San Jose fires officer for sharing Flock data with domestic abuse suspect

California Assembly fails fifth straight year to regulate license-plate readers

A San Jose police officer was fired for using his department’s Flock license plate tracking system to share a woman’s location with the suspect in a domestic abuse case — identified by the San Jose Mercury News as his cousin — Police Chief Paul Joseph told NBC Bay Area on Friday.

The officer accessed Flock camera data last year without authorization on his personal phone, running the plate of a vehicle belonging to a woman allegedly abused by one of the officer’s family members, then sent that information to his cousin, according to Joseph. The Mercury News identified the abuse suspect as the officer’s cousin.

San Jose police discovered the unauthorized access after the woman told officers that her alleged abuser told her he knew her location, Joseph said. The department placed the officer on administrative leave immediately and opened a criminal investigation into his conduct.

“I was furious that an officer would betray the public’s trust in that manner, that he would not understand how serious of a violation that is,” Joseph said.

The chief did not publicly disclose the fired officer’s name. San Jose police referred the case to the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, which had not charged the officer with a crime as of Friday. The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Joseph told the Mercury News that state lawmakers should pass legislation making it easier to bring criminal charges in cases of misuse. San Jose police also referred the officer to the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which has the authority to bar him from working as a law enforcement officer anywhere in the state.

The firing is another in a growing number of cases of police misuse of a surveillance technology that has expanded rapidly over the last several years. License-plate reading systems have drawn broad criticism, recurring protests and vandalism from the right and left alike, as law enforcement agencies have deployed tens of thousands of cameras across the country, raising concerns about privacy, mass surveillance, false positives and police misuse.

Dozens of law enforcement officers have used license-plate readers to stalk women, according to the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm.

Immigrant rights groups have raised concerns as law enforcement agencies increasingly share Flock data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which uses the information to support the Trump administration’s mass-deportation agenda.

In Sacramento, the California Assembly adjourned this month without acting on a bill that would have imposed new regulations on license-plate reading technology. The inaction marked the fifth consecutive year that California lawmakers declined to impose new safeguards on license-plate readers like Flock, according to CalMatters.

In a prior session, the Assembly passed a bill that would have imposed new regulations, including a mandate to delete data unrelated to an investigation after two months, but Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it.