Richmond’s police chief on Tuesday will recommend that the city drop its Flock crime surveillance program and switch to another provider.
The city council, at its first meeting since taking a summer break, will also consider passing a data center moratorium and will hear an update on plans to spend its $550 million Chevron settlement.
Richmond police Chief Timothy Simmons wants Richmond to end its three-year relationship with Flock and expand its contract with Axon, which already provides the department with virtual reality training, body cameras and tasers. Axon would then supply the city with a license plate reader network, CCTV cameras and a drone program.
The potential move would route camera monitoring of non-law enforcement city facilities to a separate vendor, Assure MSP.
The switch would increase the cost of Axon’s contract by $3.5 million, bringing the total to $12 million through September 2031.
Richmond city council meeting
What: Richmond City Council meeting
When: 6 p.m. Tue., Sept. 15; note there will be a rally about banning data centers at 5:30 p.m.
Where: 440 Civic Center Plaza
Agenda: See the agenda for information about how to attend in person or remotely.
Flock’s contract was scheduled to expire in December.
The contract with Assure, a Pleasanton-based IT consulting and security company that specializes in cloud-enabled video surveillance, would cost $500,000 through 2029 and cover city-owned, non-law enforcement facilities such as the recently renovated Shields-Reid Park, the Port of Richmond, the Public Works Department yard and the Civic Center campus.
Flock’s time with the city hasn’t been without controversy.
Most notably, in December 2025, Simmons turned off the Flock cameras after discovering that a back-end feature allowed the city’s data to be accessible nationally. The council voted 4-3 in March to turn them back until the expiration of the contract. The approval came with the caveat that Flock would pay Richmond a $290,000-per-violation penalty if there were other breaches of data.
In recent months, Flock also cited Richmond and Oakland in a national training for law enforcement agencies to show police how they can better persuade city leaders to adopt surveillance technologies, according to leaked documents obtained by 404 Media.
In agenda documents for Tuesday’s meeting, Flock’s performance related to camera replacement was mentioned.
After four expansions of the Flock contract since 2023, RPD’s evaluation committee documented a list of complaints, including: unreliable CCTV equipment, long delays on repairs, a camera at the public work yard that wasn’t operating for about eight months and being billed for equipment that hadn’t been installed yet.
According to documents obtained by Richmondside via a public records act request, contracts show roughly $7,750 in itemized camera, pole, and solar-panel replacement charges billed separately from the initial 2023 contract through July 2025 — 10 individual service calls which were from $350 to $800 each. It is unclear how much the city has spent since July 2025.
Also notable is the fact that some locations needed to be repeatedly repaired.
For example, a camera at Cutting Boulevard and South 50th Street needed both a pole and camera replacement in June 2023 for $1,300, then the pole needed to be fixed again a year later.
Another camera at Kelsey Street and Sanford Avenue needed a solar panel replacement in August 2024, then a full camera replacement six weeks later in October 2024 for $1,150.
One camera at San Joaquin Street and Colusa Avenue was replaced in November 2024 and again in July 2025 for $1,600.
New Axon contract would cap data retention at 30 days
Under the new contract, Axon would supply and install 110 solar-powered license plate cameras, 60 CCTV cameras, 24 spare units and a new drone fleet of five drones, replacing the one drone that Flock was providing the city. The city, under the new agreement, would own the hardware outright rather than lease it from Axon, and the company would pay for repairs due to vandalism or accidental damage.
The way that the city is retaining the data would also shift with Axon.
The ALPR data retention would be capped at 30 days unless a plate is tied to an active case. In that instance, it would be kept indefinitely in an evidence file.
The data would not be shared externally unless Richmond’s police department decided to do so. The data is also shared with the city’s Community Police Review Commission (CPRC).
Axon’s system also includes a public-facing transparency portal that would show Richmond’s data retention and general usage numbers for the ALPR program. The portal, however, only shows totals and not individual records such as license plates, photos of vehicles or addresses where the cameras are installed.
A pause on data centers — though none have applied
The council will also consider a 45-day urgency ordinance prohibiting the city from accepting or approving any “new permits, entitlements, or zoning changes for data centers” anywhere in Richmond. The approval of such short-notice ordinances requires a supermajority vote.
Data centers are facilities that house a large group of networked computer servers, storage systems, and networking equipment used to store, process, and distribute digital information. Some data centers are used to support artificial intelligence (AI) systems and have come under fire by critics who say that the massive facilities drive up utility bills, strain local power grids and use huge amounts of water.
However, according to Tuesday’s agenda staff report, there are no current or pending applications for data centers in Richmond.
Earlier this year, OpenAI, which is best known for its ChatGPT service, announced it was leasing a 200,000-square-foot property at Portside Commerce Center in the Port of Richmond.
It has been said that the site will be for “operational software and hardware development and testing,” but its presence still has some community members concerned.
“It will not be a data center,” Port Director Charles Gerard told Richmondside in April.
After news of that lease was published, the city council instructed city staff to begin the process for drafting the moratorium.
If adopted, the moratorium can be extended up to 22 months and 15 days following a notice of a public hearing. City staff plan to ask the council within the next 45 days to extend it.
Recently, both Oakland and San Francisco have considered moratoriums for data centers in their respective cities.
Richmond would be the second Bay Area city to adopt a moratorium after Oakley, in east Contra Costa County, passed one in April.
In California, Prologis is planning at least five data centers in San Jose, including a 99-megawatt, 516,050 square foot facility. Using an industry-standard estimate for average household energy consumption of 1.2 MW, the 99-megawatt facility would draw as much electricity as approximately 80,000 homes, more than the residential population of Fremont.
Local residents are organizing opposition to the data center campus, which will be powered by PG&E, according to the No on Prop. 45 campaign, which is opposed to the California Chamber of Commerce’s ballot initiative because they say that it “would reverse state environmental protections and weaken the state’s defense against President Trump’s attack on state clean air, water, and public health laws.”
Richmond council members Claudia Jimenez, who is also running for mayor this November against Ahmad Anderson, and Sue Wilson will be holding a press conference at 1 p.m. in the Richmond Civic Center alongside environmental groups Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) to speak on the issue, followed by a 5:30 p.m. community rally prior to Tuesday night’s meeting, according to a press release sent out by Shiva Mishek, CBE’s Northern California program co-director and former chief of staff of outgoing Mayor Eduardo Martinez.
Update on $550 million Chevron settlement community engagement
Earlier this year, the city council hired a consultant to gauge what the community wants to do with the historic $550 million Chevron settlement that the city secured in 2024.
Jimenez and Vice Mayor Doria Robinson, of District 3, are asking for monthly updates on those efforts.
The item, co-authored by the two, who also were on the ad-hoc committee that negotiated the settlement alongside Martinez, would call for outgoing City Manager Shasa Curl to provide an update at the Sept. 22 city council meeting.
The update would include detailing the consultant proposal and public plan, the timeline and the current state of the funds, according to the agenda report.
