Atlas · State

California

What is documented about automated license plate surveillance in California — and what is still an open question.

Are automated license plate readers used in California?

Yes. Volunteers have recorded 19,643 automated license plate reader camera locations in California, across 54 counties. That is a floor, not an inventory — it counts what someone has mapped, not what exists.

Camera data retrieved Aug 15, 2026 · Most recent record Aug 11, 2026

19,643 Camera coordinates 16.6% of the 118,623 we hold nationally. Community-reported, not field-verified by us.
54 Counties with a mapped camera Assigned geometrically from Census county boundaries. A county with no entry has no mapped camera, which is not the same as none.
8 Documented decisions 6 ended, declined, or suspended · 2 adopted, renewed, or expanded.
0 Full dossiers Places researched down to retention, sharing, warrant standard, and audit policy — including the fields that come back unknown.

Known ALPR locations

Coverage incomplete

  • Camera coordinate
  • Jurisdiction record — no camera coordinates held
  • Program ended, declined, or prohibited

19,643 mapped camera coordinates · 42 jurisdiction records · 50 of 50 states have data. Camera coordinates © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Boundaries and roads: US Census, public domain. Roads are drawn for orientation only — a camera near a road is not a claim about which road it watches.

Pinned to California. Open the national Atlas to compare with neighbouring states.

Who supplies the cameras

Vendor attribution as recorded by OpenStreetMap contributors. Where a contributor did not identify the vendor the record reads “Unspecified” — that is an unrecorded fact, not a vendorless camera.

Vendor Mapped cameras Share
Flock Safety 15,565 79.2%
Motorola Solutions 1,692 8.6%
Unspecified 1,210 6.2%
Ubicquia 596 3.0%
Axis Communications 177 0.9%
Genetec 90 0.5%
Neology 60 0.3%
Bosch 45 0.2%
Costar 43 0.2%
Rekor 41 0.2%
Axon 36 0.2%
Uniview 36 0.2%
Leonardo/Elsag 20 0.1%
Verkada 20 0.1%
Avigilon 10 0.1%
LiveView Technologies 2 0.0%

Where in California

19,534 mapped cameras assigned to the county containing them. The 42 remaining counties with at least one mapped camera are in the open data.

  • Los Angeles 3,268
  • Riverside 2,147
  • Orange 1,467
  • San Diego 1,451
  • San Bernardino 1,404
  • Alameda 1,365
  • Santa Clara 1,134
  • Sacramento 755
  • San Mateo 664
  • Contra Costa 554
  • San Francisco 445
  • Kern 398

What governments here have decided

Every decision we hold for California, most recent first. The Decision Record exists because deployment databases record arrivals and not reversals.

Jurisdiction Decision Date Vendor Sourcing
Los Angeles Ended Jul 11, 2026 Flock Safety Reported
Berkeley Renewed May 7, 2026 Flock Safety Reported
El Cerrito Declined May 6, 2026 Flock Safety Reported
Richmond Renewed Mar 17, 2026 Flock Safety Reported
Oxnard Suspended Feb 27, 2026 Flock Safety Primary document
Los Altos Hills Ended Jan 15, 2026 Flock Safety Primary document
Santa Cruz Ended Jan 13, 2026 Flock Safety Reported
Eureka Declined Feb 4, 2025 Flock Safety Reported

Signal

No Signal story yet names California. That is a gap in our coverage rather than a quiet state — send us what you are seeing.

National developments that apply here

These are not about California specifically. They govern the cameras in it.

Documented harms and verification

Incidents

Verified Unsurveilled

No community in California has been assessed against the standard yet. Compare yours.

What we don’t know about California

We hold no researched record for California deep enough to have produced open questions yet. That is the largest gap on this page.

Help close the gaps.

We hold records for 8 California jurisdictions. There are far more than that. A single records request from a resident often establishes more than weeks of desk research.

Places in California

The largest 40 of 488 places we can put on the map. Selecting one centres the map there. A place appearing here says nothing about whether it has cameras — it is a label, and the camera layer is separate and incomplete.