Flock cameras are spreading across the IE, and no one's telling residents who put them up
Citrus Belt Review: Talk to people in the Inland Empire right now and the same question keeps coming up: when did all these cameras go in, and who put them there? The devices are automated license plate readers, most of them made by Flock Safety, and they're showing up faster than anyone is explaining them. Some sit on public roads under police contracts. Others stand inside residential communities, paid for by HOAs that installed them on their own. From the sidewalk, a resident has no way to tell the difference — or to learn who's watching.
The public networks are large and growing. San Bernardino runs an $84,000-a-year city contract for 28 cameras, a deal that drew more than 100 residents to a February council meeting demanding the city drop it. Riverside County's Sheriff has gone further, expanding its network to 538 cameras under a roughly $6.9 million contract. KVCR has reported on the broader pullback, with cities around the country canceling Flock contracts over the past year. Layered on top of the public systems are the private ones: neighborhood associations buying their own readers and mounting them at community entrances, accountable to no public agenda or vote.
That mix is the problem residents keep naming. The concern isn't only the surveillance — it's the silence around it. People raise fears about who can see the data, including whether plate records reach federal immigration agencies. But underneath the specific worries is a simpler complaint: no one is making the case. If these cameras deliver public-safety value, the agencies and associations behind them aren't explaining it, and residents are left to fill the gap with their own questions. A camera that appears overnight with no notice, no signage, and no clear owner invites exactly the distrust now spreading across the corridor.
The communication gap is the story. Cities and the county can point to crime data and contract terms; HOAs can point to their own decisions. What's missing on every level is the part that faces the public — a plain account of who installed the camera, who holds the footage, and what it's for. Until someone provides it, the readers will keep multiplying and the questions will keep outrunning the answers.