Flock Safety's AI-powered automated license plate recognition (ALPR) system had been one of the few law enforcement technologies Berkeley retained after years of council decisions to strip BPD of tools available to neighboring departments. Officers had publicly described it as "the singular piece of technology the city has approved for police use in decades" and "the one thing keeping a lot of officers engaged."
On March 24, 2026, LunaParra and Ishii introduced a supplemental (Item 26) calling for the council to "reject any renewal, authorization, approval, or execution of a contract with Flock Safety." Their stated rationale was sanctuary city concerns: Flock had reactivated a "National Look Up" feature without local agencies' prior knowledge in Ventura County and Mountain View, potentially exposing resident data to federal agencies. Tregub co-sponsored.
Item 26 drew 132 public speakers. The council debated past 1:00 a.m.; a motion to extend the meeting to 2:00 a.m. failed 5–4 (Bartlett, Tregub, LunaParra, and Ishii voted no). The council then voted unanimously to continue the item to a special meeting on June 2, 2026. The final vote on the Flock contract has not yet occurred.
The supplemental did not engage with a material development. Berkeley's City Attorney had already negotiated a bespoke Master Services Agreement with Flock Safety that directly addressed the cited harms: data ownership protections, access restrictions consistent with Berkeley's sanctuary city policy, financial penalties for unauthorized disclosures, security incident notification requirements, and post-termination data protections. Flock accepted every revision the City Attorney proposed. The supplemental was written as if this negotiation had not occurred.
The same day Ishii's constituent email went out (April 14), Berkeley Scanner reported that BPD was at record-low patrol staffing — 54 officers, down from 75–80 in 2016 and 174 sworn in 2020. At least 7 officers had already transferred to SFPD; more were considering the move. Officers cited lack of tools, mixed political support, and low morale. They named the Flock ALPR system as the one remaining technology anchor — the contract the supplemental sought to kill.
LunaParra's supplemental is the document whose filename bears her name, indicating she drove its drafting. It calls for rejection of a contract that Berkeley's own City Attorney had already renegotiated to address the exact concerns she cited — without acknowledging that the renegotiation had occurred. This is not a case where a council member weighed the protections and found them insufficient; the supplemental proceeds as if no protections exist.
The decision was also a lame-duck action: LunaParra departed the council in April 2026, weeks after introducing it. Her farewell letter names "mass surveillance and contracts with harmful and dangerous corporations like Flock" as part of her legacy. It does not mention that BPD officers had publicly identified the Flock contract as a retention anchor during a documented attrition crisis she made no policy effort to reverse. A lame-duck vote to eliminate the tool your own department's officers have named as their reason to stay is a direct operational cost that outlasts the councilmember's tenure.
Ishii co-authored the original supplemental and separately sent a mass constituent email on April 14, 2026 — the same day the Berkeley Scanner published its detailed report on BPD's staffing crisis — announcing two special council meetings and stating "I remain opposed to Berkeley contracting with Flock." The email cites the same sanctuary city concerns as the supplemental, with no engagement with the City Attorney's negotiated protections.
Ishii holds a different institutional position than LunaParra: she is the Mayor, she is not a lame duck, and she is responsible for department performance during her administration. Opposing the technology her own BPD officers have publicly named as a retention anchor — while the department is losing officers to SFPD at record pace — is a direct conflict between her public safety accountability and her political commitments. The City Attorney's work gave her an off-ramp: a way to address sanctuary concerns without eliminating the tool. She did not take it.
Tregub's co-sponsorship extends his consistent position against policing technologies. The alternatives-dismissed failure here is the same as with the co-authors: the City Attorney had negotiated away the harms the supplemental cited, and the supplemental does not engage with that work. Tregub's role as co-sponsor rather than primary author warrants a lower score than LunaParra's, but co-sponsoring a supplemental you know will kill the department's last technological tool — on a record that already shows consistent opposition to ALPRs, cameras, and drones — is a pattern, not an isolated judgment.