Flock & ALPR Cameras in Costa Mesa, California
Volunteers have reported 56 automated license plate readers in and around Costa Mesa — cameras that log every passing plate with a time and location.
Jurisdiction · by recorded street address
The 56 cameras counted on this page are every reader mapped within about 20 kilometres of Costa Mesa, so the count crosses municipal lines. By the street address recorded for each one, 49 of them sit inside Costa Mesa itself.
The rest sit in Newport Beach (6), Huntington Beach (1).
19 of them name an operator in the record: Costa Mesa Police Department (12), Newport Beach Police Department (5), Huntington Beach Police Department (1), The Home Depot (1). The operator is who runs the camera, which is not always the local government.
Source: community-mapped camera data (OpenStreetMap, ODbL), with addresses resolved by Nominatim.
Need this city’s camera data? Custom extracts are free for researchers, journalists and advocates. Ask for it.
- Sep 20 Flock Safety camera newly reported
- Sep 19 Flock Safety camera newly reported
Newly reported by volunteers — cameras may have been up long before someone mapped them.
Where the cameras are in Costa Mesa
The readers mapped around Costa Mesa break down as 54 Flock Safety. Named operators in the reports: Costa Mesa Police Department, Newport Beach Police Department, Huntington Beach Police Department, The Home Depot. The first camera here was reported in Jan 2025; the most recent in Sep 2026.
- Newport Boulevard — 8 readers
- Harbor Boulevard — 5 readers
- Joann Street Bike Path — 3 readers
- Bear Street — 2 readers
- Victoria Street — 2 readers
- Superior Avenue — 2 readers
- Placentia Avenue — 2 readers
- Irvine Avenue — 2 readers
- Santiago Drive — 2 readers
- Adams Avenue — 2 readers
- Fairview Road — 2 readers
- Bristol Street — 2 readers
+ 17 more streets and roads mapped around Costa Mesa — all on the live map above.
Costa Mesa CA PD and the sharing network
Per Flock’s own transparency portal, Costa Mesa CA PD runs 46 cameras of its own, has logged 667 plate-database searches, has captured 1,461,054 vehicle records. Its network connects to 360 other agencies — a plate read here can surface in searches far beyond city limits.
Connected agencies include: Alameda CA PD, Alameda County CA SO, Albany CA PD, Alhambra CA PD, Amador County CA Sheriff's Office, Anaheim CA PD, Anderson CA PD, Angels Camp CA PD.
Costa Mesa in the Orange County picture
Orange County has 1,223 reported cameras county-wide and ranks #764 of 3,222 U.S. counties for cameras per resident. That’s across 3,164,063 residents and 6,653 road miles. By road density that is 0.18 cameras per road mile, in the top 1.5% of counties nationally.
Where contributors recorded what a camera watches, the split here is 49 traffic. Operators named on the record: Costa Mesa Police Department (12), Newport Beach Police Department (5), Huntington Beach Police Department (1).
Camera activity around Costa Mesa, last 30 days
3 newly reported in our hourly change log for Costa Mesa. Latest change logged Sep 5, 2026.
What’s watching Costa Mesa
These aren’t red-light cameras. Automated license plate readers like Flock Safety’s photograph every plate that passes, log the time and place, and store it in a searchable database that’s often shared far beyond Costa Mesa — here’s where that data goes. Counts cover cameras reported closest to Costa Mesa (within ~20 km), so nearby towns share the same corridors. Spot one that’s missing? Report it on DeFlock.
The latest around Costa Mesa
- 2 new license plate readers reported around Costa Mesa, CA
- Costa Mesa to keep Flock cameras, will reconsider contract terms
- Costa Mesa to keep Flock cameras, renegoiate city's contract
- Costa Mesa will keep Flock Safety cameras, renegoiate terms of city’s contract
What you can do in Costa Mesa
Ask who approved these cameras, how long plate data is kept, and who it’s shared with. File a public records request, raise it at a council meeting, and see the full playbook on Take Action. Fighting this locally? Join or start a chapter and we’ll amplify you.
Not sure what one looks like? See photographs of installed cameras before you go looking.
Cameras near Costa Mesa
← All California cameras, counties & cities
Camera reports: the open-source DeFlock project. Place data: GeoNames (CC BY).