Who runs license plate readers in Kern County?
-
- Agency
- Bakersfield Police Department
- Vendor
- Flock Safety
- Devices
- —
- Active License plate readers
- Agency
- Kern County Sheriff's Office
- Vendor
- Flock Safety
- Devices
- —
| System | Agency | Vendor | Status | Devices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License plate readers and the real-time centre | Bakersfield Police Department | Flock Safety | Active | — |
| License plate readers | Kern County Sheriff's Office | Flock Safety | Active | — |
On the map
- 0
- Verified by us
- 414
- Community-reported
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), including community reporting via the DeFlock project. Tiles by OpenFreeMap.
What we do not know
Bakersfield Police
- How many plate reader cameras there are and where they are. The Vice Mayor asked in open session in June 2026.
- How long the data is kept. The retention logs were part of the same request.
- What the Real Time Information Center watches, who staffs it, when it runs, and what rules govern following something live.
- What the "Flock to vCAD API" integration passes between the camera platform and dispatch.
- How many of the forty new intersection cameras are available as feeds in the Flock system, and what can be done with those feeds.
- Whether the department has published the plate reader usage policy state law requires.
- Who the department shares plate data with. The county sheriff prohibits federal and out-of-state sharing in its own policy; whether the city has anything comparable is unknown.
Kern County Sheriff
- How long plate reads are kept. The policy caps custom hotlist entries at thirty days and says nothing about the reads themselves.
- How many cameras there are and where they are.
- Which body approved the network, when, and at what cost. The county's own site and its board portal are both closed to automated requests.
- Whether the 2020 policy is still operative, and whether the office still holds subscriptions to CLEAR and LEARN.
- What the required periodic audits of queries have found.
- Whether the prohibition on federal and out-of-state sharing has been complied with. We have read the policy, not the practice.
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 Kern County.
Go to the Kern 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 ↗