Flock & ALPR Cameras in Rancho Santa Margarita, California
Volunteers have reported 25 automated license plate readers in and around Rancho Santa Margarita — cameras that log every passing plate with a time and location.
Jurisdiction · by recorded street address
The 25 cameras counted on this page are every reader mapped within about 20 kilometres of Rancho Santa Margarita, so the count crosses municipal lines. By the street address recorded for each one, 21 of them sit inside Rancho Santa Margarita itself.
The rest sit in Mission Viejo (3).
2 of them name an operator in the record: Mission Viejo (1), Rancho Santa Margarita (1). The operator is who runs the camera, which is not always the local government.
1 camera has no municipality recorded yet.
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.
No new reports near Rancho Santa Margarita in the last 30 days — checked hourly, last checked Oct 7, 15:30 UTC. Cameras only get on the map when someone looks: be the one.
Where the cameras are in Rancho Santa Margarita
The readers mapped around Rancho Santa Margarita break down as 19 Flock Safety, 4 of unrecorded make, 2 Neology, Inc.. Named operators in the reports: Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo. The first camera here was reported in Dec 2024; the most recent in Aug 2026.
- Santa Margarita Parkway — 8 readers
- Foothill Transportation Corridor — 4 readers
- Antonio Parkway — 3 readers
- Melinda Road — 2 readers
- Avenida de las Flores — 2 readers
- Alicia Parkway — 2 readers
- Coto de Caza Drive — 2 readers
- Avenida Empresa — 1 reader
- Los Alisos Boulevard — 1 reader
Rancho Santa Margarita 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 25 traffic. Operators named on the record: Rancho Santa Margarita (1), Mission Viejo (1).
Camera activity around Rancho Santa Margarita, last 30 days
3 newly reported in our hourly change log for Rancho Santa Margarita. Latest change logged Aug 17, 2026.
What’s watching Rancho Santa Margarita
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 Rancho Santa Margarita — here’s where that data goes. Counts cover cameras reported closest to Rancho Santa Margarita (within ~20 km), so nearby towns share the same corridors. Spot one that’s missing? Report it on DeFlock.
The latest around Rancho Santa Margarita
What you can do in Rancho Santa Margarita
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 Rancho Santa Margarita
← All California cameras, counties & cities
Camera reports: the open-source DeFlock project. Place data: GeoNames (CC BY).