Statement at the July 15th Police Commission Session
The short version: DeFlock SF's public comment to the Police Commission exposes how SFPD quietly shared ALPR data with 40 out-of-state and federal agencies, despite local sanctuary promises.
Our Take
Credit to DeFlock SF for showing up in person and putting this on the record. Watching someone read hard facts into a police commission's microphone, while commissioners shift in their seats, is a reminder that accountability doesn't happen automatically — it happens when residents force the issue. The underlying report is damning enough on its own: San Francisco, a city that loudly brands itself a sanctuary jurisdiction, apparently let its ALPR network leak data to dozens of agencies outside state lines, including federal ones. That's not a hypothetical slippery slope anymore. That's the slope.
This is exactly the pattern we track nationwide — local police adopt Flock cameras promising narrow, local use, and then the data quietly flows to a web of outside agencies with different rules, different priorities, and sometimes immigration or reproductive-rights enforcement goals the host city never agreed to. Once plate reads sit in a shared cloud system, 'local control' becomes a talking point, not a technical reality. SFPD's non-answer when pressed on this is the tell: if the sharing were defensible, they'd have an answer ready.
If you want to see what this infrastructure looks like in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at your own city council or police commission, our take-action page has the tools to help you do it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlock SF, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.