18 Flock was inside the city nine months before it sold the city anythingnew

The archive’s account of the program has always started in February 2021, with the sole-source letter. It started earlier, and not with the City.

May 19, 2020 — Tonia Crump, General Manager West for Customer Experience at Flock Safety, emails Sgt. Mark Hassler of the Benicia Police Department:

“I’m working with Bay Vista HOA who has expressed the desire to share their camera network with your agency. This is a free service to law enforcement that involves setting you up with a secure access portal in our system.”

May 22, 2020, three days later, subject line “Bay Vista + Flock Safety ALPR Cameras + Benicia PD Access”:

“Our customer at Bay Vista HOA has provided me with your contact information so that I can work with you to discuss sharing access to their system with Benicia PD. This is a no cost service that we facilitate between our public and private partners to give you access to crime solving technology in your jurisdiction.”

Bay Vista was not the only one. The correspondence names Bridgeview Heights as a second Benicia HOA with privately purchased cameras, and a later message records “we just had another HOA in Benicia sign.”

Why this matters

The department’s first access to ALPR in Benicia was free, private, and unapproved by anyone. No Council vote, no contract, no sole-source justification, no public comment under Civil Code §1798.90.55(a) — because the City was not buying anything. A private homeowners association bought cameras, and the vendor brokered a police access portal at no cost.

That is the entry point the rest of the record grows from, and it explains the shape of what followed. By the time the sole-source letter arrived in February 2021, the Department had had access to a working Flock system in its own city for nine months. The question before Council was never whether to start using this technology. It was whether to buy more of what the Department was already using.

Stated fairly

Nothing here is unlawful on its face. A private association may buy cameras, and may share footage with police. The point is narrower and it is about sequence: the public process ran nine months behind the operational one, and nothing in the Council record of May 2021 that this archive holds discloses the pre-existing arrangement.

Whether the Bay Vista access was ever taken up, and on what terms, is not established by this production. The offer is documented. The acceptance is not.