South San Francisco officials announced the city has launched an automated license plate recognition program with 28 solar-powered cameras installed at key public locations, as a way to help solve increased property crimes in the hotel corridor.

“The use of this technology has already proven to be a game changer in the fight against crime and a valuable tool for our officers to help solve otherwise difficult-to-solve cases,” Police Chief Scott Campbell said in a press release. “The safety of our residents and visitors is paramount and the investment in this program shows how committed we are to keeping South San Francisco a safe place.”

The cameras are built by Flock Safety, a public safety technology company that helps neighborhoods, communities and law enforcement work together to fight crime. Flock Safety ALPR cameras help law enforcement investigate crime by providing objective evidence — license plates and vehicle characteristics, according to the city.

The South San Francisco Police Department will maintain an updated policy around usage of the ALPR system. Each search requires a justification, and the data is never sold or shared with third parties. The cameras will be used to solve and reduce property and violent crime and are not intended for minor traffic or parking violations, according to the city.

Flock Safety cameras are in use in more than 2,000 cities across 40 states, and the company works with thousands of law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement have reported crime reductions of up to 70% when deploying Flock Safety in their communities, according to the city.

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South San Francisco will get 31 new surveillance cameras to be placed along Highway 101 and Interstate 280 following an unanimous vote from the City Council approving the new law enforcement measure.

The cameras, called automated license plate readers, have been increasingly installed in the Bay Area with several Peninsula cities recently approving their use. By capturing images of passing vehicles and logging plate numbers, make and color, the technology can alert nearby officers if a vehicle suspected of being involved in a crime is spotted. Officers can also access data after the fact to aid in police work.

“This is the world we are living in,” Council member Mark Addiego said. “It’s horrifying when you read reports about how many people are coming into our city and quite frankly just raising hell.”

The city first looked into adding the cameras last year, citing an uptick in crime near hotels, particularly “smash-and-grab” car break-ins. Councilmember Eddie Flores also voiced concern regarding highway shootings, citing those that have occurred recently in Oakland.

The technology can be used in instances of crimes from homicide to catalytic converter theft but, unlike red light cameras, would not be used for traffic enforcement.

Despite agreeing the cameras would be useful in fighting crime, council members expressed some hesitation surrounding privacy. The move will establish South San Francisco as the city with the most cameras in the county, which currently has a total of 119.

“I come from a time when George Orwell’s 1984 was required reading,” Addiego said. “Apparently we’re there, and there’s something a little bit disconcerting about that.”

While storage practices differ in other cities, data captured by the cameras would be deleted after 30 days unless part of an investigation, and the city would allow data to be shared with other law enforcement agencies only if requested for an investigation. Sharing data with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be strictly barred.

Per a request from Flores, the program will undergo quarterly audits from an independent party to ensure compliance with the city’s rules. A webpage will also be established allowing members of the public to view the volume of data collected and how often it is being accessed by officers.

“We want to make sure that when we do this, we do it right and don’t produce unintended consequences that we might later regret,” Flores said.

According to City Manager Mike Futrell, the city’s guidelines mirror that of soon-to-be proposed legislation from state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, which aims to curtail ALPR use. Wiener had last year introduced legislation to require data deletion after 24 hours following a report that some agencies were storing data for up to five years and others had shared data with ICE.

Police Chief Scott Campbell noted the technology carries the benefit of allowing for “completely unbiased” police work, allowing officers to react to crime that has already been committed.

The cameras would likely be procured from ALPR operator Flock Safety, at an annual cost of $2,500 per camera, or $77,500 for the whole city. A one-time installation fee of $250 per camera would also be added in the first year.

The city’s immediate neighbors all have cameras installed with the exception of Brisbane. Daly City is the only city in the county where its cameras are affixed to police vehicles rather than fixed locations.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Curt Casali has everything you could want in a good backup catcher. He is as prepared as anyone on the roster, has a strong rapport with the entire pitching staff, calls a good game behind the plate and fits in perfectly in the clubhouse.

But the Giants did not sign Casali two years ago because they just wanted to keep the pitchers happy when Buster Posey got a day off. At times in Tampa Bay, and in two of his three years in Cincinnati, Casali was above league-average on a per-at-bat basis, but the Giants have yet to really see that version.

After a 9-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night, Casali said he felt “helpless” at the plate last season. He made light of his lack of slugging, particularly to the opposite field.

“I think I had a triple last year but that was an accident,” he said.

Last year’s lack of success at the plate could be viewed as the result of offseason wrist surgery, but Casali came into camp this year healthy and in tremendous shape. The results still weren’t there — until Tuesday night.

Casali had three of the Giants’ 12 hits, driving in a pair of runs and raising his average 61 points. He also had a walk while seeing 20 pitches in four plate appearances at the bottom of the lineup.

“It felt really good,” he said. “You know, it hasn’t been the best start to the year offensively for me but I feel lately I’ve been having better at-bats. It’s nice to barrel up a couple of balls the other way — I don’t think I did that once last year. The body feels good, the wrist is healthy. Hopefully, there’s more to come.”

If there is, in fact, more to come, Casali could find himself swinging some of the playing time behind the plate in his favor. Joey Bart has been good defensively but has gotten off to a rough start at the plate, and Casali now has three starts in the last six games. He said that helped him find a rhythm.

The contributions on Tuesday were particularly important because they kept the line moving, which is how this Giants lineup is built. With a universal DH, manager Gabe Kapler has used his catchers in the no. 9 spot most nights, and it’s a big deal when they can turn the lineup over and get an RBI situation to a leadoff hitter like LaMonte Wade Jr. or No. 2 hitter Brandon Belt.

“This is not to take anything away from anybody, obviously, but you can see how valuable it is to have very competitive at-bats at the bottom of the lineup to turn the lineup over,” Kapler said. “This is something that Joey is capable of. It’s something that Curt is capable of.

“In Cincinnati, we saw quite a bit of this (from Casali). We saw it from time to time last year and certainly the best version of Curt was a good offensive player in Tampa. That’s why we identified him as a good partner for Buster and why we thought he would be a successful partner for Joey Bart this season.”

Casali has ended up in both games in this series. With the Giants leading 5-2 in the sixth inning on Monday night, Kapler sent Joc Pederson up to hit for Bart with the bases loaded. A day later, Kapler said he was hoping to extend the lead and allow some key pitchers in the bullpen — most notably closer Camilo Doval — to catch a breather. Pederson ended up hitting a sac fly while batting for Bart, who has 32 strikeouts through 57 at-bats.

“There’s no more than meets the eye here,” Kapler said of Bart. “I don’t want to complicate it: He’s swinging and missing a lot.”

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The Giants need both of their catchers to have quality at-bats at the bottom of the lineup. Casali has had plenty of career at-bats with a pitcher behind him, but when he’s in the lineup now, the job is to get it to the top of the lineup.

“With the DH, I can just kind of get back to what I normally would do and try to drive the baseball and put together a competitive at-bat,” he said. “It’s a lot different. I would say I like it a lot more.”

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LOS ALTOS HILLS (CBS SF) — A Bay Area city is pushing the installation of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) in hopes of fighting and deterring crime.

According to a city government analyst, 10 ALPRs are currently operational in Los Altos Hills, and 30 more should be operational by sometime in February.

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They will be placed at every street entrance in Los Altos Hills, as well as numerous other streets throughout the city, says the management analyst. They run 24 hours a day, and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office can use the ALPRs as a crime investigation tool.

“We hope it will make people safer, we hope it will stop people from committing crimes in our city,” said resident Rajiv Bhateja. “We have very few burglaries a year, but we have very few apartments.”

Bhateja has been a big supporter of the idea for several years and helped introduce it to the city leadership.

“Our community tends to be what we call a goal-rich environment,” he said. “I think if we can make our city and the world a little bit safer, that’s a good thing for everyone.”

Los Altos Hills partnered with Flock Safety to implement the cameras.

“Our technology is designed to capture objective evidence. We take photos of the back of a car as it drives by and use machine learning from that to identify what kind of car it is – make, model, color – unique features like bumper stickers, roof racks, aftermarket wheels and too The important thing is to identify the license plate yourself,” said Josh Thomas of Flock Safety. “They indiscriminately collect objective data from vehicles.”

Some local residents have expressed concerns about privacy.

“I’m not convinced that we really have a problem. I feel it is an invasion of my privacy,” said a Los Altos Hills resident, who asked not to be named. “I’m just really concerned about privacy issues and I’m also concerned about racial profiling.”

Thomas explained that their technology only captures still images of the vehicles’ rear license plates and features.

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“We collect vehicle information. Not people. There is no face recognition. We don’t collect anything about people. It’s just the back of a car – and in fact we don’t even know who’s driving the car.”

However, residents of Los Altos Hills have the option to opt out. They can submit a form online to prove their vehicles are registered to a Los Altos Hills address and then the system will not record any data on those vehicles.

Bhateja believes in the ALPRs.

“It’s only supposed to take pictures of rear license plates and only still pictures. So it can’t be used for traffic violations, speeding, stop signs and all that,” he said. “The sheriff needs to have a case number when accessing the information. They must have an investigative reason for looking at this data.”

According to the city, the ALPR cameras have three major benefits:
• The physical presence of a camera and accompanying street signs indicating that a recording is in progress can limit crime in the first place.
• After a crime, the data collected can give the law enforcement authorities clues for investigations.
• Cameras can send instant alerts to law enforcement agencies when a vehicle of interest is identified.

A spokesman for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office provided KPIX 5 with the following statement:
“The Sheriff’s Office is pleased to assist the City of Los Altos Hills with the introduction of License Plate Readers (LPRs). LPRs will help the Sheriff’s Office use technology to improve prevention and solve crimes. We are committed to using all available resources to improve the safety of residents of the City of Los Altos Hills.”

Los Altos Hills isn’t the first Bay Area community to use Flock’s technology.

“All over the Bay Area,” Thomas said. “Morgan Hill, Benicia, Vallejo, Colma – all up and down the Peninsula, North Bay, East Bay.”

Los Altos Hills residents who wish to opt out can do so here.

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South San Francisco could be the next town in the county to install vehicle security cameras along major traffic arteries in hopes of catching criminals and deterring future crimes, with the city council expressing its approval of the law enforcement tool this week.

Eddie Flores

On Tuesday, a plan was presented to the city council to place 25 cameras, called automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, near entrances and exits along Highway 101 and Interstate 380. The cameras would be able to collect license plates and compare them with a “hot list” of vehicles involved in crime, as well as using artificial intelligence to identify and record vehicle make, model and color.

The proposal to use the technology comes after a surge in crime along the city’s hotel corridor, particularly after “smash-and-grab” car break-ins, city officials said.

“I would definitely like to support them, support the hoteliers and the companies. I think that’s important, ”said Councilor Eddie Flores.

Neighboring cities like Daly City, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo, and others have or are planning to install ALPRs that mount cameras either in fixed locations or on police vehicles.

Despite widespread agreement, council members raised several privacy concerns, including how long data is retained, who can access it, how secure it is, and what is collected.

According to Police Chief Scott Campbell, ALPRs “are not designed to take photos of people,” and the information they collect can only be viewed by law enforcement agencies. The data is stored on encrypted servers for 30 days before being transferred to a Northern California database, where it is stored for a year before being deleted, unless the vehicle is suspected of being involved in a crime, said he.

The whereabouts of vehicles on the “hot list” can be quickly disclosed to nearby officials, said Campbell, who mentioned cases where the technology helped with an arrest.

“The good thing about this technology is that it is completely impartial, it only warns of vehicles that have been involved in crime, and officers have to review this information to make sure the camera isn’t inadvertently wrongly registered,” said Campbell . “It enables the officers to react to this information and to investigate crimes that have already been committed.”

Any outside agency, including Homeland Security or the CIA, would have to request data and it would be up to the city to grant access, he said. And depending on county and state regulations, immigration and customs enforcement would be strictly prohibited, he said.

The cameras would be used in crime cases from killing to catalytic converter theft, but not in “minor crimes,” and unlike red light cameras, they would not be used for monitoring traffic, Campbell said.

Although no cost estimates were provided for South San Francisco, Atherton, who was considering installing cameras in 2019, estimated the cost to be between $ 35,000 and $ 65,000 to equip an intersection with two cameras, excluding maintenance and licensing fees the required software. Foster City, where 20 cameras were recently approved, estimates the annual cost of running its program at $ 50,000.

Piedmont, where five ALPRs are installed, has created a portal for public access to the data collected by the system. It said the cameras collected data on 47,000 cars last month, 79 of which were classified as suspicious of criminals, and 26 of those cars were “searched”.

The cameras, which are increasingly used not only on the peninsula, have been carefully scrutinized by some state legislators who deal with data protection.

Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, drafted a law that year to tighten the ALPR regulations. In addition to restricting the exchange of data, the law, which has been put on hold, would also stipulate the deletion of the recorded data within 24 hours. A state audit commissioned by Wiener found that last year authorities in the country who used the cameras shared data with the police across the country and kept data for more than five years.

Police in Pasadena and Long Beach were found to have shared data collected by ALPR with ICE last year, despite the state protection law and despite the fact that police have made an express commitment not to do so, according to Wiener’s office.

Flores asked city officials to provide additional evidence that if cameras were installed, the data the city was collecting would not be unwittingly shared with anyone. Councilor Buenaflor Nicolas asked whether the companies responsible for keeping the data had ever breached the data and how the city would be liable in this case.

Campbell said he was not aware of any violations and would look into the liability issue.

Further answers to the Council’s questions and additional information will be presented in a public meeting at a later date.

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