Yuba County Sheriff | License plate readers
Forty cameras, counted aloud for the board in August 2026. The agenda item carried no background information, and the briefing document came from the company selling them.
At a glance
- Cameras
- 40 in total. 33 on public roadways, 2 at Linda Fire Station, 3 at Grays Beach, with 2 not in use [3]
- First approved
- 26 April 2022, at $79,750 for the first year and $73,500 a year after [1]
- Current cost
- $138,635 in 2025-26 and $135,215 in 2026-27 [2]
- Funding
- A Measure K allocation for the original agreement [1]
- What the 2025 agreement added
- "FlockOS™ Advanced features, expanded storage retention, advanced search capabilities, and integration options with other law enforcement tools and community partners" [2]
- How the purchases were handled
- Both the 2022 and 2025 agreements bypassed committee and went straight to the full board, each for a stated reason [1] [2]
- What the board was given in 2026
- An agenda item marked "(No background information)" and, per the minutes, "a handout from Flock" [3]
- Retention
- not established. The 2025 staff report says the new agreement brings "expanded storage retention" and gives no figure on either side of the change [2]
- Who the data is shared with
- not established. The 2022 report gives collaboration with neighbouring agencies' systems as a reason to buy, and no document we read says what is shared or where it goes [1]
- A published usage policy
- we did not look. State law requires plate reader operators to publish one, and the 2026 presentation listed SB 34 compliance among its topics [3]
How it happened
- Decision
The board approves the first agreement
Item 214/2022, from the Sheriff-Coroner. $79,750 in the first year and $73,500 a year after, from a Measure K allocation. It went straight to the full board rather than through committee, because of "the time involved in acquiring and installing the equipment and software, and the approved funding in the current fiscal year". [1]
- Procurement
A consolidated agreement, at roughly double the price
Item 415/2025 replaces the earlier agreements. $138,635 for 2025-26 and $135,215 for 2026-27, bringing "FlockOS™ Advanced features, expanded storage retention, advanced search capabilities, and integration options with other law enforcement tools and community partners". It bypassed committee as an update to the 2022 item. [2]
- Deployment
Forty cameras, counted for the board
Item 405/2026, a special presentation carrying "(No background information)" on the agenda. The Undersheriff "provided a handout from Flock to Board members" and a PowerPoint. Thirty-three cameras on public roadways, two at Linda Fire Station, three at Grays Beach, forty in total, two not in use. Two members of the public spoke. [3]
Forty
On 11 August 2026 the Undersheriff of Yuba County stood up in front of the Board of Supervisors and told them how many cameras the county has. The minutes wrote the numbers down:
• Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) o 33 of these positioned on public roadways in the area of Yuba County o 2 - Linda Fire Station o 3 - Grays Beach o 40 in total 2 additional camaras are not in use
Thirty-eight cameras working, two more sitting idle, in a county of about eighty thousand people.
That is more clarity than most counties on this site have produced. Several have published a policy and no count. One had a Vice Mayor ask for the number in open session and not get it. Yuba’s board asked and were told, and the minutes recorded it.
Two things about the briefing itself are also in the minutes, and both are worth setting down plainly.
The agenda item carried the words “(No background information)”. There was no staff report, no attachment, nothing for a resident to read beforehand or a supervisor to study.
And the material the board was handed came from the vendor: the Undersheriff “provided a handout from Flock to Board members”. The topics that followed included “ALPR Basics, Benefits, and Deployment”, “ALPR Precision policing with real-time alerts”, “Flock ALPR Accountability” and “2026 Flock ALPR Case Studies”.
We are not suggesting anything improper. A department briefing its board with the manufacturer’s material is ordinary, and it is what happens when a small agency has no independent source of information about a product it already owns. But it is the third county on this site where the central account of a surveillance system reaching an elected body came from the company selling it, and that pattern is worth naming.
What it cost, and what it became
The board approved the first agreement on 26 April 2022: $79,750 in the first year, $73,500 a year after that, out of a Measure K allocation. The item went straight to the full board rather than through committee, and the report said why, which is more than most such items do.
Two months later the board approved an update adding cameras.
Then in August 2025 came a consolidated agreement replacing the earlier ones, at $138,635 for 2025-26 and $135,215 for 2026-27. Roughly double the original. What the extra money buys is described in one sentence:
The new agreement reflects updated hardware and software offerings, including FlockOS™ Advanced features, expanded storage retention, advanced search capabilities, and integration options with other law enforcement tools and community partners.
Expanded storage retention. From what, to what, the report does not say. Not the old figure, not the new one. It is the most consequential phrase in this county’s record and it is the one thing nobody wrote down.
That item also bypassed committee, “as it is an update to item 333/2022 from the June 28, 2022 meeting”.
What the board was told in 2022
The original staff report made two claims to the board that are worth reading carefully.
The first:
Communities with ALPR systems report crime reductions of up to 70 percent, which are currently utilized by many of our neighboring agencies and would allow for collaboration with those systems as well.
No source is attached to it. The report’s one sourced claim is a 2011 Police Executive Research Forum study of the police department in Mesa, Arizona. The seventy percent figure appears on this site in another county too, on a page a vendor helped write.
The second:
The Flock ALPR system does not include facial recognition capabilities and does not capture personally identifiable information.
The first half of that is a statement about a product. The second half is a legal characterisation, and it is contested. Whether a timestamped photograph of a specific car at a specific place, tied to a plate that maps to a registered owner, is personally identifiable information is exactly the question California’s plate reader statute exists to argue about.
We are not going to settle it here. What matters is that this is what the board was told when it decided.
What we do not know
- How long the plate reads are kept, and what changed. The 2025 report says the agreement brings "expanded storage retention" and never gives a figure either side of it.
- Whether the department publishes the plate reader usage policy state law requires.
- What is shared, and with whom. Collaboration with neighbouring agencies was a stated reason to buy the system in 2022.
- What the Flock handout and the PowerPoint said. Neither is in the public record.
- Where the thirty-three roadway cameras are, and why two are not in use.
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 Yuba County.
What we have documented in Yuba 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. Yuba County Board of Supervisors, item 214/2022, Sheriff-Coroner staff report, heard 26 April 2022 · Meeting record · · accessed
- 2.
- 3. Yuba County Board of Supervisors, minutes of 11 August 2026, item 405/2026 · Meeting record · · accessed
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