California
Sonoma County
On record
Checked 21 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 2
- Systems
- 7
- Devices mapped
- 516
Sonoma County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
Sonoma County’s research pass read the Sheriff’s 2022 policy manual and its 2023 military equipment annual report, the Healdsburg and Cloverdale police departments’ license plate reader policies, Cloverdale’s council minutes for May and November 2023, a Rohnert Park council presentation on Flock Safety cameras, Rohnert Park’s July 2019 policy manual, and local reporting on the Rohnert Park and City of Sonoma council decisions of 2026. A later pass read the complaint and the county’s answer in the lawsuit over Permit Sonoma’s code enforcement drone program, which is the county’s largest documented surveillance operation and sits outside police oversight law entirely. Santa Rosa’s real-time crime center records and camera registry, the fusion center privacy policy the Sheriff’s own policy attaches, Petaluma’s license plate reader page, the council records behind both 2026 votes, and the county oversight office’s annual reports could not be read on this pass and remain open, as does Permit Sonoma’s drone policy itself.
What's in use here
The City Council approved a city-wide Flock Safety license plate reader system in May 2023 on a 3-1 vote, at not to exceed $37,250.00 plus a 10% contingency, then adopted a five-year renewal that November at not to exceed $87,500.00 a year plus a 10% contingency. The department's policy reached the public as a council agenda attachment, and neither vote put a camera count on the record.
Healdsburg publishes its license plate reader policy on the city's own website. The policy states that "Reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required before using an ALPR." The vendor, the number of cameras and where they sit are not in the records we fetched.
The Press Democrat reported the police chief telling the City Council in January 2026 that the city operates 32 Flock Safety devices, 30 license plate readers and two live pan-tilt-zoom cameras, and that he was asking to cut retention from 365 days to 30. A county auto theft task force grant paid for ten of the readers.
The Sonoma Index-Tribune reported that the City Council approved a three-year Flock Safety contract on March 30, 2026, running through September 2028 at an annual cost not to exceed $50,500, and that the city has 16 cameras inside its limits. The contract itself and the council record are not in the documents we fetched.
Policy 430 of the Sheriff's published manual states that the office does not have license plate readers of its own and reaches plate data through the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. A national reference dataset agrees that the office operated no readers as of 2022, but names a different route in: a regional auto theft task force.
Sonoma County's permitting agency has flown drones over private property some 700 times since 2019 to look for code violations, according to its own flight log as read in a lawsuit against it. The county denies the claims and says the flights were lawful. No county ordinance authorises the program.
The Sheriff's 2023 military equipment annual report lists unmanned aerial vehicles model by model, with a quantity and a cost for each, from a $500 DJI Phantom 4 to a $14,933.00 Loki MKII that the report describes as a drone S.W.A.T. sends inside a building. It states that the office flew 19 missions in 2023, not including training flights, for about 14 hours 3 minutes in total.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | AB 481 policy | SB 34 policy | Systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonoma County Sheriff's Office | Sonoma County | On file | — | 2 |
| Cloverdale Police Department | City of Cloverdale | — | On file | 1 |
| Healdsburg Police Department | City of Healdsburg | — | Posted | 1 |
| Permit Sonoma | Sonoma County | — | — | 1 |
| Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety | City of Rohnert Park | — | On file | 1 |
| Sonoma Police Department | City of Sonoma | — | — | 1 |
| Santa Rosa Police Department | City of Santa Rosa | — | — | 0 |
| 7 agencies on record. A jointly run system counts against each of its operators, so this column is not a county total. "Posted" means the policy is published where the law requires it. "On file" means we hold the document. "Not posted" and "not found" mean we could not find it on the agency's own website on the date shown; they say nothing about how the system is used. An agency with a dash has not been checked, which is not a finding. | ||||
Trackers
Meetings, contracts, records
Nothing listed yet. The trackers launch here, and facts appear only with their sources.
How the inventory works →What you can do
Civic action
Show up
Public comment is open to any resident, and you do not have to be an expert to use it. We have not yet confirmed where the bodies that decide for Sonoma County meet. How the inventory works explains what we check and how to check it yourself.
How the inventory works →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.
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