California neighborhood paid for its own license plate reader cameras to deter crime
Residents in one East Bay community got so fed up with the number of burglaries and break-ins that they took matters into their own hands
By Katie Nielsen
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EAST BAY, California (KPIX) — Residents in one East Bay community got so fed up with the number of burglaries and break-ins that they took matters into their own hands, paying to install their own license plate reader cameras.
Now, those same residents are asking the city of Orinda to pick up the tab on their cameras and add 15 more.
Evan Dreyer said there are at least a dozen neighbors who have surveillance video of burglars casing houses or breaking into homes in the Knickerbocker neighborhood of Orinda.
“This is something that in this neighborhood we dealt with personally, not only myself but other people,” he said.
Dreyer said his home in Orinda was broken into in January 2024, and after that, he and his family no longer felt safe.
“We understand that getting city governments and city budgets to do things sometimes can take time. This wasn’t something we could wait around on so we wanted to lead by example,” he said.
Dreyer sent out emails to a bunch of his neighbors and asked if they’d be interested in paying for their own license plate reader cameras. In just a few days, he got 30 families to sign on. They installed 2 Flock cameras at the main entrances to the neighborhood at a cost of a little over $11,000 for a two-year contract, which came out to about $400 per family.
“Like this car right here that’s coming down right now, for example. It’s going to automatically turn on, take a picture of this license plate, and if that car was a vehicle that was wanted, by the police, it would automatically give them an alert so they will now know, oh, he just crossed by Stein Way and they can do something,” explained Dreyer.
At the meeting on Tuesday night, the Orinda City Council is considering not only picking up the contract on the two cameras Evan and his neighbors paid for but also adding another 15 more.
Privacy advocates have raised concerns in general about these license plate reader cameras because almost every law enforcement agency in the area can get access to the data.
“What is the information being used for? And why is it OK for people’s license plates to be captured indiscriminately by law enforcement when people driving down the road are really not breaking any laws,” said Karen Gullo with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In Orinda, that hasn’t seemed to slow down deployment. The city currently has a total of 19 cameras, and of those, only 7 were installed by the city. The other 12 were installed by neighborhood groups or HOAs.
“I want to keep my neighbors and my neighborhood safe. Absolutely,” said Scott Johnson.
He said his HOA already paid for a camera at the entrance to their community. Johnson said while he thinks the city should pick up the tab, he’s willing to foot the bill if necessary.
“Fix the roads and fix the lights. Yes, we’d all like to see society work better, but a lot of our municipalities really don’t seem to be following through,” he said.
CBS News Bay Area reached out to the mayor’s office and the police chief for comment on the issue, and both refused our requests for interviews.
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