Chief John Cregan | Santa Rosa Police Department

Our Take

Daedalus Howell sits down with Santa Rosa Police Chief John Cregan for a wide-ranging conversation about his 26-plus years in law enforcement and his tenure leading the department. We appreciate Howell putting a local police chief on record — that kind of access is rare and useful, and we credit him for doing the legwork most local outlets skip.

Here's why interviews like this matter to us: police chiefs are often the ones who quietly greenlight Flock Safety camera contracts, expand ALPR networks, and decide how long license plate data gets stored and who else gets to query it. Those decisions rarely get a public hearing with the same spotlight a friendly podcast conversation gets. When a chief talks about crime-fighting tools in broad strokes, the specifics — how many cameras, what data-sharing agreements exist, whether ICE or other agencies can pull from the system — tend to stay out of frame.

If you're in Santa Rosa or anywhere in Sonoma County, don't just take our word or the chief's word for it — check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and if you want to push back on unchecked expansion, our take-action guide walks you through how to raise these questions at your next city council meeting.