SFPD just stood up a shiny new drone-and-camera hub this week — and that same week, the license plate reader network collapsed the minute somebody checked who was actually using it. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: surveillance that flunked its own audit, a courtroom discovery fight, and a $35,000 check propping up something the school district was supposed to protect on its own. From Kevin Killough at Just The News:
The San Francisco Police Department disabled access to its Flock Automated License Plate Reader cameras after the network was "improperly queried" by federal agencies that some that operate out of state. The department said it discovered these improper queries during regular audits last month, according to Bay City News.
So here's what gets me. California law flat-out bars federal and out-of-state agencies from touching this Flock data. SFPD only caught the improper queries because of a routine audit last month — per Bay City News, credit where it's due. And the framing in the Just The News piece is pretty revealing — the headline reassurance is that the audit found no immigration or reproductive-rights queries. Which tells you exactly which two things everyone was bracing for. Right, but flip it. I've spent all week defending this city's competence on housing math and permitting. And now that same City Hall just proved it couldn't track who was querying its own surveillance network until an audit tripped over it. That's an embarrassment, and I'm not papering over it. For folks just tuning in — Flock ALPRs are the camera network that flags stolen cars, Amber Alert vehicles, trafficking suspects. Useful tool. The whole bargain is that access stays inside the rules. The moment it doesn't, the privacy cost shows up with no payoff to balance it. And that's the question nobody's answering — were any of those improper queries tied to an actual investigation? Did this network ever move SFPD's clearance rates? Because if the answer's no, we ate the privacy risk for nothing. San Francisco just shut down its license plate reader network over improper data access, while SFPD is expanding drones and cameras. So who decides whether this surveillance is worth the privacy trade-off? And is anyone checking whether it actually reduces crime? The short answer: the guardrails exist on paper, but they keep failing in practice. Start with the license plate readers. SFPD disabled its entire Flock camera network in June after an audit found the data had been 'improperly queried' by out-of-state and federal agencies, per NBC Bay Area. And this didn't come out of nowhere: reporting from The Standard going back to July 2025 showed San Francisco and Oakland police had been sharing plate data with federal law enforcement repeatedly, likely violating California law, which bars sharing that data with the feds. We're talking about 1.6 million searches run by cops from Georgia and Texas alone. It went beyond outside agencies, too — an internal affairs investigation found an SFPD officer used the Flock system to look for his own wife's stolen car, then posted the images on Instagram. That's exactly the kind of individual misuse the rules are supposed to stop. On drones, SFPD has flown them nearly 1,400 times since May 2024, mostly chasing car theft, robbery, and burglary suspects, per a Chronicle analysis. The department credits the technology with contributing to a broader crime decline, but the causal link between drones specifically and falling crime numbers hasn't been independently verified. If audits are supposed to be the check here, and SFPD's own audit caught the improper access, why are we calling that a failure instead of the system working? The audit caught it — eventually — but the 1.6 million unauthorized searches had already happened. And a lawsuit filed by a retired San Francisco teacher argues the whole architecture of constant tracking is unconstitutional, no matter who's querying it. What matters now is whether the Police Commission requires real-time access controls and public reporting before SFPD reconnects those cameras and expands the drone-and-camera hub — because right now, discovery is reactive, not preventive. Donovan Castillero, writing in Davis Vanguard:
SAN FRANCISCO — As jury selection began Monday, June 22, in a San Francisco criminal trial, defense attorneys renewed allegations that prosecutors continued to provide late discovery despite prior sanctions and court orders, prompting Judge Michael Begert to authorize the defense to litigate the issue before the jury.
Okay, so jury selection starts Monday, and Deputy Public Defender Jared Rudolph stands up and says the DA's office is STILL dumping late discovery — after Judge Begert already sanctioned them once for it. And get this — the new material from ADA McDaniels landed June 18, basically right after the judge ordered sanctions. Evidence from investigations more than two years old, per Rudolph, showing up the week of trial. Credit Davis Vanguard's David Greenwald, who's been sitting in that courtroom and logging it. For listeners — discovery is the legal duty to hand over evidence to the other side. Late discovery isn't a clerical hiccup; it can blow up a defendant's ability to prepare. And Begert's response was telling — he authorized the defense to litigate it in front of the jury. That's a judge deciding jurors should hear how the sausage got made. This is why I keep coming back to competence. I've spent all week defending that this city CAN run things well — housing, permits, the budget. Then in the same week, the LPR network collapses the second someone checks who's querying it, and now the DA can't follow a court order on basic evidence-sharing. The tools keep outrunning the accountability. This one's from The Bay Area Reporter:
An anonymous donor has pledged $35,000 in funds to continue and possibly expand dozens of LGBTQ-inclusive Rainbow Clubs at SFUSD elementary schools next year, inspired by another unnamed donor’s $1.6 million donation to district teachers in April.
An anonymous donor drops $35,000 to keep Rainbow Clubs running at SFUSD elementary schools — and look, allyship matters. But step back: this is a private check plugging a hole the district is supposed to own. The Bay Area Reporter broke this, and one detail jumps out: the donor says they were inspired by a separate anonymous gift — $1.6 million to SFUSD teachers back in April. Right, and that's my worry. When philanthropy carries the program, what's the line item next year after the donor moves on? These are dozens of clubs across elementary schools — a recurring cost that has to be planned for every year. For folks new to it — the Rainbow Clubs started in 2022, community groups that openly acknowledge LGBTQ identity. The money's routed through Spark SF Public Schools, the district's official philanthropic foundation, so this is going through the sanctioned channel, not some freelance side setup. Which is the part that should make people uncomfortable. We just spent a segment on the city skipping the accountability math on surveillance tech. Here SFUSD is leaning on anonymous donors to fund programs that should be in the budget if the district actually values them. Got feedback, a story idea, or a correction for us? Send a note anytime to sfdailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read what you send, and it helps shape the conversations we follow next.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can dig into the original reporting there.
That’s San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.