A City Considers: How Should They Audit Surveillance Tech?

The approval of an agreement with Flock Safety for new gunshot detection technology was not the most interesting piece of the most recent Vallejo City Council meeting — for vendors and consultants, anyway.

The part industry should be paying attention to from the Dec. 16 meeting was tucked in between the lines and related to how the city will move forward with evaluating its suite of surveillance technology. The city’s Surveillance Advisory Board (SAB) has been evaluating how to best audit systems like Flock Safety, but are finding that few other cities have comprehensive audit structures in place.

“I’ve helped them by going out and trying to find audit plans from other cities, which there don’t appear to be many, but we’re working on that process,” Chief Assistant City Attorney Randy Risner told the council.

Since September 2024, the city has been using Raven, Flock Safety’s gunshot detection system, in a 4-square-mile area as part of a no-cost beta test, and has now voted to extend paid service for 18 months under a new agreement.

Auditing this sort of technology has been a focus for one of the SAB subcommittees, and some Vallejo Police Department frameworks exist, but officials are considering a more comprehensive approach that would include other technologies as well.

“Creating the audit plan is going to take some time beyond the end of this year; it will probably be some time in the next year and it may even require, at some point, having a consultant come in and help us develop that plan,” Risner said.

As far as a timetable for an audit action plan, Councilmember Tonia Lediju requested that staff update the council on the progress by February, to which Risner responded that he hopes to be able to provide that information sooner.

“I would expect by February that someone is coming to talk about it,” Lediju said.

More information about the Flock Safety agreement and the SAB is available here and here.