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ORWELL INDEX

Who runs license plate readers in Contra Costa County?

On the map

0
Verified by us
577
Community-reported

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), including community reporting via the DeFlock project. Tiles by OpenFreeMap.

What we do not know

Antioch Police

  • How many readers the department operates, of what kind, and where.
  • The results of the audits Policy 422 says should happen regularly.
  • Which agencies have requested and received Antioch plate data.
  • Whether the department has adopted anything on federal or out-of-state sharing since 2024.

Contra Costa County Sheriff

  • Whether the office maintains a plate reader policy newer than the 2013 revision that is not published. We could not find one posted.
  • Which agencies receive county plate data through the ARIES program.
  • How many cameras the office operates and where they sit.
  • The results of the audits the policy assigns to the Technical Services Division.

Concord Police

  • Whether a policy newer than the January 2016 version is posted, given its own review date of January 2017.
  • How many readers the department operates and where they sit.
  • The audit reports the policy describes, and how often they are produced.
  • Which partner agencies contribute data to, or draw data from, the system.

Richmond Police

  • The department's December 2025 press release and the council records for the March 2026 vote, none of which we have read directly.
  • Whether any outside agency retrieved Richmond data while the national search setting was on, and how that could be established given the audit limits the chief described.
  • What the December 2026 re-evaluation decides.
  • Why the hot list categories do not account for the printed totals in the 2024 and 2025 reports.
  • Whether the May 2026 figures cover that month or the year to date, which the report labels inconsistently.
  • The results of the annual audits the policy requires, and how many inquiries were reviewed.
  • How many cameras are installed and where.

What license plate readers are

An automated license plate reader photographs every passing vehicle and records the plate, the time and the place. It does not watch suspects. It logs everyone, and the record is usually kept on a vendor’s servers.

How they work, why agencies buy them, and every county we have documented →

What you can do

Civic action

Show up

This technology is bought and renewed by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Contra Costa County.

Go to the Contra Costa County hub →

Personal protection

Protect yourself

Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.

Surveillance Self-Defense ↗