guess I'm finished. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Okay, next person, please. Thank you.

Segment 6

My name is Xochitl Sanchez, and I'm a statewide organizing manager with the California Immigrant Policy Center, here in solidarity with the people of Berkeley. I come from Los Angeles County, where for more than 11 months, the federal government has unconstitutionally and illegally raided worksites, school graduations, day labor centers, churches, and community gatherings to target street vendors. From L.A., Long Beach, Ontario, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota, ICE not only separates families, they shoot to kill, and have executed U.S. citizens with impunity. Do not use FLOC to expand surveillance. As we have seen with the sharing of IRS information to target ITIN holders, and now the data sharing by the California DMV, the federal government will abuse this information and use it to terrorize you, you directly, your neighbors, observers, protesters, people of color, and the working poor. The city council must not invest in weaponized technology to criminalize the people of Berkeley. Thanks. Okay, shh. Folks, I know there's a lot of talking going on. Please. Okay. Hi, my name is Micah. I live in District 6, and I am a public school therapist and social worker. And when I go to work and I meet with kids and families, it's obvious who I serve. When FLOC exploits Filipino workers and meets with billionaire and MAGA stakeholders, it's obvious who they serve. Y'all are elected public servants, so it should be obvious who y'all serve. But it's not. So once again, you have a room full of constituents, beautiful constituents, pleading for y'all to listen to our FLOC disapproval. I can't believe I have to bite my nails wondering if our sanctuary city of Berkeley is going to listen to us or to listen to MAGA fascist funders. Who consider us extremists and terrorists, too. Right now, the deal does not make sense financially, morally. Thanks so much. Please let us rest. Thank you. Thank you. Micah Lyon. I was listening to this conversation that's going on about should this contract be accepted. And all this stuff is going on about what the compensation should be if something should go wrong. And this is insane. We're talking about somebody's life, somebody's kid being sent out of the country. And for Mr. FLOC here, this is just a cost of doing business. Every person who's kidnapped is maybe $200,000 out of their profits. It's nothing. It's a drop in the bucket. Yeah, really. Boo. So, you know, someday we're going to be able to overthrow capitalism. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I have one person giving their time. Could I get one more person to give me their time? If anybody has a.. Someone in the back is giving you time. Thank you. Thank you so much. Three minutes. Council members, my name is Derek Rodriguez. I'm a Berkeley Rent Board candidate, and I'm here speaking separately on behalf of the Cal Berkeley Democrats. I would first like to recognize the community gathered here today and remotely, a community upon which the discussions made today will either strengthen or fracture the ever precarious public trust in our institutions. By that, I mean the rapid expansion of a surveillance state, being weaponized in ways that threaten the very civil rights generations have fought to protect. When Benjamin Franklin spoke of liberty over security, could he have imagined that our law-abiding residents would be the primary targets of the Patriot Act, an act that has been in place longer than many of us in this room were alive for, a weapon that was used to discredit our Islamic community, and now we are expected to sacrifice our community once more to flock, an organization willing to see our people removed from a society we have poured our blood, sweat, and tears into, all in the name of security and profit? Where now do the winds blow, council members? By advocating for flock, you have shown your distrust for the residents and the faces you see here today. You are forcing our immigrant community into hiding, but the greatest humiliation of all is the fact that you have forsaken morality for security in the eyes of everyone present here today. I call on you to rescind your support of flock. If not for the people standing here today, then do it for the future generations that may never get to enjoy the freedom many of us take for granted here today. The question before you is not what keeps us safe today, but what kind of society we leave behind tomorrow. Because I didn't serve my country as an emancipated 17-year-old for surveillance. I did it for them. The residents of Berkeley here today stand for our immigrants, we stand for our vulnerable, and we stand proud because we stand strongest together. We will be remembered here today for refusing to yield to fear, for refusing to divide our community, and refusing to sacrifice our freedom. The question is whether you will have the backbone to do the same. My name's Clara, I'm a student and a resident of District 7, and I urge you all to terminate Berkeley's contract with Flock. We've heard a lot tonight about how Flock doesn't have any direct contracts with ICE or CBP, as if that's supposed to reassure us. As if the fact that you're leading the industry is supposed to impress us. Even without direct contracts to ICE or CBP, these agencies still have been able to obtain Flock camera footage through backdoor methods. Even if we are to believe the promises that the Flock representative has made tonight, which I do not, and I don't think any of us here do, how can Flock ensure that their data is not accessed by federal agencies without their knowledge or their permission? We've heard a lot about how Flock does not utilize facial recognition technology, as if that is supposed to reassure us. Even if we believe that this technology can only track people based on their clothing, which I do not, and I don't think any of us do, how are we to be certain that facial recognition technology will not be implemented in the future? That we won't all be back here in a few months or a few years fighting extensions to the contract? The only option is to terminate this contract completely. Hi there, I think I have one more minute from the crowd. Thank you. I've also heard some technical difficulties are happening on Zoom, so I don't know if someone can take a look at that. People are getting kicked out and having trouble rejoining. So I guess I'll go ahead and start. Thank you, go ahead. Good evening, Council. My name is Jason Martins, and at 3.30 today I had to take my daughter to the ER, but thankfully they're fine, but I'm here anyway, because that's how important this issue is. I've been canvassing for months now in Berkeley. I think I've easily talked to 400 Berkeley citizens about this issue, and what is clear from my experience, and I think corroborated in this room, is that this issue is massively unpopular. Many people I talked to first expressed surprise that we are doing this in Berkeley. Then they expressed shock that a majority of the Council is supporting it. To my fellow residents, I hope we are all learning that our city is not the liberal bastion that I think maybe we all dreamed it was. To the Council, I would like to know why you are supporting a proposal with overwhelming opposition. What's in it for you? I would also like to know what motivates you to go against what is clearly the desire of your constituents. So I'm here for a third time to ask you to vote no. And if you vote yes, I want you to know that we will be hounding you until the contract is canceled. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. I have two extra minutes. Sorry, I saw one here. Where was the.. Oh. I can't.. Okay. Oh, thank you. Okay, great. My name is Joseph Allman. I live here in Berkeley. And I'm an animal cruelty investigator with the animal rights network, nonviolent, called Direct Action Everywhere. I'm here tonight because I'm one of the people FLOC has already been used against. Twice. By law enforcement. And this is in direct connection with my activism. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, released records documented two separate instances of law enforcement querying the FLOC network to surveil me. Both tied to my work exposing animal cruelty. Not for a violent crime. Not for a public safety threat. For activism. I currently face two years, correction, two felony charges in six and a half years in prison for rescuing sick, emaciated baby goats from a Meinberg supplier. A supplier to Whole Foods. And they use the, quote, certified humane label. The goats that I'm charged with felonies for rescuing were dying. Necropsies confirmed coccidiosis, severe respiratory infection, and starvation at this facility here in California. Other goats from that same facility were being dumped by the dozens in a mass grave. This is what investigators like me try to expose. And that is the kind of work that FLOC is being used to track. The EFF's investigation this past year documented that my own organization, Direct Action Everywhere, has been targeted across FLOC network, including nine queries by the Delaware State Police in a single month last year. I was charged in Delaware in connection with that last year, and I was expunged from those charges in Delaware last year. The same investigation by the EFF found agencies running FLOC searches tied to No King's Protests, to abortions series, to No King's Protests, to abortion seekers, and using racial slurs against Ramadi people. This is the system Berkeley is being asked to renew. This op-ed, the op-ed from four council members, says FLOC is just another piece of an existing surveillance landscape. So refusing it changes little. With respect, that is the same exact argument that's been used for the past 20 years for surveillance systems. You're being asked tonight to renew a contract that has already been used to surveil a Berkeley resident for exposing corporate cruelty. I am that resident. I'm asking you directly. Reject FLOC. Thank you. Thank you. Come on up, Mama Ayana. Anybody have a minute they can give me? Thank you. Are you taking both? Yeah. Okay, one here. I'll give it up if I don't use it. And then this person in the back. Okay, thank you. Greetings, council. My name is Ayana Davis. I am currently the vice president of the newly formed nonprofit Equity for Black Berkeley, former deputy executive director for Healthy Black Families. While at Healthy Black Families, with the mayor, editor gains, chief of staff, Jack McCormick, and Chris, we formed and created the Black Equity for Black Berkeley initiative. And as part of that initiative over two years, we did 12 people's assemblies all over the city. We had 16 weeks of advocacy training. We did three community stakeholders convenings. We had three focus groups. And over 10 years, I worked with Healthy Black Families. I came in contact with thousands of Berkeley residents. I am a mother who lost their son to violence. They knew who killed my son. Even when they closed his cold case, they told me they knew. Alex Goodwin, my coworker, Kamika Patterson Smith, her son was killed. The whole community knew who killed her son. None of the murderers of our sons have been prosecuted. All right, y'all, you know, but my point being in the course of my experience and in the course of our people's assembly and the data that we have that we share with the city, at no point was mass surveillance a priority for the people. At no point do we believe mass surveillance has lowered crime in Berkeley. It is our work that has lowered crime. It is our coming together with our neighbors and our community that has lowered crime. It is education. It is outreach. It is shared love and understanding that does it. It is the work of the people that creates community and a place where our children can live and grow and thrive. Now, I've lived in the same house on the same street for the past 45 years. My family has been here since the late 1880s, built historical homes that are still standing. I'm a Berkeley person, and I will tell you, I have seen what has created crime, and it is poverty. It is the redlining. It is the displacement. It is the unhoused community. If we're spending money on anything, it should be for affordable, not just affordable, housing people can afford to live in. Y'all need to put your phones down. I just want to say that. Pay attention to the people. We don't have much time for our voice. Listen, please, respectfully. So I say this to you. We're coming together and creating a workforce development coalition and a collaborative as we build the Adeline Corridor. We know you plan on turning San Pablo Avenue into, what is it? What did I hear? Little Manhattan? Who's going to do that work? We have to get people trained and ready. You need to be a council with vision and create a community that has employment for the people, good jobs. Invest in that. Invest in workforce development. Invest into the Black Arts and Cultural District and to a hub for our youth so they can sell their art. I love y'all. Thank you. Raise your hand if you are against FLOC. Thank you. I believe a few people gave me their time. Sorry. Okay. You have a minute for him. Okay. So two minutes. Three minutes. Oh, wait, hold on. I can't see that person who's sitting there. Okay. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. Commissioner Gordon has given his minute too. I think that's four, right? Yeah, you have four total. I would expect better from the city that has these flags behind them. I would expect better from a city that is this diverse, that is this noted for their civil rights work. FLOC is a known collaborator with the Trump administration. They are a known collaborator with DHS. In fact, DHS has a law in place that bans FLOC from actually having them show up in any sort of audit. People have mentioned it before. And can you remind me, what was that county, or what was that city that actively violates that rule? A couple. I can't even figure out which, because it's that notable. None of these counties, none of these cities are paying attention. They're going to go fly flagrantly in the face of federal law. And the same thing is going to happen with that guy's boss. That man's boss does not care about you. That man's boss does not care that two people were murdered in Minneapolis, that a teacher was stalked and shot five times, seven holes, like the cops said. We do not need this needless violence brought into the Bay Area. I'm from San Jose. We failed to stop our FLOC contract because Mayor Mahan is bought and paid for by them. Don't make the same mistake as that man. You have the chance right now to make a better world for your community, to be an example to the rest of the world. Berkeley has always been an example from a civil rights perspective, in my opinion. Hey, put down your phone, buddy. I'm not done talking. This is the moment where you decide whether or not you are complicit in the hunt of vulnerable people. This is the moment where you decide whether or not you wish to allow trans folks to be hunted, whether you allow day laborers to be stalked, whether you allow mothers to be killed. I hope and pray to God that you make the right decision here today because your decision has an impact on the rest of the Bay Area. Your decision is not in a bubble here. All of these individuals have been pleading you and begging you to make the right decision, the clear decision, which is don't even bother with a contract with FLOC. Send that man packing with nothing because he deserves nothing from you. He deserves nothing from Berkeley because they will take and take and take until nothing is left. You will not see a dime of that money if something goes wrong because they will fight it in litigation. You will not see a dime of sympathy from the federal government when it happens, and it will happen. Do not be a coward and a traitor to your people who are looking to you to be their voice. You have the chance to make the right choice here. And in case it wasn't clear, you keep that. Make the right fucking choice! Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi again. I'm David Allen, a Berkeley resident. This mass surveillance expansion is far past the point where quantitative becomes qualitative. The hardware may already be used in Berkeley, but it builds a network that has the ability to track a person from their work, to their appointments, to their family and their home. That's facilitated by their patent-pending individual recognition. They attempt to digitally fingerprint each of us without using the words facial recognition. There are many factors that the individual recognition machine learning uses that Chandler left out. It uses race, it uses body characteristics, it uses walking gait. I have that patent in my hand. It is software, not hardware. And tonight, the Berkeley PD said that they would use that capability if it was available. FLOCC pushes every boundary. It took 404 Media doing an expose for FLOCC to back off. Thank you. I had an additional minute from Skip, who is supposed to be in the room. Where is Skip? Okay, thank you. FLOCC saying that they will not data share with ICE or Border Patrol is a red herring, because under this current federal administration, everything is upside down. No federal agency at this point can be trusted to not engage in an abuse of power. Office of Civil Rights, created to protect civil rights of persons, are now entrusted with actually investigating transgender treatment and immigration. That's what they're doing at the Office of Civil Rights. Employees are being placed on leave if they have advancing claims that they already had open, including for women that are in the country under the Violence Against Women's Act, because they're immigrants. A $295,000 fine, it may sound overwhelming to us in the room, but it's nothing to a billionaire investor. It's a drop in the bucket. Follow the investors. You follow the genuine interests. You heard recently a report from the city auditor on non-competing competitive contracts. There seemed to be a commitment that going forward, all contracts were going to be competitive. So what's the difference here? Why is there no non-competitive contract? Why is there not competition here? Why is everything directed towards FLOCC at their word? And it's the same as declaring that we're a sanctuary city, and then engaging with FLOCC, who has violated the rights. And we can't be both. It's inconsistent. Thank you. Thanks, Carol. Hi. I just had something I wanted to point out, which is that earlier this meeting, I heard Jen Lewis refer to a term we weren't sure about when referencing the FLOCC database, and I assume that Jen Lewis is referring to the time when Berkeley's FLOCC data was searched with the terms ICE and CBP, because that did happen. If this is what she's talking about, I think that that's an appalling way to downplay the severity of those search terms. BPD can say that they prevented this kind of search from happening again by turning off the statewide lookup feature on the database so that other agencies can't access the data. But last meeting, Jen Lewis said herself that SFPD and OPD and other counties and police departments would also have access to this data. Any police officer from any of those counties could access and share Berkeley data. You can say that you own the data, but you have not addressed that the other police departments have access to it, and you don't control them. FLOCC's database already searched with the terms ICE and CBP. I don't know why we're speaking about federal access as a hypothetical. It's not a hypothetical. It's already happened. Thank you. No one on FLOCC rejects the contract. I want to speak to a spineless and absurd op-ed that we saw come out this week that was full of disingenuous arguments and outright lies. There are some lines you should still be afraid to cross, and this is one. Being a foot soldier of fascism is one. And if you don't care about us, which we are seeing from this op-ed is your case, you should care about the litigation that is coming your way because it is coming and it is going to be brutal. When legislators fail us, it is up to litigation to represent us. And that fact is so sad and it is absurd and appalling that you could even think of bringing us to that case. Reject the contract. No on FLOCC. Listen to everybody here tonight. Listen to them. Thank you. Come on up. My name is Sophia. I'm a resident of District 3. The job of any place that calls itself a sanctuary city is to gum up the gears of fascism and authoritarianism however we can. Why in the world would you choose instead to serve up weapons on a silver platter that will be used and have already been used against not only the most vulnerable and over-policed among us, but also against anyone who dares speak out against the government? The only way Berkeley can prevent sharing data with ICE or with the feds is to not generate and not hold that data in the first place. And certainly not to store it with FLOCC. Stand with your people, reject FLOCC, and don't do the fascists' job for them. Thank you. Two minutes. Oh, sorry. Hold on. I need two people to raise their hand. Okay, one. And this person in the back corner, can you stand so I can just.. Oh, thank you. Great. Go. It looks as if the headlines tomorrow may sadly read, Berkeley City Council Threw Away $2 Million in Spite of a $30 Million Budget Deficit. Crime is down. The police chief understandably wants the latest bells and whistles. But the Berkeley City Council is supposed to be the adult in the room. Other methods of fighting crime are better proven, less expensive, keep the money in our community, and help locals. The police, again, don't need every new bell and whistle. These cameras put the city at risk of liability, up to $60 million, according to the city attorney. Federal legislation could force us to take the cameras down. Because of the deficit, we might lose a fire station. Crisis mental health services might be on the block. Your constituents want fire stations, not cameras. We don't need to throw away $2 million and risk multi-million dollar lawsuits for new bells and whistles when crime is down. Don't waste our money. As the former chair of the Berkeley Police Accountability Board stated, council members O'Keefe, Humbert, Keserwani, and Taplin, in their published op-ed piece, seem to have knowingly misrepresented some things. They didn't mention that the Police Accountability Board strongly advised against this contract. They didn't mention that the liability risk that they're aware of. They do acknowledge that FLOC has altered data sharing without permission, but imply that there's something we can do to manage that risk, which isn't the case. They make false comparisons with our tracking devices on our phones, which we can control. They imply that crimes were solved, which would not have been solved without FLOC, even though there's no way to prove that, and it conflicts with University of California Law Center analysis. They don't mention that crime is markedly down already. They don't mention the budget deficit that this purchase would exacerbate. Brent Blackaby, in his recent email to constituents, makes similar misrepresentations and omissions. Officials who mislead their constituents should consider whether this position of trust is really the right place.

Segment 7

The Police Accountability Board says that the contract process broke city procedural rules. That should be enough to vote no. The Police Accountability Board advises in general against a flock contract. That should be enough to vote no. The City Attorney tells us that the contract puts us at risk of a $60 million lawsuit liability. That should be enough to vote no. The City Council members who plan to vote yes admit this company has already shared data without permission. That should be enough to vote no. The majority of citizens who have given feedback do not want this contract. That should be enough to vote no. There is a budget deficit and other things are more important. That should be enough to vote no. These are not license plate readers. One of them, sure, that's a license plate reader. A network of them that surrounds us and tracks our every movement, puts it in a database, can be queried. That's a pattern of life logger, detector. It's just wrong. If it's just the City of Berkeley doing this just for solving 50 more crimes in a year, okay, I'm still pissed off about it, but it's way worse than that. I want you to ask Mr. Flock over there, again, pointedly, if the federal government asks for Berkeley citizens' data with a gag order, will you give it to them? Will we know? Because the answer is yes, they will give it to them. No, we will never know. That means we are just serving ourselves up on a silver platter to fascism. Don't do this. History will not look kindly on this moment. Anyone who votes yes will be shamed. Please do not vote yes. Thank you. Hello. My name is Jacob. I'm on the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, but I'm just here as an individual today. In addition to what everyone else said, which I 100% agree with, one of the things that I want to talk about is the risk of data leaking to a third party. I think all of us have credit card numbers or phone numbers that are kind of out there on the Internet, and we can never take them back. Imagine if that's where you're most likely to be at 530 on any given day or where your kids go to school. Once this information is made, it can't be unmade, and there's no amount of monetary compensation that can take that back. This is something that once we take this step, it's crossing a Rubicon. We can't take it back, and we will always be at risk. No matter what safeguards we impart, no matter what we do, we will always be at risk of this type of incredibly sensitive data. My data, where I physically am at any given point being open to the highest better. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, I'm a South Berkeley District three resident and community organizer. The only thing that makes me feel safe in the city is my neighbors. Other organizers who are working for affordable housing, who are working for better education, who are working for safer transit for everybody, food security. These people in this room who I've seen show up over and over to implore you guys to not contract with flock for all of the many, many, many reasons listed. I've also been a victim of a violent crime in the East Bay, and I have never once felt like surveillance technology would keep me safe. What's kept me safe are the other people in my community on the streets looking out for each other. Police don't keep us safe, and surveillance certainly doesn't keep us safe. So thank you to everyone else speaking out because we keep each other safe. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, can I I can't quite see who that person is. Thank you. Good. Hello, my name is Allison. I live in District four, and I wanted to highlight one of the ways that flock data and technology has already been misused is currently being misused. And that's in the use of police, some of which are in our San Francisco Police Department, using license plates, flock license plate readers to stalk and surveil romantic partners, their romantic partners. And if you know anything, if anyone knows anything about power and control surveillance on an interpersonal level, on a systemic level, surveillance is a classic tactic of power and control and power control is what constitutes abuse. And so on both an interpersonal and structural level, expanding state and police department overreach to surveil us is enabling abuse on a systemic level. I have worked in the domestic violence field I have lived in, I've experienced domestic violence of my family's experience domestic violence surveillance by way of cameras and tracking has always been a factor of controlling people and not causing safety, I do not feel safe. I don't feel safe putting more tools in their hands. That's not my vision of safety. Meanwhile, domestic violence and IPV services in the Bay Area specifically are so drastically underfunded are currently at risk of being stripped away further. And so please, I urge you to stop doing the work of the abuser, the state as the abuser and actually invest in services that keep people safe and don't traumatize survivors further. The idea of being surveilled is traumatic for survivors. Thank you. I'm in D3, Mr. Flock could tell you that his cameras are outside my house. There's a false equivalence being asserted that surveillance is safety, which is being strategically deployed to hide the fact that the opposite is true. Surveillance is not public safety. There is no actual demonstrated need for any of this technology. And even if there was the Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center's independent policy review showed this technology doesn't actually help solve crimes or even work. It does create steep data privacy risks for the city. People will die in ice custody as a result of getting flocked or getting shot in the street by fascist federal agents with the help of this technology. And it doesn't matter what vendor you use for your mass surveillance dragnet. Once that data is collected, no matter what encryption you use, no matter who owns the data, not you, it exists and can be acquired with a warrant. The only truly safe choice is not collecting it. This is not a safety company. It's a data broker who answers to the highest bidder and you're selling us out and making us pay for it. Hold on a second. I'm from El Cerrito. Yeah, I'll take a couple minutes. So, I'm here. I was just speaking in El Cerrito a couple nights ago, where we were very successful vanquishing the situation from our city. And I was one of the core organizers there. I spent a lot of time, a lot of people spent quite a long time organizing that. And now several of the members of that organizing group are considering running for city council because of, well, frankly, how they were treated by Mayor Gabe Quinto, who's up for re-election in quite a short time, I believe in August. Running uncontested as well, I might add. So, you know, there's a lot of people in this room tonight who are very motivated, and there's a lot of people up here on the city council who might be coming up for election. And so I would encourage everybody here, if you're serious about this, you can just get the votes next time it comes up, and everybody on this council maybe could consider that. Furthermore, okay, I also want to cover a little bit of technical stuff. So I run a small consulting company specializing in cloud infrastructure, networking, and security. I work for a lot of AI startups in San Francisco. One of my primary objectives with these companies is to help them comply with regulations around data and how it's managed. So network segmentation, concepts like data sovereignty, this is basically the notion of where the data lives, who owns it, what region of the world it's stored in, who has access to it, under what legal frameworks can it be shared, et cetera. The situation with Flock is that the data is being stored in a central location. It's not being co-located within your city. I don't know, maybe you can explain what region it's being stored in, what cloud provider it's being stored in, AWS perhaps. These are concerns, I mean, I don't know if anybody knows the answer to this, but that really strongly affects the access control of the data. And, you know, the thing is, no matter what they tell you about the policies and how Flock manages the data, they're still subject to federal law. Federal law supersedes any local law or any company policy or any contract stipulation. And there's a few laws on the books, the Cloud Act of 2019, FISA, which is from 1978, and the FBI has the ability to send national security letters. Now, if the FBI sends a national security letter, oftentimes it's attached with a gag order. And this gag order would legally prevent Flock from informing any of their clients that the data was requisitioned by the government. This means that even the lawyers at Flock would not be informed. There are reported cases of this. And so if you have time to ask him a question, get him up here on the mic and tell you if the federal government asks for the data, will they be legally allowed to inform you that that occurred? Can I get one more minute, anybody? Can I get one more minute? Actually, I want to make sure we have everyone speak. So, I mean, you're welcome to get another minute, but there are still folks who haven't spoken yet. But I have one more very important thing to say. Can I? All right. We got one more. There's a little bit more in terms of audit logs. So one of the only tools available for a city or an independent set of researchers to use to determine what Flock is doing with the data is through an audit log. And Flock provides audit logs on their website to every municipality. However, there has been recent reporting, as recently as April, from a website called Footnote 4A, where they're basically analyzing the logs that are publicly available and finding that between 3% and 7% of the logs are changing. And we're talking about audit logs. This should be an immutable piece of data. And when this data is queried and then queried again a week later, they're finding unique IDs to have changed, timestamps to have changed, strong circumstantial evidence that the books are being cooked on the Flock side. I mean, the question is, like, if they're providing audit logs, can they cryptographically sign the logs? And can the third party.. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Hello, everybody. I have two minutes. I have Ziggy and Paul Blake back there, so three minutes, please. So let's be clear. Surveillance cameras are a supremacist tool of an authoritarian society. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Surveillance cameras are a supremacist tool of an authoritarian society. How do we know? Some of you have lived under such regimes where they have been, where you've been surveilled. How do you think Israel was so successful at assassinating so many Iranian officials? Because Iran is surveilled. Every corner of Iran is surveilled. Look around. The fascist countries have surveillance. This is not a tool that we want to use here in our community. And who is safer? We keep thinking, oh, this is a safety. Who is safer? You have been provided data by the BPD, but do you even collect the data of how many times you wrongfully pull over people because of bad data by a Flock? Okay, these cameras, did they tell you all anything about this? No. Have you asked how many times have they harmed people? Tremendous harm to people that they pull over, detain, they've impounded cars, and caused innocent people harm. We heard about a woman who was shot five times, seven holes, and a man from our community here who's an activist who has been harmed. Okay, so there's a lot to this story. I've taken a tally. So far, we've had 97 minutes. That's been 97 people who oppose this, three who have supported it. Okay, in a democracy, that would be overwhelming that, of course, you represent us. We all elected you, okay? Or maybe you're with my former council member before I got redistricted, who doesn't happen to be on the dais at this moment, so they'll be go unnamed. And I had a private conversation with them in 2020, and I asked, are you getting lots of calls for, you know, this was about the police budget. This was in 2020 with George Floyd about the, you know, the police budget should go up. And this person said, no, but I was elected to make a decision. And I was elected to make a decision about what I think is best. Not what the community said, but what this person literally said that to me. So you all, are you going to take that authoritarian, like you were elected to make, because you're the parent, and you're the big brother, that you're supposed to make the decision for your constituents in your community? Or are we part of a democracy? Are you representing us? Okay, the audit, the audit was just brought up. If you do vote for this, who's going to ensure compliance with this complex contract? It can't be FLOC. It can't be BPD. Who is it going to be? Flip the Berkeley City Council. Flip BCC. Check it out. Go ahead and move the mic so we can hear you. I'm, I'm Sam Joy. I'm a little horse. 50 fucking years ago, I came to California. I came to the Bay Area. Why did I come here? I had a five year old child. I was 24 years old. I came here because Berkeley promised to be the kind of country, I'm part of that generation, that 50s and 60s generation that believed what our teachers told us about social justice, about civil rights, about ending war. And Berkeley stood for that when I came here. I've been so proud. I've been an activist and a business owner in Berkeley for almost 50 years. And I've been so proud to be here. But this is not making me proud. This is making me so ashamed. And I already lived in seven states before I came here. So I didn't, I came here, I knew what I was coming to. I, I'm not going to say anything new. Thank you. Can I have one more minute? Thanks so much. Okay. I'm going to take that minute from the person in the back. Okay. Thank you. I'm not saying anything new. But what I am going to say, you all know, you all know all the information. Those of you that are voting yes, I ask you to look inside yourself and figure out what lack of morality, what lack of humanity is letting you vote for this, letting you accept that we can be safe through surveillance. When these women have said, we know how we're going to be safe. Equity is the only thing that's going to get us safe. Providing, ending poverty. Providing caring for everyone in the city. That's the only thing that will make us safe. Not surveillance. That's all. Thank you. I just want to check. Is there two people left? There's two people, three. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Hello, I'm Roberto. I believe I'm in district four. I'm actually sure I don't have anything novel to say. Actually have notes here that just say I'm tired. So that's really good. It's been a tough past ten months for me. I wouldn't call myself an activist. I'm definitely not an extremist. I am employed. I'm just very tired. And I feel like if Flock happens, it's kind of over for myself and my friends and my community. I feel you can probably guess why and the activism that I don't want to be doing. Flock just dooms us. It's over. There's nothing else for us. So, yeah, that's it. I'm tired. Goodbye. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Sophia O'Brien. Can I have a minute from someone there? Okay. Okay. My name is Sophia O'Brien. I was born and raised in district four. At a time when this city is discussing cuts to critical public resources and safety net programs, while hundreds fill your inboxes and this room to demand investment in our communities, this council, well, many from this council, plans to spend millions expanding surveillance infrastructure, $2 million plus millions more in inevitable lawsuits that could go towards preventing crises, supporting vulnerable residents, and strengthening community services, which is public safety. Instead, our tax dollars are being directed toward expanding systems tied to policing, federal abductions, racial profiling, and mass incarceration. If you really cared about public safety, you would invest more money into our schools to make sure that our teachers can afford to live in our city. You would invest more money into affordable housing and ensure the most basic social net for the most vulnerable in our community is met, not sell those same people out as data points so a billion-dollar company can make more off of my community. Like many have said, you are a public servant, and therefore I hope you will act in the interest of your constituents, and if not, that will be a stain on this city for years to come and something that you as an individual will never live down as long as you are an elected official in our city. To move forward with this expansion, despite the legal warnings, the oversight concerns, the moral failures, and the erosion of public trust would be a profound mistake. The first rule of fascism and the most important rule is do not obey in advance. Now please, for the first time in forever, stand on the right side of history and do not sell out your constituents, the public, in the interest of public safety, because the public is telling you exactly what will make us more unsafe. So please vote no on this contract on the expansion of more flock in our city. The public does not want this. Thank you. Alright, our final in-person speaker. Go ahead. I'm Gail Alcock from District 2, and I think flock is a big mistake, and I was really proud when I was at home to be listening to all the information that came, and I just hope that it's not news to you. Any of the things that you have heard tonight, it's not news. Is that correct? You didn't hear anything that you didn't already know. I'm just assuming that that's the truth. But you do have these commissions, and they do a lot of research, and apparently there's this very organized group that is tremendously committed and dedicated and has brought so much information. But really, I think that you all knew anyway, because I knew without knowing a lot of information that this is creepy. I mean, you don't need to know much. Thank you. Okay, we're going to take—we've finished with our in-person comment. If you are online for online comment, we have an hour of online comment. Please raise your hand so you can get in the queue, and in the meantime, we are going to take another 10-minute stretch break. Thank you. Okay, the microphones are on. Okay, hello everyone. We are going to take online public comment now for item number 1A, which is the Public Safety Technology, Surveillance Technology, Ordinance of Police Equipment, Ordinance Approvals, Policy Updates, and Contract Authority. So, Clerk, can you please go ahead and start it? The first speaker has a phone number ending in 405. Hi. Dirk and I live in District 1. I came to Berkeley in 1952. I got educated in Berkeley, and I look like another ditto person saying, show me the money. What gave us a billion dollars? The answer should be, no, we will not take—we will not be bought. The idea that we are paying to be bought is outrageous. I do think that I'm on the board of directors of four local corporations. To the best of my knowledge, not one director, not one constituent of these corporations, would vote to endorse any candidate who endorses surveillance. Thank you. Okay, next is Roddy. Thank you for your service. And there are two questions that I have for Mr. Flock. I really just have these two questions, because I'm really interested in hearing it. They're just yes and no questions, if that's possible. One question is, are there any scenarios in which Flock would have to share data with the federal government? And then are there any scenarios in which Flock would have to share data with the federal government and not be able to tell the city of Berkeley or the local police? Yes or no? Sorry, we don't respond to questions during the comment period, but those were also asked and answered. All good, thank you. Okay. Next is Beth Rossner. Good evening, mayor and council. This is Beth Rossner, CEO of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. The chamber supports moving forward with thoughtfully managed public safety technology and the strong oversight framework in item 1A. For Berkeley businesses, public safety and economic vitality are closely connected. Employees, customers, and visitors need to feel safe in our commercial districts and public spaces and tools that improve emergency response and investigations can provide real public benefit. We're concerned about creating a gap in public safety capabilities if existing systems are discontinued before replacement tools or policies are fully in place. At the same time, we recognize the legitimate concerns around privacy data security and vendor accountability, strong safeguards, transparency, auditing and local control over data must remain paramount. We appreciate the work being done to strengthen oversight while protecting Berkeley's values and keeping the city safe and welcoming for all. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Della Luna. Yes. Thank you. I was going to say that this, this item has taken up so much of our time and it feels like with so much of the public being against it, it shouldn't even be on the table. It's now to committee multiple times. And then I think we're up to one o'clock in the morning talking about it. And now again, and I feel like it just reflects that you all are not doing your jobs because we don't elect you. I guess what I want to say is you all are professionals in your own rights and each of you has a set of expertise, but no one as individuals or collectively has the expertise to sign a contract. That's going to murder death, kill the constituents. And we didn't elect you for you to then negotiate contracts. So there's like a sleight of hand going on where we do elect you to be city council, but the intention is not for you then to turn around and murder death, kill us. So. Yes, you all represent the people and the people do not want this. And the notion that flock, you can just sit there. The Mr. Flock could be there. And you all just ask questions back and forth and somehow that's good enough. Next is Laura Hill. Wait a second. Sorry, Laura Hill. Good evening. My name is Laura and I'm speaking on behalf of the Bay area council. We are a business association and policy advocacy organization representing nearly 400 of the region's employers. Three years ago, 125 East Bay employers asked us to form a coalition in response to concerns about safety and the future of the region. This coalition strongly supports the continued use of ALPR and related technology in Berkeley. Technology is a critical public safety tool, particularly for departments facing staffing challenges on the ground every day. These tools help officers recover stolen property, prevent human trafficking and identify suspects in violent crimes. We've also seen across the East Bay and the broader region that this technology can be implemented with appropriate, appropriate safeguards that balance the needs of community privacy with public safety. Finally and importantly, since many nearby cities are already applying this technology using compatible tools, strengthens coordination and safety across jurisdictions. Thank you for your consideration and your continued leadership in Berkeley. Next is Tracy Rosenberg. Yes. One second. Tracy Rosenberg from Oakland privacy. Let's be clear. While fully. Aware of dozens of local sanctuary ordinances. California. SB 34 and SB 54. So I chose to let customs and border patrol. Into their database and hold absolutely. No one. In my news today. Shaker Heights. Ohio is sitting with a sanctuary policy. Announced that other agencies. Searched. Three months this year. It is happening and it is continuing to happen every single day. You can't. Negotiate. With companies that are lying to you. No on the contract. Thank you. Next up. For our next speaker is Wendy Alpson. Thank you. At mayor council. Speaking on behalf of the Berkeley friends meeting. In opposition to the approval of these eight items on your. Agenda. Just like to point out that each of them merits a separate agenda. Thank you.

Segment 8

this process to have any attention on the policies that underlie all of this. I'd like to point out that in addition to all of the other things that have been raised, particularly by the Police Accountability Board, I ask you to pay special attention to their recommendations. Their most recent one of May 6th on the purchase order contracting issue really requires. Thank you. Next is Audrey Kramer. Good evening City Council and Mayor. My name is Audrey Kramer and I am a sophomore at UC Berkeley and a District 6 resident. I am currently looking at the City Manager's proposed 27-28 budget and balancing plan. And so my question for you today is why are we sitting here? Berkeley is in a ridiculous budget deficit. On page 52 of this report, the City Manager outlines the eight policemen that Berkeley is firing this year. Every department in the city is losing 10% of its budget and flock is clearly highly unpopular. So I would suggest that you use this exorbitant amount of money to follow the Police Accountability Board's recommendation for an RFP on this matter or use this money for literally anything else. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Eduardo. I'm Latino and when extremist ideological experiments go wrong, people die. Socialist extremist policies failed Cuba and Venezuela. Millions suffered. Here in California, DSA-driven defunding of police helped create this out-of-control crime wave. And now you want us to do what? Keep trusting your failed social experiment? Here in Berkeley, even common-sense liberals are now called fascists and bullied into silence. Look, the city's number one job is still to protect residents and businesses with proven tools, not gamble with public safety based on ideology and zero evidence. What happens when cities turn off flock? Richmond stopped cameras a few months. Auto thefts jumped by a third. That's not theory. That's documented facts. So who's paying the highest price? It's working-class black and brown families. Most are single-car households. And when that one car is stolen, it's not a small inconvenience. People lose jobs. Kids miss school. Families lose their homes. Stolen cars become stolen lives. Thank you. Time is up. Thank you. Next is Devin. Devin, you should be able to unmute. Last call for Devin. All right. Let's go to MR. Hello, I'm a resident, a data engineer, and a former defense technologist. I'm embarrassed to have Shoshana O'Keefe as my representative. Flock is not a public safety company. They are a data broker. As a data engineer, I'm telling you that the oversight narrative for this contract is technically infeasible. The city and the Berkeley Police Department will absolutely not have the independent technical capacity to oversee, monitor, or manage Berkeley data generated by Flock. As a survivor myself, I completely reject the use of survivor trauma as justification for warrantless mass surveillance. Commercial surveillance companies and their products do not address the causes of violence or crime. And survivors, too, deserve, want, and have rights to privacy. Shame on you for invoking survivor trauma to enable mass surveillance. Thank you. And just a reminder to folks to not refer to specific council members. You have to refer to us as a body. Okay. One more try for Devin. Devin, you should be able to unmute. Okay. No, Devin. Next is Makai Freeman. Can you give her extra time, please? Thank you. Good afternoon, City Council. I'm not representing any organization tonight, but myself as a private resident. We recently saw the reversal of voting rights in the Cali city. We know what happened during Corona's outbreak. We know we have very strong followings of our community. I thank our police officers who treat us well. I care about folks' safety, but you know, all of you on the dial know there's going to be abuses. You are our public servants. When our public says no, listen, honor those who have been removed and children are here. Without the parents, family members, it is a false dichotomy that if you don't want the veiled, don't care about public safety and for our budget to have an end. Thanks, Makai. Next is a phone number ending in 453. I think that's Chair Cayetano. He needs to ask for that minute. Chair Cayetano, can you hear us? Needs to unmute first. Phone number ending in 453. You should be able to unmute star six to unmute. There you go. Hi, everyone. Josh Cayetano, Chair of the Police Accountability Board. I believe I have three extra minutes from people online if they could raise their hand. So four minutes total. Could you give us their names? Because a lot of people are raising their hands. Oh, I don't know what their names are listed as. Chip, Adriana, and Layla. One of them is calling on by phone. Oh, Chip, did you say Chip? Yeah. Okay, one more time. Chip, what were the other two? Adriana and Layla. Okay, I see Adriana. And Layla. I see Adriana and Layla on there. Do you see them, Mark? Thank you. I see Adriana, Layla, Nasrallahi. Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right. I see Chip more on though. So we'll get you that, Josh. Well, I'll see if I can get you that third minute in here, but just let's for now check on those other two. I want to make sure we keep moving. Yeah, so we've got three minutes. If Mark gets on, then that will be a fourth. Your third minute. I've got your third minute here. Okay, so four total, right? Okay, thank you. My name is Josh Cayetano. I'm the Chair of the Police Accountability Board, also a graduate of Berkeley Law and a D3 resident. First, I would just like to note that nobody has asked BPD or finance about their supplemental and why they are no longer standing behind their first proposed resolution. I can tell you why. The PAB sent a letter this week where we explained that BPD has failed residents of Berkeley by exclusively pursuing a contract with FLOC without a competitive procurement process, even after the city council sent them back to the drawing board on FLOC in fall 2025. And the city did that again this spring. And so they've had to pivot. The city manager said, um, during the comment section that we do this all the time and that's exactly the issue. It's one of the city auditor recently faulted the city for 40% of its contracts were not competitively bid when the default rule is a competitive process. He also compared this to a contract for a truck or a pencil, but we're not talking about trucks and pencils. We're talking about the largest expansion of police surveillance technology in Berkeley's history. Now BPD is trying to claim that FLOC is the best out there, that nobody else has a comparable product, but this is what's best for Berkeley, but they cannot back that up without a competitive process. And that's something Berkeley and deserve second. And speaking for myself now, there's also been a lot of talk about safety from FLOC supporters, but FLOC does not keep our community safe. We do. I recently spoke with leaders in Elmwood and DM3 who are monitoring the neighborhood around Sylvia Mendez, making sure children are safe and protected from ice. That is safety. I also talk every month with members of the mayor of sanctuary city task force with people who are tirelessly coordinating mutual aid for our community. That is safety. And I spoke with numbers, some members of BPD and live free who are building relationships in schools and on the streets with people in high risk areas. That is safety. FLOC does not make us safe. We do. Third, there's also been a lot of talk from FLOC supporters about accountability. Go up to those supporters and ask them what their track record is on police accountability in Berkeley. BPD buried their audit on the last page of the report that they had identified Berkeley's own data with search for ice and DHS. They didn't bring that to the council's attention. We did. BPD did not have the courage to say what that was and call it what it was, a material of our trust and said they explained it away. And still what I hear them saying is that they don't know exactly what that was. But I think that sitting there today, if they're asking for you to contract with FLOC, they should admit it. Why should we trust what they say if they can't admit even with their own audit log they're showing? The last three years, our own, our accountability institutions have been undermined, subverted, and defunded. And tonight this accountability can start. Make them, make it happen. Thank you all. Thanks, Josh. Okay, next is Kelsey Jackson. Thank you. Yes, my name is Dr. Kelsey Jackson. I'm in District 1 and I'm concerned about the similarities and surveillance between Israel and the United States in this moment. I'm an expert in the perceptions of intercultural empathy, peace, and the other between Palestinians and Israelis. I spent time in the Middle East. I spent time in Palestine and Israel. I walked around the inside of the wall of Palestine at a military checkpoint where headstones littered the brush while I stared down, sorry, while I was stared down by four Israeli soldiers, each holding their AK-47s as they watched me. While in Palestine 10 years ago, I saw firsthand the detriment of overt surveillance and saw firsthand the way it impeded the lives of Palestinians. They weren't able to self-organize. They weren't able to gather. They weren't able to protest without threat of being imprisoned or killed. Israel uses the same surveillance technology in their Red Wolf and Blue Wolf surveillance as flock and it's now being embedded into our cities, our communities, to our neighbors. We are on a dangerous path to normalizing mass surveillance and infringing on their climate. Next is Tim McKenzie. Tim McKenzie. Hi, my name is Tim McKenzie. I'm a member of the Democratic Socialist of America. I'm here to encourage you to get rid of ALPRs, cancel the flock contract. I actually believe Mr. Flock saying that they are an industry leader and honestly that's embarrassing for the industry. Flock only just introduced two-factor authentication that was just admitted at Sunnyvale City Council last month. They have had less data security than applying for a job. It is really impossible to believe that they will be able to protect the data. It's been illegal in California to share data outside of the state for a decade and they have spent years doing that, having a nationwide lookup tool. They've already broken trust. They cannot be relied upon. You need to cancel the contract. Thank you. Next is Mary Lynn Morales. Hi, thank you. I'm a longtime Berkeley resident, a homeowner, and a small business owner in Berkeley and members of the city council, I beseech you in the strongest possible terms, do not renew the flock contract as proposed. I am more afraid of flock than I'm afraid of crime in Berkeley. Crime is already down. Everyone has talked about it. We don't need to expand our invasions of privacy and further militarize our police force. Save us from the constant fear of Big Brother. Please, please. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jordan. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Cool. My name is Jordan. I lived in Berkeley for about 22, 23 years, recently moved, still very connected to this community. I go to UC Berkeley Law and I am joining the overwhelming chorus of people who are asking you to drop the flock contract. I'd like to also expand upon that and say, I think that as we built this grassroots power and this grassroots movement against flock, we've also seen people more broadly take a stand against mass surveillance in general. And that includes drones and that includes shot spotter. And that includes all of these technologies that get woven together into this intricate web of mass surveillance that we are trying to prevent and cannot escape. And I had other things to say, but I think you're going to vote how you're going to vote. I don't know if us saying this is going to sway anyone, but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus and I hope that you listen to your constituents. Thank you. So another instance of Wendy Alfson here. Is this Wendy or somebody else? Hi, my name is Marilyn Cleveland and I'm a resident of Berkeley and a retired attorney who spent 30 years advising public entities concerning public contracts. The Daily Cal recently published an article about a leaked city attorney memo describing the city's exposure to multimillion dollar lawsuits. If the council proceeds to renew and expand the flock contracts, the article states that the proposed contract follows flock standard terms and conditions, public entities, including Berkeley should start with their own contracting procedures from the city's form of contract, not from a standard form that the private entity trying to contract with the city provides, even if that another public entity has accepted those terms. Piggybacking on another public entity's contract is one way to comply with the California public contract code. Piggybacking does not waive the city's responsibility to comply with applicable state and municipal requirements, including sanctuary laws and military equipment reporting. That's your time. Next is Zachary. Hi, I'm Zach, a D1 resident. I think that cameras and ALPRs are a useful tool for solving crimes and getting convictions, and we should stand against crime, but this is about something different. This is aggregation. There are other ways to get these tools that don't grant automatic third party access, and this is really a conversation about civil liberties. I was lucky enough to be born and live in a world before the Patriot Act. Year after year, our rights are trimmed back, and on average, we saw a drop of four deaths per year due to terrorism before and after the Patriot Act. We could have asked everyone just to wear seatbelts, and it probably would have been more effective. A contract with FLOC will not fix our criminal justice system, and it will not be in a step in the right direction. We need to aggregate, sorry, it will aggregate our data into their cloud so that it can be served up the very moment a whiskey-soaked FISA warrant shows up with NSPM 7 written on it. Next is Fabiola. Fabiola D5, Madam Mayor and the City Council members, I urge you all to heed the warning from the City Attorney regarding the potential liability Berkeley faces if it renews its contract with FLOC. Please don't waste our money. Regarding that op-ed, my City Council member co-wrote in the BS that claims FLOC keeps us safe. Well, that's BS. The op-ed talks about arrests made for crimes that were committed. Where's the public safety there? Crimes were committed. They were not prevented. FLOC does not make us safe. Again, this proposal represents the largest expansion of surveillance infrastructure in the city's history and directly undermines Berkeley's long-standing commitment to being a sanctuary city. To those op-ed writers, supporting this surveillance system is totally MAGA. Please vote no to renew the FLOC contract. Thank you. Next is Keon. Keon Bliss. Can you hear me? You're echoing. Apologies, can you hear me now? Yep, can hear you now. I just wanted to say that BPD and Council members argue that up to $2 million for private surveillance technology is needed to compensate for BPD staffing challenges because the department's running well below authorized strength, but it's actually a false choice. Technology and staffing have never been interchangeable. In reality, ALPR cameras generate leads but require officers to investigate them. BPD's reduced staffing means fewer investigators available to follow up on ALPR hits. Peer-reviewed research already suggests ALPR's effectiveness depends on dedicated units. Creating that capacity requires staffing, not cameras, but BPD itself calls this technology a resource multiplier even as it's ready to fund that resource multiplier by eliminating up to six sworn officer positions. BPD's argument for FLOC actually highlights the need to invest in people rather than surveillance technology. Thanks so much. Next is Ralph. Ralph, you should be able to unmute. Ralph. Ralph Brown, can you hear us? Can you please unmute? Nope. Okay, we'll come back to you. Next is Catherine Lewis. Hello. I'm here tonight and can only think about how this body has failed its residents, its constituents, over and over again. I can only think of the infants in Gaza, four days old, who were bombed in their apartment because of surveillance. You've all heard of the Palestine Laboratory. Well, the Berkeley City Council is complicit because they failed, failed to condemn genocide in Gaza and continue to fail. Don't fail the children of Berkeley as well. Say no to FLOC. We do not need this surveillance. What a waste. Look into your hearts and do the right thing. Thank you. Go back to Ralph Brown. Ralph, are you there? Go ahead and unmute. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. There you go. Excellent. Just wanting to note from the supporters, there's a lot of money that's actually invested in Berkeley City Council members from some of the supporters like Bay Area Council, who is most notably a prime backer of FLOC in the Bay Area. That comes out to about $81,000. Also, with the Berkeley Police Officers Association for existing members of city council. I mean, it comes out to even more. Should actually be listening. I hope you are actually listening to what concerned constituents are actually telling you to do as it comes to the surveillance. It's not actually keeping you safe. What it is is just a feel-good measure for a lot of these folks, and it doesn't actually guarantee safety for most people. Thanks. Your time's up. Next is Almira. Hi there. My name is Almira. I'm a resident of District 5, and I've known about FLOC for a little bit, but it wasn't until I got an email from the Electronic Frontier Foundation telling me that the organization that I lead, Direct Action Everywhere, has shown up in searches that they've done looking into FLOC over 50 different times. And over 50 times, people who have been doing public property protests have been surveilled, and their license plates have been tracked. And this is happening to residents of Berkeley. I am your constituent. This is happening to my friends who are your constituent. So this is not a hypothetical. This has already been used to suppress free speech and intimidate people trying to make the world a better place, and I strongly encourage you to vote no on this contract to protect people in Berkeley and everywhere who are fighting for a better world. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Mimi. Mimi, you should be able to unmute. There you go. Hey there. My name is Mimi. I lived for eight years in District 8, and I thought and hoped when I moved to Berkeley that this would be a place that reflects my values. The hundreds of people that have spoken tonight and the hundreds of people that have spoken at the tear gas commission meeting, those people reflect my values. The people I've been working with at our BUFG school and in my neighborhood to set up community watch and mutual aid networks, those people reflect my values. I feel like I really shouldn't have to worry about the city of Berkeley embracing the approaches and tools of fascism. I'm appalled and livid that we're all here again tonight. This dynamic where your constituents beg you in droves to act in our best interest and then the council acts the opposite, it's awful, it's disgusting, it's gross, and I'm begging you literally on my knees, please, please, please do not move forward with block. Thank you. Next is Chelsea. Hi, my name is Chelsea. I grew up on military bases, just one second, I'm fixing the echo. I grew up on military bases, specifically with in-depth knowledge about military warfare and psychological warfare. What FLOC is, is it's an arm for Nazism, it's an arm for the military, and it's a tool for direct psychological warfare and control. And people know this, it's obvious, follow the money. For example, the founders and the people that pay for FLOC, Peter Thiel, he's in charge of Palantir and sells intelligence tools to ICE, DHS, and the Pentagon. Another example, Meritech Capital gives FLOC a lot of money, makes a lot of decisions, that's owned by the U.S. military, by the Air Force. None of this is subtle. These firms bankroll companies that surveil, detain, or kill in the name of national security. We don't want this. Furthermore, time is up. I'd like to, no, it's not, first, next is JL. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I'm a long-time Berkeley community member. I've seen videos where members of the public can hack into these feeds. That means anyone with the tools could use these feeds to follow women home, or could access playground feed and watch kids, which has already been reported in other cities, or could follow home someone who just bought something expensive and find out where they live in order to rob them. So from those perspectives, FLOC actually introduces the possibility for more crimes to happen. I've also seen reports where police themselves have used surveillance tools to follow their ex-partners around, not because the partner was part of anything criminal, but rather because the officer was stalking them for personal reasons. As someone else has said, there's no special wording that could possibly be used in a contract that could ensure the data will be safe. You can introduce fines, but this is a slap on the wrist to a company like FLOC. Many cities are realizing that these are risks they do not want to take. The legal risks that it opens the city to and the actual data security risk. Many have canceled their contracts, and this is what Berkeley should do. As someone else has said, please heed the warning from the city attorney and do not waste their money. Thanks so much for your comments. Next is Wilhelmina. Hi, this is Wilhelmina Condon. I'm in district seven, and I've been watching these and coming to these city council meetings, and I'm completely gobsmacked at how the council has set themselves up as sort of a paternalistic know-all, completely disregarding their constituents. To me, this issue in the city of Berkeley is outrageous. It's a no-brainer. There's nothing that I've studied, nothing that I've heard that makes this a good decision. Please start representing us, not against us. We're not your enemy. We voted for you. We would never have voted for you if we imagined that you would do something like this. No onslaught. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Todd Andrew. Oh, hi, council. Can you hear me? Yes. Hey, Todd Andrew, district five. I know this is a tough decision, and we all know that crime was coming down before the implementation of the cameras, and we all know that the cameras help to solve crime, so it's a tough decision, but we have a regime at the federal level who has proved lawless and unaccountable, along with their immigration and custom enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agencies, and we've had capitulations on the part of media. We've had capitulations on the part of law firms and other organizations in this country. Who's to say FLOC is not going to do the same thing? I would urge you, can we keep, please, maybe the hardware in place for when the Trump regime has been vanquished and then turn them back on once they are the hell out of here? Thanks a lot. Thanks, Todd. Next is Jiggy. Hi, I'm Jiggy Geronimo. I'm a resident of El Cerrito, where we just successfully beat our FLOC contract, and like others, I frequently come to Berkeley to visit friends, go to restaurants, and check out your parks, and so while I'm relieved that I'm not going to be surveilled at home, I don't want to be watched when I come to your city, and your decision today is not about cameras. It's about FLOC, and I want to talk about how bad and toxic of a company FLOC is. Berkeley is a reputable city with a reputation of being a beacon of progressiveness, so I don't really know what you all are doing contracting with the most disreputable company on the market. Engaging in mass surveillance is going to tarnish your reputation. 50 cities have already canceled their contracts. Even Ring, which is a mass surveillance company, has canceled its contracts. You all need to wake up and realize that you are living in 1939 Germany, so whatever you imagine that you would do if you were alive during Nazi Germany, you are doing that right now. How will you feel in 6 or 12 months when one of your residents starts disappearing because they were protesting, and you have to live with the realization that you greenlit the technology that made that possible? How will you sleep at night? Next is Jen. Jen, you should be able to unmute. Hi, I'm a District 5 resident, and I strongly oppose doing business with FLOC, and honestly, I feel a real sense of despair that we're even having this debate. FLOC has shown itself to be untrustworthy time and again, and it seems to me to be magical thinking to believe that Berkeley can somehow prevent data sharing when so many other jurisdictions couldn't. The question before the council tonight is not simply one of local safety. I really, really,.

Segment 9

I really wish it was, but unfortunately, the real question here is whether Berkeley is going to voluntarily contribute to a mass surveillance network that aids inhumane political agendas and imperils the privacy rights, well-being, and sometimes the lives of countless people. Dr. Maya Angelou once said, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. FLOC safety has shown us over and over who they are. Please believe them and vote no on continuing to do business with FLOC. Thank you. Thank you. Next is a username just says iPhone. If you continue to work with FLOC, you will be personally responsible for the arrest of women who have abortions, like happened in Texas when police performed a nationwide search of cameras last May. FLOC employees accessing videos of children's gymnastics rooms, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a swimming pool in Atlanta, Georgia. Police drawing guns on innocent families, including children, which happened in Arkansas. Police dogs mauling innocent Black drivers, like happened in West Hollywood just in March. The detention and subsequent torture of immigrants, because according to the ACLU, records revealed that many FLOC searches were carried out by local officers on behalf of ICE. Stalking of romantic partners by police, which has already been documented 14 times per the Justice Institute. 75-year-old grandmas being repeatedly pulled over due to misidentified plates, which has happened in Boulder, Colorado, over the last few months. And countless other crimes. Thank you. Next is John Lindsay Poland. There have been several claims this evening that when Richmond turned off its FLOC cameras that crime went up. And this is just a misreading of the data. Richmond's cameras went on in April 2023. They turned them off in November of 2025. During that period, between 2022 and 2024, robbery rates, when the time when the FLOC cameras were on, robbery rates went up by 29%. Sexual assault went up by 22%. Vehicle theft went up by 6.6%. Arson went up by 15% from the times when the FLOC cameras were off. This is just a misstatement of the facts. Crime responds to a lot of other things besides whether people are being watched. And this is just not one more reason that you should be convinced. Please stand with the people and vote no on the contract. Thank you. Next is Amelia. Hey, guys. I'm yet another District 5 resident ashamed of my representative. Really, really embarrassed. I know you're not listening. Your own lawyer and auditor have told you not to do this and you're pushing through anyway. Two weeks ago, you were talking about the $30 million deficit, but suddenly you found the money to pay for the lawsuits that are going to come from this. Really proud of you for finding the money. Love to know where it came from. Seems like there are better ways to spend tens of millions of dollars that your own lawyer have told you you're opening us up to. BPD staffing issues have everything to do with the erosion of community trust and the fact that they're lying to you and us to get to get more toys to play with to spy on us is not helping. It's actually hurting their own staffing issues and the community trust that they keep claiming they want to build. It's not going to be built on this. You want to spy on kids' playgrounds? You want to track down your ex-girlfriend? Do it on somebody else's dime. This is a bad idea. I wish you'd listen. We're all just gammon. Next is Avery Arbaugh. Avery, you're unmuted. Avery, you're unmuted. Can you hear us? Avery, are you there? Maybe we come back to that. We'll come back. Next is Anne Dixon. Hi there. My name is Anne and I live in District 1. And I just wanted to also mention that I believe Trevor Chandler, Mr. Flack, has clear conflicts of interest in this, that he's been working with us. He is not only a board member of the Bay Area Council, which their public safety initiative has come to these meetings twice. They were in here earlier and pushed Flack. He's also an elected member of the San Francisco Democratic Party. This is way too close. It's inappropriate for Berkeley. And I think that Flack has, once again, just wasted a bunch of people's time. They cannot do what they say. And I mean, this is inappropriate. You all cannot actually approve a contract with what is going on right now. This has to be talked about before that. Thank you. Thank you. Just so folks know, we've got about 13 speakers left, but only about 11 minutes. Oh, sorry. 13 minutes. So we might lose some folks because of the timing. Next is Vince. Hi, Vince Montabon, District 5. Excuse me, District 5. A lot of the council questions really frustrated me earlier, because I think we got bogged down in questions about our sanctuary policies, or what language we can put in the contract, or what about this hypothetical. But we're basically saying at the end of the day, we're going to build the surveillance state, but Berkeley City Council is going to have control over it. And I have an issue with that. I'm not comfortable with that. I don't care if you're a left-wing person or a right-wing person, or if you're the president, or if you're the city council. I don't want you to be spying on me, no matter who you are. So I just feel like this is the type, you know, we like to march for no kings. This is the type of system that a king would build to control the people. So we have to oppose this. Please vote no on this item. Thank you. Mark, can we try to get Avery back? I think Avery's got their hand up again. Yes. Okay, Avery, you're unmuted. Can you hear me this time? Yes. Okay, fantastic. Good evening, Mayor, night mayor and council members. My name is Avery. I'm the chair of the Berkeley Tenants Union and head of the Berkeley Tenant Organizing Task Force. After Measure BB was passed, one of the first things our first building-wide tenants union to enter bargaining with their landlord fought for was a data privacy safety plan to protect their undocumented neighbors from ICE. Berkeley residents care about this issue. I'm proud that through bargaining and with the pressure of our union, they got a plan in place that means that their personal data is now more secure than the data of the average Berkeley resident whose license plate is scanned by a flock automatic license plate reader. Berkeley's city government should not be doing a worse job at keeping our data secure than slumlords. Please vote against this contract and keep our neighbors safe. Thank you. Thank you. Next is NB. Hi there. So a lot of people are talking about drones, cameras, software, keeping us safe. As others have said, there's no independent evidence that shows that any of us. The surveillance methods decrease crime or improve clearance rates. There's no independent studies on this. But I also want to talk about what it means for us to do this. Even if it did keep us safe, we would be throwing everyone else under the bus in the states and localities that Mr. This stuff is legal, right? They follow the law. That means in Texas, they harass trans people and find women getting abortions in Kansas, where they overnight made trans drivers license illegal. They can track them down. So why would we give our money to this company, help train their AI models? It's impossible to remove data from an AI model once it's been trained. We don't have that capability. Why would we do that? Even if it did keep us safe, why would we throw everyone else in the country under the bus? All of our marginalized communities. Devin, Devin, you should be able to unmute. Yeah. Yeah, here I am. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Dr. Devin pastika. I've lived in Berkeley for over 20 years and have been really happy here. I live in district three with Ben Bartlett as my council member. And I just can't believe I just heard that the license plates are automatically imaged. I just I just can't believe like basically a system that that I don't consent to. And so many of us don't consent to will be just rolled out like this. And I can't believe that El Cerrito voted the proposal down. And here in this progressive left leaning city that I really have been excited about living, living in, that they're actually believing that a private corporation will be responsible and trustworthy with all of our surveillance data. And that the courts, of course, and federal agencies can the courts can. Thanks for your comment. Time's up. Next is Deb. Hi, I just wanted to point out what hasn't been discussed, that there's a potential for increasing costs over time with flocks flock as a subscription service that they can raise their fees over time. And apparently they've done that with other jurisdictions. So that's kind of another cost that the current council is putting us in for going forward. My understanding. Thank you. Next is Ann Parker. And are you there? And Parker. Let me start over when I hear mass surveillance being considered as a way of life in Berkeley. I just don't recognize the city of within the years as a student mom, grandma, pediatrician. I'm sure this is not the will of Berkeley residents. What's the city council missing and why this is contrary to the reason we live in Berkeley and in this country, a country built on generations of people who fled fascism and autocracy. Please support democracy and civil liberties and not autocracy and distrust. Safety is associated with communities, supporting communities through funding its institutions, not mass surveillance. Please hear us here. The majority of those speaking to you tonight and the majority of citizens in Berkeley vote against surveillance and begin by voting against this contract with floss for many reasons presented tonight. Most of us. And most of all, rethink supporting fascist. Thank you. Thank you. Next is MP. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm a district 5 resident and I just wanted to come here tonight to say that I've listened to everybody's wonderful comments. I've learned a lot from everybody here and whether or not you are. Pro or against or whatever your political leanings are, whatever, whether you believe we're living under fascism and whatnot. I, it doesn't matter that there has been decades, decades of research into the sorts of things that can be done by a community in a civil infrastructures to reduce crime to stop crime. Surveillance infrastructure is never one of those things. I mean, somebody brought up the Patriot Act earlier, and I just wanted to bounce off that because the Patriot Act has been around longer than I've been alive and my whole life. I've been hearing about crime, crime, crime, crime, and the Patriot Act is it gives it gives intelligence agencies and the government the ability to your minute is up. Thank you. Next is Whitney sparks. I am a black mom and tenant organizer in district 7 demanding that you reject and cancel the contract with flock expansion of the fascist police surveillance state flock is a fascist escalation diametrically and irreconcilably opposed to Berkeley sanctuary city policy. There's no way to ethically vote to deploy flock in a quote unquote sanctuary city, and there's especially no way to ethically ignore a vast majority of Berkeley civilian constituents legal counsel UC research and the police accountability board, all of whom overwhelmingly reject this. Listen, no on flock cancel the contract reject flock and break democracy. If you still plan to vote for flock tonight, you should just resign instead before expanding the most of various surveillance technology in the world to vote resources to essential tech like public zoom meetings that don't boot constituents multiple times in between pandemics. Do not wait for further harm to come to your constituents community and neighbors, like Martinez shot five times and the giant psychological toll of knowing that we are being stalked on democratically by local police and government. Next is Gustavo. Gustavo SP knows a high performance computing machine learning engineer. One thing I want to bring up is that flock the whole. I mean, in terms of an efficiency thing the technology is just not efficient. The models are open source, you're able to find them online. And you're essentially just paying for server $2 million for server costs. That doesn't really make sense. You could just hire an engineer to do this stuff for you. There's, there's no fiscal reason why you would invest $2 million in flock. Lastly, there's something I do want to bring up. There's been a lot of parallel between Palestine and Israel and it's kind of weird that Mr flock used to be associated with a pack up until like 2018 2019 That's kind of telling There's more to say about the tag. Next is Casey. There's only three people left. I'd like to let them go. So, there's more reason. Well, I'm going to take those three people that we just said that were left. Casey. Hi, this is Karen Chen. I'm a resident of district four. I've been here for the past five years in Berkeley and 60 for six years. I just want to encourage the council and the mayor to vote no on this contract, because it is this type of surveillance technology is very clearly counter to the aim of community safety and obviously drain on taxpayer resources. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And next is Kelly hammer grin. Kelly should be able to shows that you're unmuted. Kelly, can you hear us. You're unmuted. We can come back to Kelly. See rock. Hi. Hi. Good evening. Mayor and members of the city council. My name is Eric McKeel I actually am right outside but just came back from the housing advisory commission. We will not be safe with any version of a full contract flock, which has already shared data with ice will not fight in a court order to protect the city's data. There's nothing we can put in our contract to prevent from sharing this and in previous violations of the law and contract by fault, cities were unaware of data privacy breaches until after they already happened. In several cases, city officials still don't know the extent of what happened with their constituents data violations could happen without any of us know. Law enforcement have violated all contracts and use private data to detain immigrants punish people seeking abortions, even stop ex partners of police officers. And even if we believe BPDs claim that flock will result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, which I do not. This contract exposes the city to tens of millions of dollars in liability as documented in the city attorney's memos provided to the daily top police doesn't community and stop flock. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. I see. Mark I see Kelly's iPad that probably is Kelly. Yes. And that would be our last speaker. Okay, can you hear me this time. Yes, we can. You are our final speaker for this evening. Oh, that's a big responsibility. You know, people have said so much tonight, it's hard to even add anything to that. Flock is a nationwide surveillance system. It's the wrong decision. It's the wrong way to go. And I plead with you plead with you to say no to flock it There just isn't anything good that I have been able to find about it, except looking at the flock website, maybe. But everything else I pick up is about all the problems with block and how data is shared and misused and we just shouldn't be doing that in the city of Berkeley. So I plead with you. To please say no. And if there hadn't been a line I'd be there in person. Thanks, Kelly. Okay, thank you so much, everyone. I appreciate hearing all of the public comments. We have now had three hours of public comment, two hours in person, one hour online. So we will now move on to council comments, starting with council member BlackBee. Great. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So we started first. I just wanted to thank everyone who came for speaking out and singing out as the case may be. Tonight, over the past few weeks, and especially the last couple of days, I've heard from many residents on all sides of this issue. I appreciate all the thoughtful emails and phone calls we've received from folks in District 6, from former colleagues on the Police Accountability Board, from local business owners, from members of the Berkeley Immigration Collective and so many others. And today, with the benefit of that feedback and that input, I want to share how I'm making this decision, weighing these many factors. The concerns that I've heard and I know many of us have heard from constituents are real and serious. Data privacy, the risk of federal authorities gaining access to local data, and the safety of vulnerable members of our community. Given the Trump Administration's aggressively unlawful immigration enforcement actions, those worries are not abstract. I take them seriously, and they have shaped how I'm approaching this vote. Berkeley's Police Department is among the finest in the country. Chief Lewis, Deputy Chief Tate, Mr. Malmberg, and our officers serve our community every day with professionalism, intelligence, dedication, and compassion. I strongly support the work of the BPD and everything they do to keep our community safe every day. I also strongly support the use of modern technology with clear guardrails and frequent audits to advance public safety. ALPR technology has proven to be an important investigative tool. Over the past 18 months, Falk ALPRs have assisted Berkeley Police in more than 161 cases, contributing to 83 arrests involving serious crimes, such as attempted homicide, hit-and-runs, carjackings, assaults, and kidnappings, including six alerts in just one day last week that led to a series of investigative follow-ups. Behind these numbers are real people. I heard earlier tonight people were trying to discount the numbers, but these are all real people and families who benefited from timely investigations and, in some cases, the prevention of further harm. In District 6 alone, I reviewed the list that I got from the Department. In District 6 alone, ALPRs have helped us solve a series of home invasion robberies, recover stolen vehicles, apprehend a roofing and construction scam ring, yes, those exist, and get justice for a sexual assault victim. These people matter, too. Some critics have suggested that we hire more police officers instead of licensing technology tools. Unfortunately, this is a false choice. Despite focused work on recruitment and retention, BPD has been understaffed for years, not for lack of effort, but this is a hard market to recruit and retain police officers. In just the past few months, Berkeley has lost six officers to San Francisco's aggressive recruitment campaign. We can't just hire our way out of this. On the contrary, providing officers with effective tools is part of how we recruit and retain them. Walking away from modern technology would make our staffing problem worse, not better. At the same time, the City must ensure that any public safety technology is procured from a company that can earn and maintain the public's trust. That community trust is crucial to me and to everyone up here. FLOC has faced criticism for past data sharing practices, rightfully so, involving outside agencies without local authorization, these concerns have understandably created real skepticism within parts of our community. We've heard much of it here tonight, I've heard much of it over the last couple of weeks. They warrant careful consideration before moving forward. I know FLOC has indicated that they have taken steps to remediate, but the outcome remains to be seen. As I mentioned from the start, this technology is important for Berkeley, but equally important is making sure that we get this decision right and build the public trust that we need in our decision-making process. I have full confidence in Chief Lewis and the professionalism of our officers in uniform and the BPD staff. We should be equally sure that the tools that we license meet these same superior standards of performance. I believe tonight it's more important to get it right than to get it fast. So I propose that we do take that time. So for the purposes of moving the process forward, and I look forward to comments from my colleagues, I've got a multiple part motion and I'll try and lay it out for Mark, because I know he's writing fast. So the motion would be starting with the Chief's updated proposal as the base motion, as amended by the supplemental from Mayor Ishii, Council Member Lunapar, Council Member Traiga. There's sections one through six, eight, and nine. We will not move forward with the full MSA execution as proposed. Do you want to say what MSA means? Sorry, we will not move forward with the full contract at this point. We'll refer to the City Manager the initiation of an RFP process in consultation with Police Accountability Board and BPD for each of the components and for their integration. Through that RFP period, extend the ALPR contract incorporating as many contract changes as possible from the Humbert-Blackabee supplementals, plus the letter that we received back from FLOC that indicated acceptance of some of those contract terms, and to take no action on item 1B on tonight's agenda. So again, I just want to thank everyone, that's my motion, and thanks for listening. Thank you. A second was from Council Member Humbert. So, yeah, you're in the queue. So, I would also like to ask that we sever the part of your motion that was referring to our portions, the one through six, eight, and nine from the supplemental. And I can just request to do that, so I'm going to do that. And then, yeah, does anyone else have anything about this particular motion before we continue on? Yes, so the sections one through six, let me just pull it up. Yeah, they are referring to the use, the policies around the items themselves, and then specifically are asking number eight is referred to the city manager to amend ordinance 2.99 to include a violation slash termination clause for surveillance technology vendors. And number nine was referred to the city manager and city attorney. Additional contractual language required vendor to inform the city of any requests for information, including but not limited to subpoenas, discovery requests, or requests under any federal or state law to the extent permitted by law. It receives related to city controlled data and safeguarded to the fullest extent allowed by the law. And feel free to pull it up, though, if you want to look at the details of it. And also to clarify that the extension through the RFP period is for a period of up to 12 months. If we figure it out sooner and end up somewhere sooner, you know, we can move sooner, but the extension goes up to 12 months for the RFP period. Okay, thank you. All right, let's go through the comments. Council Member Trageb. Can I clarify quickly? Yes. So you're severing the supplemental and not the ALPR? The part of the motion that includes our supplemental pieces, because then we can just vote on that separately. Okay, I think I'm still confused, but I'll just.. Okay, we can check in about that. All right. Council Member Trageb or Vice Mayor Trageb. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Everyone wants to feel and be safe. And based on lived experiences, safety means different things to different people. For businesses and many of our residents, it might mean having cameras and other technologies that help deter perpetrators of burglaries and robberies. And to many other Berkeley residents, particularly within our most vulnerable communities, it might mean being free from state surveillance and potential prosecution just for their existence in this country. All of these perspectives are ones that I heard from constituents and other Berkeley neighbors. All deserve to be held with equal humanity as we make our decision. From my firsthand experience as an immigrant and as a member of a vibrant immigrant community, I can tell you that these fears are grounded in the current reality, especially now in the current national climate and current administration, where data has been accessed and used in their hands in ways that could undermine Berkeley's sanctuary city commitments. BPD has demonstrated that they're great community partners and approach their work with a strong sensitivity towards all community members. I agree that providing our hardworking police officers with effective tools is critically important. At the same time, vetting these tools with careful consideration is equally as important and makes all the difference in our community's trust in city government. Over the last several months, the prevailing concern and theme among my District 4 constituents has been trust. A preponderance of them, conservatively nearly 95% of the over 150 who have contacted my office have expressed grave concerns about FLOC. History and evidence have shown that however well-meaning its admissions may be tonight, the vendor lacks accountability and therefore cannot be relied on as a trusted partner. I share those concerns. Tonight we're being asked to expand the system without comprehensive documentation of procurement requirements.

Segment 10

And with a full evaluation of alternatives. We are also being asked to do so without ever assessing the surveillance system as a whole, not just individual components like licensed plate readers or cameras. But the combined network including drones and real time monitoring, and it's cumulative impact and cost data use and civil liberties. A competitive RFP process would allow us to define our needs clearly, compare multiple vendors and consider different system designs. Furthermore, diversifying our vendors would create a resiliency in our public safety technologies. Flock has made at least four changes to standard terms and conditions in the last seven months, leading to their most recent February 2026 version of the contract. All of these changes deserve careful consideration before renewing our city's contract with Flock. While the city technically owns the data, the company appears to control how and when we can access it and in what format, raising real questions about what ownership means in practice. The company now claims a perpetual right to use our data to improve its services, although those terms may have been adjusted. And the agreement expands protections against liability for willful misconduct or gross negligence, shifting responsibility away from Flock. And taken together, these changes would shift control from the city and towards the vendor, increasing long-term risks. There are also real concerns about how data might be used beyond our local control. We have heard from residents who worry that surveillance data could be subpoenaed or accessed by federal agencies in ways that conflict with Berkeley sanctuary city values and our laws. The perception alone of this happening here can erode trust and public safety depends on people feeling protected, not monitored for all of these reasons. I will support any effort of this council to pause an expansion of this contract and conduct a formal competitive procurement process. We should evaluate alternatives, fully understand the costs and risks, seek legal guidance on these evolving contract terms, and ensure that any system we adopt aligns with our values of transparency, accountability, and civil liberties. This is not about projecting technology outright. It is about making sure we get it right. Tonight's decision is not just about a contract. It is about whether we uphold the standards of good governance, protect the rights of our residents, and build the kind of trust on which the community safety depends. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Council member Luna Par was right. I meant to sever the portion of the contract, which was just the extension of the ALPR. So thank you. So are you changing? I'm just saying the sever was just the ALPR extension piece. So we'll vote on that piece. Oh, OK. OK. Everything else, everything else will stay together. Yeah, it does. OK, speaking of, it's your turn. OK, thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you to our police chief, Deputy Chief Tate, Mr. Malberg, Ms. Lee, Mr. Chandler, as well as all of the public commenters and those who were in person as well as on Zoom. And I also want to thank those who have emailed, have engaged with us in other ways who aren't able to be here tonight, as well as those who did so during our last meeting in March. And I know this is a really contentious issue with strong opinions. And I just want you to know that I have heard your public comments and like my colleagues, I'm concerned about the data sharing breaches that have occurred in the past with this vendor. I know that we will never have what some are seeking, which is this 100 percent guarantee that it won't occur in the future. But I do feel reassured by what we heard from Mr. Chandler tonight about the way that Flock has adapted to data security concerns by changing the capabilities of its system. One of the public commenters asked why some of us are open to extending or renewing this contract. And so, you know, I just want to be honest about it. It's when you are an elected official, you don't have the luxury of just listening to who has the time to come to the meeting in person and share their opinion. You have to consider everyone that you represent. I happen to represent 15,000 people in my district. Some of them have been victims of serious violent crime. A big consideration for me are the crimes that have been solved by the use of automated license plate reader technology. You know, some people are talking about stats. You know, in twenty twenty five, Berkeley police made at least fifty two arrests for burglaries, robberies, sexual assault and homicide, homicide directly from A.L.P.R. data. And they use a network to assist all twenty nine other cases. You can disagree, but you cannot interrupt her. And respectfully, I have not heard anyone against the Flock contract renewal propose. How how will we solve these serious violent crimes if we fail to at least extend this contract for twelve months to give ourselves more time to weigh our options? So as an elected official, I have to think about the worst outcome, and that is the possibility that if we do not extend this contract for at least twelve months, that I will be responsible for the serious and dangerous outcome of violent criminal criminals who are not caught and arrested. They also weigh my conscience with equal weight as the possibility of a data breach. So that is why we have been elected to make these hard decisions, to weigh difficult competing trade offs. And that's what we are doing tonight. And I thank you for listening. I listened to you for three hours tonight. I listened to you for maybe five hours last night, last time in March. And and I thank you for listening to me. Thank you. Folks, come on, Nathan. Thank you. All right. So we're going to go to council member Lunapar, and then we're going to go online to council member Taplin. Thank you. We made a promise to our immigrant residents. We told them in January twenty twenty five to go live a normal life, to go to school, to work, to groceries, to the grocery store and to believe us that we would do everything in our power to keep them safe. We asked them to place their trust in us and passing this contract would be a slap in the face to those who did trust us. I feel exhausted and deeply, deeply disappointed that our promises to our residents and our values of sanctuary are so shallow, so fragile that we are not willing to back them up the minute we have to give up even the smallest thing. In this case, technology that we have no proof does anything to deter crime. I am so frustrated that we have made our community members and organizations who spend their scarce time and resources fighting endlessly on behalf of our immigrant residents facing the wrath of the federal government argue with the city of Berkeley instead. They are organizing legal support. They are camping out at day labor spots to watch out for ice. And we are supposed to be their allies. And instead, we are working as if we were purposely trying to waste their time. It is easy, it's easy to say that we support immigrants and transgender people and pregnant people and activists and all marginalized people who are targets of the federal government. It is easy to say that we are willing to stand up to fascism and do everything we can to protect them. And it is much, much harder to actually do it, especially when it gets hard. Yesterday, the Trump administration released its new counter national counterterrorism strategy. It names it's one of as one of its top three national security threats, what it calls violent, secular political groups whose ideology is, quote, anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist. It explicitly names Antifa. It promises in its own words to, quote, rapidly identify and neutralize these groups using, again, in their words, all tools available to map their membership and cripple them operationally. It is truly naive to a baffling level that any of us would think that simple contract language would save us from a government that is openly telling us that they think that they are above the law. I also want to respond to this idea that that that people who support Flock are somehow in the silent majority. In the past month, there was a pretty biased survey that went around Berkeley trying to find that a majority of Berkeley supports Flock. And in campaigns, when a survey, a poll isn't released, it usually means it's because it didn't go your way. And we haven't seen the results of that poll. So I think we can take that. OK, with that, I have two amendments, friendly amendments that I would like to make to the motion. And I'm going to share my screen quickly. One of them is what I mentioned earlier around First Amendment. The UAS First Amendment authorized use to use the can everyone see this? Can you make it a bit? It's amending amending the UAS surveillance use policy to respond to violent criminal activity at mass gatherings or special events only when there is probable cause of a felony and an active threat of serious bodily injury. And then my second amendment is to the end of the motion. My second amendment is to the ALPR extension that it should include a referral to create to include an efficacy assessment and review for compliance to be presented to council at least 30 days before the end of the extension. Thanks. It's acceptable to me. Council Member Humbert, do you? Is it acceptable to you? Yes, Brent does, he says. Council Member, excuse me, Council Member Blackaby. Thank you. Thank you. I also was wondering if the police department could quickly explain their supplemental and just briefly go over it because I just want to make sure that everyone understands what that is changing. The only thing that's changing is identifying that once we are in a space to authorize or get authority to enter into contract, we want to point to the most current and comprehensive procurement vehicle that exists. So that was updating to what that vehicle would have been. Thank you. That's helpful. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Going to online with Council Member Taplin. Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Good evening, everyone. I would like to thank city admin, legal, the PD, Director Lee for your diligence and your hard work to address the concerns of the council and the community at each step of this process. I also want to thank my fellow co-authors as well as council member Blackaby and the mayor for calling for additional restrictions and guardrails. I completely understand the trepidation and reaction to Washington. The city also needs to be able to function and provide basic tools for critical public safety services. In my view, it would be illogical and impractical to cause for the system to come down this July, and therefore, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to Council Member Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I want to thank everybody who appeared here and spoke today. I want to thank our police leadership and Mr. Chandler for appearing here and responding to questions. I respect the positions of all my colleagues and I've listened to all the concerns that have been expressed here tonight. I agree that some of the concerns, at least, are justified. At the same time, I think there's good evidence that automated license plate readers and other technological tools are creating crucial public safety benefits. A great example was just last week. There was a reference made to it. The block system led to six apprehensions in a single day. That's a real result. Those are six people potentially brought to justice and potentially untold number of additional crimes prevented. And, you know, I'd also go further afield and mention that flock ALPRs help apprehend a heavily armed ex-police officer who apparently intended to kill black Americans at a New York, New Orleans jazz festival within the past couple of weeks. So they do have the potential to save lives. I think they probably save lives there. I believe we can get to a place where we have sufficient protections for our data and the ability to get out of this agreement such that the benefits outweigh the risks. I understand and can respect the principled position that any marginal risk in this regard is too much. But in my view, but my view remains that our residents face public safety risks every day. Robberies, gunfire and organized theft. These are the real concrete everyday safety threats against which I am weighing. And I appreciated Council Member Kessarwani's comments on this. I am weighing the more marginal impacts of things like data leaks. So I'm I was willing. That said, I believe that the contract provisions I proposed alongside Council Members Taflin, Kessarwani and O'Keefe are essential. And I think Council Member Blackby's amendments are appropriate. And of course, I've just seconded Council Member Blackby's motion. So that's really about all I have to say on it. My my views have not modified since we last took this up last March. Thanks. Thank you very much, Council Member. Going to Council Member O'Keefe. Thank you. I have a statement, but first I want to ask about I guess the motion maker about my supplemental about the drone UAS. I initially was thought, well, maybe it doesn't matter anymore because we're not really doing anything on drones tonight. But I think if we are going to accept, I mean, I think there is a marginal use for it. So would you be open to including we are going to move the use policies? I and I'll just say my my main concern is if DFR is intended to sort of also clear cases that don't necessarily involve like imminent risk. So my only concern is one of the because one of the factors of using the DFR is there would be able to sort of clear cases where we don't need an officer. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was captured. That's my concern. So you don't support my supplement? If you want to have a separate vote on, I'd be able to have a vote on. Yeah, I would like that. So if we could suffer that, can we so we could adopt it, but sever it? OK, so the city attorneys let me know that that she has some concerns about the severability or not the severability, but I guess the severability of the use policy from the contract specifically. Do you want to just speak to that now since we're discussing it? Yeah. So it's not necessarily to the severability, but there's a little bit of concern. I thought the council was going to just do the vote on extending the contract and then kind of do the use policies later. Some of the use policies are very flock specific. So I think we need to take a look at that issue. How specific are the use policies? I think that that was reviewed when we submitted our supplemental. So we can take a quick recess to discuss that. If you think that's appropriate. That would be really helpful. All right. I do kind of want to let council member Bartlett speak, though, because he hasn't given us a call this. Yeah. I also want to make a statement if that's OK. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I'll make a statement and then we'll talk about the drone thing. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I'll let you make your comments and then I'm going to have council member Bartlett make his comments. Then we'll take a quick recess. I want to move to extend by 15 minutes. Second. OK, to extend to 1115 p.m., council member Casarwani. Yes. Kaplan. All right. Bartlett. Yes. Drago. I. O'Keefe. Yes. Black. Yes. Lunaparra. Yes. Humber. Yes. And Mary. No. OK. I said I already said to everyone, I said we're finishing at 11. That's it. So go ahead. Continue. Go ahead, council member. I can speak. OK, thank you. OK, so I'm happy to support the motion made by council member Blackaby. I think it's fundamentally reasonable and I really want to thank him for bringing it so thoughtfully, except for the drone part. I, I was prepared to go forward tonight with the original proposal, but really, my bright line rule is retaining the LPRs as as they exist right now. And so because that's being proposed, I'm happy to support it. They've really been a valuable tool, and I would not be OK taking them away. I really believe they taking it, taking away the LPRs at this point would make our citizens less safe. And I would actually be breaking a campaign promise if I if I were to agree to that. So that is actually like that is actually how democracy works. It was something I campaigned on was allowing police to have better and more effective technology. And I was lucky that I saw that. So that's important to me. Rolling out. But back to the motion that we're debating, it's fine. Rolling out the newer technologies, it can take more time. I think we have a good chance to hopefully build more public trust in the process before making the next step, and that feels appropriate. I do have a question, though, about whether it's possible to build public trust. The survey say, shh. Was she talking about my thing? OK, that's misunderstood, but I don't want to talk about that right now. That's not what that was. I do. OK, folks, so I do. I do wonder. I have to say. And I really would appreciate it if you all would listen and you can yell and jeer after if you like. I wonder about the good faith, whether or not people came here in good faith, willing to consider that public trust as possible. My position on this topic has been well stated in the op ed that I authored, along with three of my council colleagues. So I won't belabor it here, except to say that, you know, it was brought up several times tonight and always with criticism. And while I understand many disagreed with it, that's fine. I didn't expect everybody to agree with it. I didn't hear anyone really refuting its fundamental logic, which is that our surveillance state should be after. Thank you. Which is our surveillance state is really unchanged by whatever it is we do here tonight. If you want a phone, you came in here with an iPhone or whatever in your pocket, I have bad news for you. Stop, Nathan. Folks, let her finish speaking. You're just you're you're using up our time. Come on. You are already being surveilled to a level of intensity that pales in comparison to what's being proposed. When I walked to work the other day, I counted nine cameras that I walked past. Do I have any idea if facial recognition was used on the images that captured? No. Do I have any idea what happened to those images? Who can access them? I do not. I'm sorry to tell you that that is our reality. And folks, please. Hey, excuse me. As I said, I understand people want to agree, but that logic is what's driving my decision here tonight. So I want to implore those here tonight to really think about the logical basis for your outrage. And when we come back here in a year, hey, let her finish speaking. Yes. But I hope they have a more reality based conversation about what's really at stake. Let her finish speaking. Sit down. Sit down. Order or we'll take our recess right now. Sit down, Nathan. Go ahead. OK, I guess I guess. Folks. OK, I guess I can speak to this moment now. Order. We're hearing from Councilmember Bartlett now. Well, this is, you know, very instructive. Context really is king. I'm redundant by administration. This council deliberated and implemented the burqa, which is a form of this. This was a technology way to kind of remove police bias from automotive policing. We did put some cameras up and there was a very little fanfare. There's a small grouping. And in that meeting, actually, if you recall, it's a couple of years ago. Like I said, I fought hard for a motion that I made to air gap our data and air that means to separate it so it can't be used and can't be shared without our control. I mean, that motion, I fought hard for it and it failed because I knew that while we were trusting a Democratic president, things could change. Things always change. And that the next administration, because governments can change, governments can go bad. It might be a different context. And now we're in the context now. So it's interesting. And my district district three is in the house here for sure. I can tell you, my district is really amazing. You know, these are my family. I love all you do so much. My district is very diverse. It has the wealthiest person in Berkeley, has homeless people, has has my mayor. Yes, my mayor and good friend and neighbor. Has African-Americans, seniors, college people, techies. Who else? It has people that it's the center of disability rights in America. It has a hospital. It has a has an ad part station and supermarkets. It runs the gamut. It has the new homeowners, has the old homeowners and to the person. Every single person admonished me to not approve this deal. And. And it's important, because if you if you know, you know, our tenure, especially the work I've done through these years, you know, they're they're really they're very patient. They let me do the wild things I like to do, the interesting concepts that they support it. They forgive me when I mess up. They teach me. They're a really amazing bunch of people. And they let me kind of have my way. But every now and then, every now and then, there's an issue that they care about. And when they care about it, I care about it because I am them and they are me. So that's my position tonight. The same as yours. Thank you. OK, we are going to take a brief recess. Thank you. Hey, all right, folks, please. I need everyone to quiet down. If you can hear me, clap once. If you can hear me, clap twice. If you can hear me, clap three times. Oh, OK. All right. Wow. Amazing how much that works. OK, so we have some clarifications around the motion that I think needs to be made and just generally a couple of clarifications. I have some comments and I'd like us to take a vote. So did you want to clarify something, Council Member Linares? Oh, yeah. I wanted to clarify that the the poll that I was talking about was not Council Member O'Keefe's personal Google survey for her constituents. It was a separate paid official poll. I just wanted to clarify that. OK, thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Blackaby. Clarification of the motion on the on the extension portion for up to 12 months and 200 K, just to be clear, there's a dollar figure attached to it. OK. Attached to it. OK, thank you. Council Member Traiga, did you have something? Yeah, I wanted to. First of all, I appreciate this motion and I know we're going to sever out an item. I wanted to see if the maker and seconder would be friendly to since the the exploration of what was previously in the MSA, but is going to be in a potential negotiation of the 12 month extension, if the maker and seconder would be amenable to an exploration of upping the for violation penalty to two hundred ninety thousand dollars for violation. Yeah, that's acceptable. Yes. Thank you. OK. Any other clarifications? Yes. Council Member O'Keefe, did you have something? Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask again if I think we've gotten some clarification. I would like to request that we sever out the UAS use policy, both as an issue and well, I guess. Do I also make a motion then? We don't need to. You can request a separate request to sever it. And then I have I can say what I want to be voted on. For that substitute motion, I think that's different. No, we're just we would just vote on it separately. And so should I say what I want us to vote on now or should I wait? Mark, well, I'll just take my attention. I would like my my idea is I would like to vote on that separately. And I would like I will make a motion for that to be my supplemental and the edits that Council Member Lunaparra suggested to that are both edits to the UAS policy. So you would likely need to make a motion to amend the main motion if you wanted your amendments in. But the maker and the seconder were not acceptable to a friendly. Yeah, that's what I want to do. So just and just to clarify, I think Council Member Lunaparra were already part of it. So, OK, they were accepted. If we separate out the you. Yeah, OK, I'm making a substitute motion to amend it with my. So just a motion to amend the motion to amend the motion. Motion to amend the motion. OK, I made that. And so we will vote on that first. I'll second that. Thank you. So this is a motion to amend the main motion to include Council Member O'Keefe's amendments to the UAS policy into what gets adopted. OK, OK, so I'm sorry. I'm a motion to amend. Council Member Kesarwani. No. Kaplan. No. No. Oh, Council Member Bartlett. No. Trigub. Pass. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackabay. No. Lunaparra. Yes. Humbert. Yes. Mayor Ishii. No. Council Member Trigub. Aye. OK, motion that motion fails. OK. OK, and so we're back to the main.

Segment 11

Thank you. I'm going to give some comments first and then we'll vote. So I want to thank you all so much for being here this evening. I want to thank everyone for coming, for your previous presentations, and also for sitting and listening to our public comment, answering our questions, and engaging in this process. I want to make sure folks know that the police chief has been very helpful in answering our questions and working with us as we worked on our supplemental in good faith, and that my decision here tonight has nothing to do with my trust for the police department. I understand that these tools have helped on a number of different cases. I myself have seen so many cases that were really heart-wrenching that would not have been solved without these tools. So I do understand why it is the police department is interested in having them, and at the end of the day, I just don't trust FLOC. I don't trust, I don't trust FLOC and I don't trust our current federal administration. So many communities that we're hearing from are experienced heightened, are experiencing heightened justified fear. People deserve to live without fear of deportation or detention, to speak out in a protest without feeling intimidated, and to trust our city will protect its residents. Legal safeguards are not enough to ensure that federal authorities will respect local laws and protections. That's what we're seeing now. I want to ensure surveillance technologies we adopt fully align with Berkeley Sanctuary City policies and our deeply held free speech values. And FLOC needs to be proactive, not just reactive. FLOC has a responsibility to proactively safeguard data, ensure compliance with contracts, and uphold the legal and ethical standards of the communities that it serves. When there are legitimate fears that data could be used to target immigrant communities or suppress First Amendment rights, it becomes difficult to justify the use of FLOC's products. Concerned about the mass, I'm concerned about the mass aggregation of data with interoperability across all platforms and the risk that the Interim Director of Police Accountability, Kathy Lee, and PABS cite about over-dependence on one system, increasing our vulnerability as a city. I want to make sure folks understand that the procurement process was done properly. And at the same time, I don't feel that it was sufficient. So I will be supporting the motion that Council Members Blackabee and Humbert have made. FLOC may be the best technology right now, but we know that technology changes rapidly. And our Chief has even said that other companies might catch up not too long from now. It's not ready for our city yet. I don't have full confidence in a company, and I can't support something that I just really don't trust. We've heard so much from the community. I really want to thank you all for coming out to speak. I know for some of you, this is a really emotional issue. And at the end of the day, I know I can't support a FLOC contract because if this company does not live up to our standards and our values as a city, we really can't support it. So I want to thank you all again. Thank you to my colleagues this evening. Thank you to the City Manager and City Attorney in your office, all of our staff for being here and for answering our questions. There's a lot to go through on this issue. It's quite complex, and we have spent many, many, many hours reviewing all of it. So I would like to take a vote. We have two motions separately. I'd like to vote on the first one, not the ALPR part extension, but on the rest of it first. So can you please take the roll on that, Clerk? Okay, so this is the severed portion of the main motion for the use policies as amended with the supplemental numbers one to six and eight and nine of the supplemental materials from the Mayor, as well as Council Member Lunapara's amendments to the UAS and ALPR policies. So on that portion of the.. Does that also include the no full MSA, right? That's in that motion. And no full MSA, okay. Thank you. And no action on 1B. Right. Okay. On that portion of the motion, Council Member Kastorwani? Yes. Taplin? Yes. Bartlett? No. Trago? Pass. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackabay? Yes. Lunapara? Yes. Humbert? Yes. Mayor Ishii? Yes. Council Member.. Vice Mayor Trago? Aye. Okay, so that portion is adopted. And then on the other severed portion, which is the referral to the City Manager for RFP process for the other contract authority, other public safety technology, and the UAS, the fixed surveillance, and the investigative software. And the extension of the.. And the extension of the ALPR contract for 12 months with not to exceed amount $200,000 with amended contract term for $290,000 penalty per violation. So on that portion of the motion, Council Member Kastorwani? Yes. Taplin? Yes. Bartlett? No. Trago? No. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackabay? Yes. Lunapara? No. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? No. Motion carries. Thank you. Council Member O'Keefe, did you want to say something else? I'm sorry. I saw your little.. Okay. Sorry. Okay. All right. Thank you all very much for coming this evening. And we have completed both items on our agenda at this point. Yeah. So there are a few different things that just happened. Oh my gosh. Okay. Council Member Blackabay, I'm going to have you repeat your motion. Just so folks.. Actually, can I just ask because we're nearing the end. Well, actually, I think it would be helpful if you clarified for folks what we just voted on. So adopted the use policies for the various technologies, did not move forward with the full MSA with FLOG, initiating an RFP.. Sorry. Master Services Agreement, the contract did not move forward the contract. Initiating an RFP process for all the components and then extending the ALPR through the period of that RFP process so that we don't go dark in that period. And those were voted on separately. So the second vote was on extending the ALPR contract, whereas the first part was the rest of it. Thank you. Okay. All right. So in that case, I will see if there's a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Can we take the roll, please? Okay. To adjourn the meeting, Council Member Kisarwani. Yes. Hold on. We're still taking roll. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Trago. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackabay. Yes. Zunipara. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Mayor Ishii. Yes. Okay. Meeting is adjourned. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone.