El Cajon PD | License plate readers
The only California city the Attorney General has taken to court over plate data. The case turns on what two words in the statute mean, and it has not been decided.
At a glance
- The case
- People of the State of California ex rel. Rob Bonta v. City of El Cajon, San Diego County Superior Court, case 25CU053437C [1]
- Filed
- 3 October 2025, as a petition for writ of mandate [1]
- What the state asks for
- A declaration that state law prohibits sharing plate data with federal and out-of-state agencies, and an order that the city stop [1] [2]
- What the state alleges
- Sharing with agencies in 26 named states in the October petition, and with "over 100 state and local agencies outside of California" in the January memorandum [1] [2]
- What the state cites as evidence
- The department's own vendor-hosted transparency portal, "as of Sept. 25, 2025" [1]
- The disputed phrase
- Whether "public agency" in Civil Code 1798.90.5(f) covers agencies outside California [2]
- El Cajon's position
- The city has answered and disputes the state's reading. We know this only from the state's brief, which says "El Cajon erroneously claims it can share ALPR data with out-of-state agencies" [2]
- Outcome
- undecided. We found no ruling later than the memorandum of 21 January 2026, and nothing here is an adjudicated finding [2]
- El Cajon's own account
- not read. We have read nothing written by the city. Its Answer is not published by the state and the city's website is closed to our tooling [2]
- Cameras, cost, and the approving vote
- not established. Nothing in the filings gives a count, a contract value or a council item [1]
How it happened
- Context
The state tells every agency what the phrase means
California Department of Justice Information Bulletin 2023-DLE-06, issued to all state and local law enforcement agencies, advises that the definition of "public agency" is limited to state or local agencies and "does not include out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies", and that the prohibition reaches databases accessed through vendors. [3]
- Decision
The Attorney General sues
A petition for writ of mandate filed in San Diego County Superior Court against the City of El Cajon, the El Cajon Police Department and Chief Jeremiah Larson in his official capacity, asking the court to declare the practice unlawful and order it stopped. [1] [4]
- Debate
The state asks the court to act, and the city is contesting
A memorandum of points and authorities in support of the petition, putting the figure at over 100 agencies outside California and naming five. It records that the city has answered and disputes the interpretation. [2] [5]
A note before anything else
This page describes a lawsuit that has not been decided, and it is built almost entirely out of one side’s filings.
Everything the Attorney General says here is an allegation. No court has ruled on it. The City of El Cajon has answered the petition and disputes the state’s reading of the law, and we know that only because the state’s own brief says so. We have not read one word written by the city. Its Answer is not published by the Attorney General, and the city’s website returns a block to our tooling.
That is an unbalanced record and no amount of careful phrasing fixes it. Getting El Cajon’s filings is the first item on this county’s retrieval list. Until then, what follows is what the state filed and what the state cited, described as exactly that.
What the case is about
On 3 October 2025 the Attorney General of California filed a petition for writ of mandate in San Diego County Superior Court against the City of El Cajon, its police department, and Chief Jeremiah Larson in his official capacity. The case is 25CU053437C.
The dispute is narrow. California’s plate reader statute says a public agency may not share plate data “except to another public agency, and only as otherwise permitted by law”. The statute then defines a public agency as “the state, any city, county, or city and county, or any agency or political subdivision of the state or a city, county, or city and county, including, but not limited to, a law enforcement agency.”
The Attorney General reads that as meaning California agencies and nothing else. The petition puts it plainly:
Thus, California’s state and local law enforcement agencies are prohibited from sharing ALPR data with out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies.
El Cajon reads it differently. What its reasoning is, we cannot tell you, because we have not seen it. The state’s brief characterises the position in one sentence, and a characterisation by the opposing party is not the position.
A judge will decide which reading is right. That is what the case is for, and it is worth saying that a statute whose meaning two sets of government lawyers dispute in open court is not an obvious one.
What the state alleges
The October petition names 26 states whose agencies it says can access the department’s data: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
The January memorandum puts it at “over 100 state and local agencies outside of California”, and names five of them: a sheriff’s office in Florida, another in Tennessee, and police departments in New Mexico, Louisiana and South Carolina.
The filings also describe what happened before the lawsuit: contact with the police chief about the limits in state law, a request for written confirmation that the sharing would stop with a response due by 12 September 2025, and no response.
The evidence is a page the vendor publishes
This is the part of the case that reaches past El Cajon, and it is a fact about the record rather than an argument.
The Attorney General did not need a records request or a subpoena to find out who can search this city’s plate data. Footnote 2 of the petition cites:
El Cajon CA PD Transparency Portal, Flock Safety <https://transparency.flocksafety.com/-el-cajon-pd-ca\> (as of Sept. 25, 2025).
The state’s evidence is the vendor’s own public transparency page for the department.
Three other agencies documented on this site link a page exactly like it as their own answer to how a resident is supposed to check what happens to this data. It is, in that sense, working: the information was public, and the state’s chief law officer read it and acted on it.
There is one wrinkle worth recording. We could not read it. The host returns a bot challenge to automated readers, so this project has never once been able to open one of these portals, in this county or any other. A challenge is a gate rather than a request and we do not go around it. What a person with a browser can see, and what a research tool can see, are different things here.
Where the language in other counties’ policies came from
In October 2023, two years before the lawsuit, the Department of Justice sent every state and local law enforcement agency in California a bulletin about exactly this question. Information Bulletin 2023-DLE-06 says:
Importantly, the definition of “public agency” is limited to state or local agencies, including law enforcement agencies, and does not include out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies. (See Civ. Code, § 1798.90.5, subd. (f).) Accordingly, SB 34 does not permit California LEAs to share ALPR information with private entities or out-of-state or federal agencies, including out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies. This prohibition applies to ALPR database(s) that LEAs access through private or public vendors who maintain ALPR information collected from multiple databases and/or public agencies.
That paragraph explains something this site had documented without being able to source. Several California agencies now publish policies containing that reasoning, sometimes nearly word for word, including the sentence about databases reached through vendors. They did not each work it out. They were sent it.
Which makes the bulletin the more useful document of the two for a reader outside El Cajon. It is what every agency in the state was told, in writing, in 2023. What a given agency’s policy says about it now is a choice each one made afterwards.
What is not on this page
No camera count. No contract value. No council vote. Nothing in the filings gives any of them, and the city’s website is closed to us, so we have not established a single fact about the size or cost of this system.
And no outcome. We found nothing after the January 2026 memorandum. If the court has ruled since, it is not here, and this page will be wrong about the state of play rather than about the facts it states.
What we do not know
- What El Cajon says in its own words. We have read nothing written by the city, and its Answer is not published by the state.
- How the case was decided. We found no ruling after 21 January 2026.
- How many cameras the department operates, at what cost, and which council item approved them.
- What the department's transparency portal shows now.
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 San Diego County.
What we have documented in San Diego County →Protect yourself
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Surveillance Self-Defense →Sources
- 1. People of the State of California ex rel. Rob Bonta v. City of El Cajon; City of El Cajon Police Department; Jeremiah Larson, San Diego County Superior Court case 25CU053437C, Petition for Writ of Mandate and Complaint for Injunctive and Declaratory Relief, filed 3 October 2025 · Primary document · · accessed
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