EL CERRITO, Calif. (KRON) -- The El Cerrito City Council is scheduled to decide Tuesday night on the future of 40 Flock license plate reader cameras operating throughout the city. The decision follows an audit revealing federal agencies accessed data from the cameras. Opponents of the cameras expre ss privacy concerns about this access, while supporters maintain the cameras are a valuable tool for fighting crime in the community. Flock cameras are utilized by law enforcement to track wanted suspects by monitoring license plates. These 40 cameras are spread across El Cerrito. An audit confirmed that federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service and a Veterans Hospital in Loma Linda, gained access to El Cerrito's Flock camera data in 2023. A Flock license plate reader camera is seen in El Cerrito, Calif. on May 5, 2026. (KRON4) Flock has stated that the technical issues that allowed this unauthorized access have since been fixed. The company also said that its cameras do not incorporate facial recognition technology and do not track a person's gender or race. Data collected by the cameras is stored for 30 days and is shared with law enforcement agencies statewide. If the El Cerrito City Council decides to cancel the contract, all 40 Flock cameras currently deployed in the city would be turned off on June 7. All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by KRON4. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by KRON4 staff before being published. ...read more read less