home / mytown-research

surveillance_spending

A DISCOVERY INDEX of surveillance and police-technology dollar figures found in local government meeting records across 130+ named vendors — NOT a table of confirmed spending, and NOT safe to SUM. An audit on 2026-07-29 found aggregate views were adding amounts that must not be added: the same procurement recurs at committee, council, approval, amendment and renewal stages; "not to exceed" figures are authorization ceilings, not payments. Use the canned query "the CONSERVATIVE total" for any number you intend to publish, and "data-quality report" to see what is flagged. Columns added for this: `amount_type` (stated / ceiling / proposed / recommended / estimated), `dup_rank` (>1 = redundant copy), `geo_suspect` (city disagrees with the source link), `anomaly` (implausible figure), `state_norm` (normalized state). Vendors covered include ALPR (Flock, Vigilant, Genetec), body cameras/tasers (Axon, WatchGuard, Utility, Getac), gunshot detection (ShotSpotter/SoundThinking), face recognition (Clearview AI, DataWorks Plus), fingerprint biometrics (Idemia AFIS/Livescan, filed separately under `sv:biometrics`), data fusion and OSINT (Fusus, Peregrine, LexisNexis Accurint, Thomson Reuters CLEAR), phone forensics (Cellebrite, GrayKey, Magnet), drones (Skydio, BRINC, DJI), cameras/VMS (Verkada, Avigilon), cell-site simulators, CAD/RMS records systems, photo enforcement, jail-call and student monitoring. Every row carries a VERBATIM quote from the minutes and a link to the source document, and a row only publishes if that quote was found character-for-character in the source text. READ THE `ledger` COLUMN: `sv:<category>:<vendor>`. `radio_infra` (two-way radios), `rms` (records/CAD software), `biometrics` (fingerprints) and `not_surveillance` are NOT surveillance sensors — exclude them before quoting any surveillance figure.

Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown

2 rows where ledger = "flock", state = "CA" and vendor = "Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety)" sorted by amount descending

✎ View and edit SQL

This data as json, CSV (advanced)

Suggested facets: spend_date (date)

vendor 1

  • Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety) · 2 ✖

state 1

  • CA · 2 ✖

ledger 1

  • flock · 2 ✖
Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
1784 1784 Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety) La Puente CA 2023-06-27 approve a five-year agreement and purchase order contract 1236050.0 CONSIDERATION OF A FIVE-YEAR AGREEMENT AND PURCHASE ORDER CONTRACT WITH FLOCK GROUP INC. (FLOCK SAFETY) FOR THE PURCHASE AND INSTALLATION OF AUTOMATED LICENSE PLATE READER (ALPR) CAMERAS TO BE INSTALLED THROUGHOUT THE CITY IN THE AMOUNT OF $1,236,050 https://lapuente.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=8&clip_id=2226 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/gr-lapuente/#m570000 flock stated 1 0 0 CA
1781 1781 Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety) East Palo Alto CA 2025-12-02 authorize agreement 453250.0 Authorizing the City Manager to enter into a five-year agreement with Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety) for the continued provision of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) services in an amount not to exceed $453,250.00; https://cityofepa.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=3&clip_id=219 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/gr-cityofepa/2025/#m568253 flock ceiling 1 1 0 CA

Advanced export

JSON shape: default, array, newline-delimited

CSV options:

CREATE TABLE surveillance_spending (
  vendor TEXT, city TEXT, state TEXT, spend_date TEXT, product TEXT,
  amount REAL, quote TEXT, source_document TEXT, mytown_record TEXT, ledger TEXT, amount_type TEXT, dup_rank INTEGER, geo_suspect INTEGER, anomaly INTEGER, state_norm TEXT);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_vendor ON surveillance_spending(vendor);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_state ON surveillance_spending(state);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_amount ON surveillance_spending(amount);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_ledger ON surveillance_spending(ledger);
Powered by Datasette · Queries took 21.983ms · Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown