19 The community meetings were the vendor's plan, and their stated goal was Council approvalnew

Finding 7 records Flock coaching City staff on messaging in 2025, once scrutiny arrived. This is the same thing four years earlier, before there was anything to defend — and this time the vendor is not advising on a plan but writing it.

February 9, 2021, ten weeks before the Council vote. John Anderson, Flock’s Territory Manager for Northern California, emails Lt. Menesini and the City’s public information officer, introducing two Flock colleagues and setting out the plan (subject: “Flock LPR - Benicia PD Community Engagement Intro”):

“In preparation for going to City Council, they are going to conduct community outreach to HOA’s, Neighborhoods, Neighborhood Watch Groups, and Businesses to involve the community in this decision”

He proposes the format — four parts, of which Flock presents two:

“1. Benicia PD will intro and talk about crime in the city, why they have decided to implement ALPR and partner with Flock, and the benefits to the community 2. Flock (Me) will talk about the technology, solution, and Flock in general 3. Flock (Jess/Meg) will talk about partnerships with neighborhoods, HOA’s, how LPR can make communities safer, etc. 4. Q&A”

And then, in his own words, the purpose:

“Goals are twofold: 1. Engage the community so Benicia PD’s project will be approved when it goes to Council 2. Gain support with HOA’s, Neighborhoods, and Business and plant the seed for them to fill in the gaps within their communities”

What that says

Read plainly, goal 1 is not consultation. It is approval. The community outreach that preceded the May 2021 Council decision was designed by the company that would be paid if the decision went one way, and its first stated objective was that the decision go that way.

Goal 2 is the sales strategy underneath it: the public meetings were also a channel for selling private cameras to residents and associations, to “fill in the gaps” the City’s own deployment would leave. The audience was being engaged and prospected in the same session.

The plan also proposes two meetings rather than one — “likely to do 2 virtual meetings with subsets of the groups”, one for “HOA’s/Neighborhood Watch/Businesses, and the second for the general public”. Organised supporters first, the general public second.

The same email chain also settles finding 1

Finding 1 established that the sole-source letter was drafted by Flock, inferred from the document itself. The transmittal is now on the record. February 22, 2021, 12:27 PM, John Anderson to Michael Greene and Mark Menesini, subject “Flock Safety Sole Source Letter”, four attachments:

Sole Source Letter - Benicia Police Department.pdf Agreement - Benicia Police Department.pdf Covina - Staff Report - 2020.pdf Azusa - Staff Report - 2020-9.pdf

“Chief and Lt., here is the Sole Source Letter. I’ve also included a copy of the agreement so we can start on the le[gal] process, and a couple of examples for staff reports.”

So the vendor supplied the justification for skipping competitive bidding, the contract, and two other cities’ staff reports as models for Benicia’s own. Finding 1 said Flock wrote the City’s no-bid justification. It also supplied the template for the report in which the City would explain itself to its Council.

Stated fairly

A vendor helping a customer through a procurement is ordinary commercial behaviour, and none of this is concealed — the City produced it. Anderson is direct and professional throughout, and the Department was free to ignore any of it.

What the record does not show is any point at which the City wrote its own case. The justification, the agreement, the staff-report models and the community-engagement plan all arrive from the same sender. The finding is about authorship, not about legality, and the reason authorship matters is that a Council reading a staff report has no way to see where it came from.