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Marin County Sheriff | License plate readers

The California State Auditor examined this program in February 2020 and recorded that Marin's policy was to retain images for two years, that images were shared with hundreds of entities, and that staff searches were not audited. A suit over that sharing was filed in October 2021 and settled in May 2022. The office's policy manual stamped September 2025 caps retention at thirty days and requires an annual audit of all user queries.

At a glance

Retention stated by the State Auditor, February 2020
"Marin's policy is to retain images for two years" [1]
Retention the office reported to the State Auditor, same report
Between 6 months and 1 year, for data not tied to an investigation [2]
Retention in the current policy
No more than thirty days, reevaluated every two years (Policy 426.4, manual stamped 2025-09-18) [3]
Sharing recorded by the State Auditor, February 2020
Images shared with "hundreds of entities" and stored on "Vigilant's server, which is a cloud service" [1]
Sharing after the 2022 settlement
The ACLU of Northern California states that the sheriff agreed to stop sharing plate and location information with agencies outside California [6]
Sharing in the current policy
Policy 426.5(b) requires a receiving agency to "be verified as a non-federal, California law enforcement or prosecutorial agency with a need to know the information," and bars transfers to an agency the office knows shares the data outside that group [3]
Auditing of staff searches, February 2020
Of the four agencies examined, "none had audited searches of the ALPR images by their staff" [1]
The auditor's finding on abuse of the data
The auditor wrote that "our review of its internal affairs investigations records did not identify evidence of abuse or misuse of ALPR data" [1]
Auditing of staff searches in the current policy
Audits of all user queries once a year, run by the ALPR Program Manager (Policy 426.6) [3]
Vendor
Vigilant Solutions in the 2020 survey answer; Flock Safety per an August 2024 Central Marin Police Authority staff report [2] [8]
Contract as reported
The Pacific Sun reported $198,650 for a two-year contract with Flock Group Inc. covering 31 cameras in nine locations, funded from the sheriff's existing budget [7]
Published usage and privacy policy
Policy 426, one section of the office's 732-page policy manual; the office answered "No" when the State Auditor asked whether it posts its policy on its website [3] [2]
Camera locations, as the Pacific Sun named them
The outlet reported cameras "in Marin City, Strawberry, Tam Valley, Greenbrae, Oak Manor, Santa Venetia, Peacock Gap, Marinwood and Lucas Valley, as well as at Atherton Avenue near Binford Road and Highway 37 in Novato and the east and west ends of Indian Valley Road in Novato" [7]
Siting rationale, as the Pacific Sun reported it
Sites were chosen "based on crime 'heat maps' for retail and vehicle theft, with the targeted areas having only one or two ways in and out" [7]
Results of the annual query audits
Policy 426.6 requires one each year; we did not find an audit result for any year in the records we fetched [3]
Current sharing list
not in any record we fetched

How it happened

  1. Coverage

    State Auditor examines the office's plate reader program

    Report 2019-118 examined "Fresno Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Marin County Sheriff's Office, and Sacramento County Sheriff's Office" in detail. It states that "Marin's policy is to retain images for two years," that Marin and Fresno "have each arranged to share their ALPR images with hundreds of entities," and that of the four agencies "none had audited searches of the ALPR images by their staff." [1] [2]

  2. Incident

    Lagleva v. Doyle filed in Marin County Superior Court

    The ACLU of Northern California's case page states that "On October 14, 2021, community activists sued Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle." Three Marin residents brought the case, represented by the ACLU Foundations of Northern California, Southern California, and San Diego & Imperial Counties, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and attorney Michael T. Risher. [6] [4]

  3. Decision

    Settlement in Lagleva v. Doyle

    The ACLU of Northern California states that "In May 2022, the plaintiffs reached a settlement with Marin County and Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle," and that under it "Sheriff Doyle has agreed to stop sharing license plate and location information with agencies outside of California to comply with state laws S.B. 34 and S.B. 54." The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced the settlement on June 1, 2022. [6] [5]

  4. Procurement

    A Flock Safety contract, as the Pacific Sun reported it

    The Pacific Sun reported on December 5, 2023 that "Last week, the Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved" Sheriff Jamie Scardina's proposal "for an ALPR system with 31 cameras in nine locations," and that he "received the green light to spend $198,650 for a two-year contract with Flock Group Inc." That places the vote in late November 2023. We did not read the Board item. [7]

  5. Context

    Policy 426 in the current policy manual

    The manual stamped September 18, 2025 states that plate reader information "should be stored for no more than thirty days," limits sharing to law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies, and states that "Audits of all user queries will be conducted once a year for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity." [3]

What the 2020 audit found

The California State Auditor’s Report 2019-118, published in February 2020, examined four agencies in detail: “Fresno Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Marin County Sheriff’s Office, and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.” The report states that “Marin’s policy is to retain images for two years,” that “Marin did not establish its retention period based on when it uses the ALPR images it captures,” and that “Marin did not cite state law in its policy; its former ALPR administrator stated that when setting a two-year retention period, he considered other agencies’ retention periods and the retention requirements for litigation related to investigations.”[1]

On sharing, the report states that Fresno and “Marin have each arranged to share their ALPR images with hundreds of entities and Sacramento with over a thousand entities across the United States,” and that Fresno, “Marin, and Sacramento all store their ALPR images on Vigilant’s server, which is a cloud service, and share their images with other agencies that subscribe to Vigilant’s services.” It records that “Marin and Sacramento have allowed expired hot lists to remain in their ALPR systems for far longer than their specified retention periods” because “their administrators were unaware of the need to manually delete them,” and that Marin’s ALPR administrator “believes that sharing ALPR images widely is important because the more information available to law enforcement, the more successful it can be in its mission.” Across the four agencies the auditor found that “none had audited searches of the ALPR images by their staff and thus had no assurance that the searches were appropriate.”[1]

Marin filed a written response to the draft report, and the auditor published comments on it. In those comments the auditor states that “Marin did not communicate with us to seek clarification regarding the report content we provided, despite our providing multiple opportunities for it to do so.” The same report states that “our review of its internal affairs investigations records did not identify evidence of abuse or misuse of ALPR data.”[1]

The office’s own answers in that report’s survey name Vigilant Solutions as the vendor and state that the office both operates cameras and accesses plate reader information, that it has a usage and privacy policy, that it does not post that policy on its website, and that data not tied to an investigation is retained between six months and one year.[2] The audit’s text and the office’s survey answer give different retention periods.

What the litigation was about

The ACLU of Northern California’s case page states that “On October 14, 2021, community activists sued Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle” in Marin County Superior Court.[6] Three Marin residents brought the case, represented by the ACLU Foundations of Northern California, Southern California, and San Diego & Imperial Counties, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and attorney Michael T. Risher. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote that “Documents show that the sheriff’s office shares and transfers ALPR information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), over a dozen other federal law enforcement agencies, and over 400 out-of-state law enforcement agencies.”[4]

The ACLU of Northern California’s case page states that “In May 2022, the plaintiffs reached a settlement with Marin County and Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle,” and that under the settlement “Sheriff Doyle has agreed to stop sharing license plate and location information with agencies outside of California to comply with state laws S.B. 34 and S.B. 54.” The organization calls the case “the first of its kind to challenge the sharing of private information collected by ALPR mass surveillance” and lists it as a closed case.[6] The foundation announced the settlement on June 1, 2022.[5] What we read is the two organizations’ accounts of their own case, not the complaint or the executed settlement.

What local reporting says about the contract

The Pacific Sun reported on December 5, 2023 that “Last week, the Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Sheriff Jamie Scardina’s proposal for an ALPR system with 31 cameras in nine locations,” that Scardina “received the green light to spend $198,650 for a two-year contract with Flock Group Inc., a privately held Atlanta company that will lease the cameras to the county, as well as install and maintain them,” and that “The funds will come from the sheriff’s existing budget.” The article’s own date places the vote in late November 2023.[7] Nobody on this project has read the Board item, the staff report or the agreement.

The same article names the sites. It reported that “Drivers will soon notice the sheriff’s Flock cameras in Marin City, Strawberry, Tam Valley, Greenbrae, Oak Manor, Santa Venetia, Peacock Gap, Marinwood and Lucas Valley, as well as at Atherton Avenue near Binford Road and Highway 37 in Novato and the east and west ends of Indian Valley Road in Novato.” It reported that the sites were chosen “based on crime ‘heat maps’ for retail and vehicle theft, with the targeted areas having only one or two ways in and out.”[7] That is the outlet’s account, not a siting list published by the office.

A Central Marin Police Authority staff report dated August 8, 2024 states that “Currently, the Novato Police department, San Rafael Police Department, and the Marin County Sheriff’s Office use Flock Safety for their ALPR cameras.”[8]

What the policy says now

The office’s policy manual carries a Lexipol stamp of September 18, 2025. Policy 426.4 states that “The information collected by the ALPR system should be stored for no more than thirty days. Thereafter, ALPR data should be purged unless it has become, or it is reasonable to believe it will become, evidence in a criminal or civil action or is subject to a discovery request or other lawful action to produce records,” and that the “retention period for ALPR data should be reevaluated every two years.” Policy 426.5 states that “The ALPR data may be shared only with other law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies for official law enforcement purposes or as otherwise permitted by law.” Policy 426.5(b) carries the same limit the settlement describes: a receiving agency “shall be verified as a non-federal, California law enforcement or prosecutorial agency with a need to know the information,” and “ALPR data shall not be transferred or shared to an agency that MCSO knows shares such data with an entity other than a non-federal, California law enforcement or prosecutorial agency.” Policy 426.6 makes the department’s Vehicle Theft Investigator the ALPR Program Manager, gives that role responsibility “for creating approved accounts and managing ALPR data and user/data query audits,” and states that “Audits of all user queries will be conducted once a year for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity.” It adds that “Access to the raw ALPR database is restricted to approved personnel with assigned passwords.”[3]

What it does not establish

The February 2020 report and the September 2025 manual state different rules on retention, on sharing and on auditing. Neither document states why they differ.

The camera sites we publish are the Pacific Sun’s account of them. We did not find a siting list published by the office, and we did not confirm which of the reported cameras were installed.[7] Policy 426.6 requires an annual audit of all user queries, and we did not find a result from one for any year in the records we fetched.[3] Which agencies receive Marin Sheriff plate data today is not in those records.[6] The Board of Supervisors item behind the contract was not readable by our tools on this pass.

Questions

Does the Marin County Sheriff's Office use license plate readers?
Yes. The California State Auditor examined the program in February 2020, when the office's vendor was Vigilant Solutions. An August 2024 Central Marin Police Authority staff report states that the office uses Flock Safety, and the Pacific Sun reported in December 2023 that the Board of Supervisors approved a two-year, $198,650 Flock Group contract for 31 cameras in nine locations. [2] [8] [7]
How long does the office keep plate reader data?
Policy 426.4 in the manual stamped September 18, 2025 states that the data "should be stored for no more than thirty days." In February 2020 the State Auditor wrote that "Marin's policy is to retain images for two years," while the office's own answer in that report's survey said between six months and one year for data not tied to an investigation. [3] [1] [2]
Who can see the data?
Policy 426.5 states that the data "may be shared only with other law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies for official law enforcement purposes or as otherwise permitted by law." Policy 426.5(b) narrows that further: a receiving agency "shall be verified as a non-federal, California law enforcement or prosecutorial agency with a need to know the information," and the data "shall not be transferred or shared to an agency that MCSO knows shares such data with an entity other than a non-federal, California law enforcement or prosecutorial agency." The ACLU of Northern California states that under a May 2022 settlement the sheriff agreed to stop sharing plate and location information with agencies outside California. The current list of recipients is not in any record we fetched. [3] [6]
Are searches of the database audited?
Policy 426.6 states that "Audits of all user queries will be conducted once a year for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity," under a Program Manager who is the department's Vehicle Theft Investigator. In February 2020 the State Auditor found that of the four agencies it examined, "none had audited searches of the ALPR images by their staff." We did not find an audit result for any year in the records we fetched. [3] [1]

On the map

The community has mapped 117 devices of this type in the county on OpenStreetMap. These are community reports: the vendor and operator of each point are unverified, and none is confirmed to belong to this system. See them on the map →

Street names from reverse geocoding — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

What we do not know

What you can do

Show up

Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Marin County.

What we have documented in Marin County →

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 →

Sources

  1. 1.
    California State Auditor, Report 2019-118, "Automated License Plate Readers: To Better Protect Individuals' Privacy, Law Enforcement Must Increase Its Safeguards for the Data It Collects," February 2020 · Primary document · accessed · archived copy · our copy (5041 KB)
  2. 2.
    California State Auditor, Report 2019-118 survey response, Marin County Sheriff's Office · Primary document · accessed · archived copy
  3. 3.
    Marin County Sheriff's Office Policy Manual (Lexipol, stamped 2025-09-18), Policy 426, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) · Primary document · · accessed · archived copy · our copy (2141 KB)
  4. 4.
    Electronic Frontier Foundation, press release on the filing of Lagleva v. Doyle · News · accessed · archived copy
  5. 5.
    Electronic Frontier Foundation, press release on the settlement in Lagleva v. Doyle, June 1, 2022 · News · · accessed · archived copy
  6. 6.
    ACLU of Northern California, case page for Lagleva v. Doyle (status "Closed Case," latest update June 2, 2022) · News · accessed · archived copy
  7. 7.
    Pacific Sun, "Marin sheriff installing license plate readers amid concern of eroding civil liberties," Nikki Silverstein, December 5, 2023 · News · · accessed · archived copy
  8. 8.
    Central Marin Police Authority, Staff Report Business Item A, informational item on Flock Safety automated license plate readers, August 8, 2024 · Meeting record · · accessed · archived copy

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