A downtown San Diego street. The Police Department has used the city's Flock license-plate network in internal investigations, news reports said. Photo: Roman Eugeniusz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
San Diego police used the city’s Flock automated license-plate cameras in internal investigations of officers, including a 2025 case in which detectives also tracked a domestic-violence victim, KPBS reported Nov. 12. NBC 7 San Diego reported the same records. A department spokesperson confirmed to KPBS that Flock data has been used in internal investigations six times. Three of those searches returned no useful information, two corroborated officers’ accounts, and one was the 2025 case involving Officer Miguel Gonzalez, the station said, citing an internal investigation. In that file, investigators wrote that Gonzalez began a sexual relationship with a woman he had met on a domestic-violence call and went to her home while on duty.
Watchdogs say that use does not fit the city’s policy on when the cameras may be used. “That domestic violence victim was in no way in a circumstance or situation where they were some sort of suspect or subject of any kind of investigation where they would need to be surveilled,” attorney Julia Womack told KPBS. “This definitely sounds like a violation of the use policy.” The department has said the searches were authorized. The San Diego Police Officers Association, in a message to city officials cited by KPBS, criticized the use of Flock data in internal investigations after members brought it to the union’s attention. KPBS also reported that the department has conducted nearly 13,000 searches in the Flock database.
The disclosures landed as the City Council moves toward a vote on ending the Flock contract. KPBS said the council had been one vote short of the six needed to override a mayoral veto, and that Councilmember Raul Campillo’s shift appeared to give opponents a sixth vote. Mayor Todd Gloria has not, in these accounts, said whether he would veto a repeal. Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, a leading critic of the cameras, told KPBS the Gonzalez case “is an excellent way of illustrating some of the risks that come with this technology” and that existing rules are “insufficient to prevent misuse.”
A council date of Nov. 16 has been set for action on the contract, according to coverage of the agenda. Until then, the facts on the table are the six internal searches, the 2025 investigation that included a victim who was not a suspect, the union’s objection, and a council that now appears to have the votes to cancel the cameras if it chooses to take that step and if a veto does not stand in the way.
