The Brief

Fire has never been a foreign concept in the life of Altadena-based photographer Kevin Cooley.

It's been a major theme across his work. His fine art photos have focused on smoke, explosions — including those he creates himself — and a man nicknamed the Wizard of Awe who made fireworks in Southern Minnesota.

For his day job, Cooley chases and captures wildfires in California for a photo agency and publications like the New York Times.

"It's hard not to want to go right to the fire, but I often want to find an angle to create an image, a scene where you put the fires within a larger context than the burning house, the burning building, the threat to people," he said.

One of his favorite pieces is a photo taken during the Woolsey Fire in 2018, which burned nearly 97,000 acres in L.A. and Ventura counties and prompted the evacuation of some 295,000 people.

Screenshot of the New York Times story where Kevin Cooley's photo was published.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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The photo was shot on assignment for The New Yorker and was also used for a Times opinion piece. Taken at a house in the San Fernando Valley, the picture was uncannily Hockney-esque in its composition and symbolism.

"It's of a house with a swimming pool in the backyard, beautiful landscape with the fire just encroaching right over the wall behind it," he said. "In a way that's kind of like the end of the California dream."

A photo Kevin Cooley took during the Bobcat Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles in 2020.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Cooley moved to Los Angeles from New York in 2012, and was already familiar with the city's tendency for destructive wildfires having gone on assignments to photograph them before.

His relationship to his subject deepened half a decade later, when the La Tuna Fire scorched some 7,200 acres — becoming the largest wildfire in the history of L.A., at the time.

That was 2017, and Cooley had just moved into his new home, barely a week or so in, when La Tuna came about a hundred yards from his house.

Instead of wary, he became more fascinated.

"The ecology of Southern California is the chaparral, and the chaparral needs to burn. You know, fire is part of that ecology. We live in its domain," Cooley said.

"That  really got me more interested in going to more fires," he said.

But, he added, " I much prefer to go to the fires than have them come to me."

At 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7, a brush fire started in Pacific Palisades and grew exponentially over the course of the day, fanned by damaging Santa Ana winds unseen in a decade.

Kevin Cooley's new book, Wizard of Awe, is a compilation of photos he took of a man in Minnesota that makes smoke generators for big events.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Two photos inside Kevin Cooley's collection of photographs, Wizard of Awe. The West Coast launch of the book was postponed due to fires spreading across Los Angeles starting on Jan. 7.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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That morning, Cooley was installing a gallery show in downtown Los Angeles for the West Coast book launch of Wizard of Awe, a collection of photos he took over the course of more than a decade of a man named Ken Miller, who made huge smoke generators at his Minnesota farm for airshows and other splashy events. Some of those photos were published in Popular Mechanics magazine. Those shots, and the accompany story, landed Miller in prison for violating federal explosive laws.

Miller was scheduled to fly out to L.A. to join this weekend's book launch.

But as the Palisades Fire grew in strength, Cooley got a call to go on assignment.

So he left the gallery and headed out.

From Kevin Cooley's "Controlled Burns" series.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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" I've done enough where you can kind of get a sense of, you know,   looking at different resources and angles from fire cameras. It's like, 'OK, that's a fire. I got to go.' And you just go," he said. "That was the Palisades that day."

He and a friend spent hours out in the Palisades shooting the unprecedented blaze — until he got a call from his wife saying that a fire had broken out near Eaton Canyon and was growing fast.

" I could tell from the photograph that she sent from our house that it was like, 'We got to get back right now.' It was already that intense," Cooley said.

They hauled back to Altadena and saw firsthand what was happening to his neighborhood.

" I thought the [Palisades Fire] was the most intense fire I've ever been on until I got back to Altadena.  And that was more intense, at least for me, because it's my community," he said.

Cafe de Leche, a small coffee shop on Lake Avenue in Altadena, destroyed by the Eaton Fire.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Cooley, his wife and their 10-year-old son evacuated from their duplex near  the intersection of El Molino Avenue and Morada Place, straddling the border of Altadena and Pasadena, at about 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Once they settled into their friend's Bungalow Heaven home in Pasadena for shelter, Cooley headed back north.

 "Being the fire photographer that I am, I couldn't sit and I went back straight to my house and it was already on fire," he said.

Kevin Cooley and his family's Altadena duplex consumed by the Eaton Fire on the morning of Jan. 8.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Another view of the Cooley home.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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A wall of fire was close to engulfing his car.

"I figured I probably should go," Cooley said.

The veteran fire photographer said after leaving his home: "I just went around the neighborhood like I always do, except I knew all the houses."

By early Wednesday morning, on Jan. 8, just hours after the start of Eaton Fire in Altadena, Cooley and his family has lost their home — along with so many people in the area.

He went to Instagram and posted a video of his house being ripped apart by the flames.

The next morning, one of the photographs he took of the Palisades Fire was published in the New York Times.

Cooley was showing me that shot in the backyard of his friend's Pasadena home that afternoon — while ashes from the fires burning across Los Angeles fell from the sky around us.

A screenshot of the New York Times opinion piece where Kevin Cooley's Palisades Fire photo was used.

He said he isn't sure what's next, what's going to happen, where he and his family are going to go, or whether they'll stay in L.A.

But he did say living with wildfires has become part of living in this city.

"If there's an earthquake, it's not gonna be like we weren't informed. People who live on the beach, [it's not like they] aren't aware that the sea is coming," Cooley said. "It's just all part of our living in this 21st century."

Because so much of Los Angeles teeters at the edge of paradise lost.

Kevin Cooley in front of his Altadena home destroyed by the Eaton Fire.

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Aaron Giesel

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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***

The West Coast book launch of Wizard of Awe has been rescheduled:

KEVIN COOLEY | THE WIZARD OF AWE
These Days
Location: 118 Winston St., Los Angeles
Event: Artist Reception + book signing: Jan. 18, 7 - 9 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Jan. 18 - Feb. 1

Two of L.A.’s top elected officials are publicly clashing over one of the public’s top issues — the future of homeless services spending — as city council members weigh pulling $300 million a year out of the troubled L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).

It started just after Wednesday’s meeting of the city council’s housing and homelessness committee, where members discussed the possibility of directing the city’s homelessness spending to the county’s new department. Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement urging the council not to redirect the funds too quickly without a plan.

“The county’s decision to establish its own department and withdraw from LAHSA has created a funding and operational gap, which the city must immediately address in order to ensure life-saving services for unhoused Angelenos are not disrupted,” Bass said.

County supervisors decided last April to withdraw their funding — over $300 million a year — from LAHSA and shift it to a new county department starting this July.

“The last thing we need is a new department and more bureaucracy,” the mayor said, adding the county had been “prioritizing bureaucracy rather than services.”

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath responded shortly after with a statement of her own, saying the mayor “is living in the LAHSA twilight zone.”

“When the mayor created a new program — spending hundreds of millions of your dollars without prior City Council approval — she called it ‘strategic,’” said Horvath, referring to Bass’ Inside Safe program.

“Now, when the County withdraws hundreds of millions of your dollars from an agency that failed multiple audits, she calls it ‘more bureaucracy.’”

Audits released in late 2024 and last spring found LAHSA failed to properly track the hundreds of millions of dollars the city and county entrusted to it per year.

“Angelenos know the truth: The current system doesn’t work,” Horvath’s statement said. A spokesperson for Bass didn’t respond to a request for comment on Horvath’s criticism.

‘Wasted precious time’

Wednesday’s discussion by the homelessness committee came a year after city and county officials received staff reports about potential alternatives to LAHSA.

County supervisors made their decision last April. The city council is about a year behind in starting its discussion of the options.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who introduced the motion two years ago requesting the city report up for discussion Wednesday, said at the meeting the council had “wasted precious time.”

 ”This is a leadership failure,” Rodriguez said. “If you care about the people that are being lost in the street, then you should care to work with urgency and decisive action.”

She has criticized the committee’s chair, Nithya Raman, for waiting more than 300 days after the report was finished before bringing it forward for discussion.

Raman did not respond to the criticism during the meeting or in response to a request for comment from LAist.

At Wednesday’s meeting, council members were told in their official staff briefing that the city lacks officials dedicated to homelessness policy and that it would likely take a year and a half to bring oversight of the spending in house to direct city control.

Homelessness Bureau not ready

Bass’ statement pointed to a forthcoming Homelessness Bureau, a team in city government she said will focus on oversight and accountability over homelessness spending.

Raman said the bureau is not yet ready to monitor homelessness spending or advise the council.

“We have not hired a single person for the bureau yet,” said Raman, who championed the bureau a year ago. City council approved the bureau’s funding nine months ago, for the fiscal year starting last July.

Rodriguez criticized the council’s decision last spring to pursue the bureau instead of discussing options to shift funding from LAHSA. The bureau, she added, still does not have “ an overarching goal, which addresses the concerns around governance” of homelessness dollars.

Raman recently announced she’s running for mayor against Bass, something Horvath openly considered but opted not to do. She is instead running for re-election as supervisor.

The committee plans to hold one more discussion in the coming weeks, before deciding next steps. Any changes to funding would have to go to a vote of the full city council.

The historic Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles is reopening under a new partnership with nonprofit Hope the Mission.

The more than 100-year-old diner on Figueroa Street is expected to open in May or June in collaboration with the North Hills-based organization that provides meals, shelter and services to people experiencing homelessness.

When The Pantry first announced its closure last March, thousands of Angelenos from its loyal multi-generational customer base flocked to the restaurant for one last meal.

But now, the greasy spoon will start serving customers again under a new model. All profits will go toward supporting the unhoused community, according to Ken Craft, founder and CEO.

“This creates an opportunity for people to know 'I'm going to go enjoy an incredible meal at an iconic location in Los Angeles, and it's going to be doing good for the city of Los Angeles,'” Craft told LAist.

What’s new

Hope the Mission isn’t a total stranger to food service.

The organization provides nearly 9,000 meals each day and operates 33 shelters and interim housing sites in the region, including five shelters within a few miles of The Pantry.

One of its mottos is that everybody and everything gets a second chance — the historic diner included.

“It is very symbolic of the work that we do where oftentimes lives get beat down, they get worn out and they feel like their usefulness is done,” Craft said. “And so I look at The Pantry and I say, ‘No, your best years are yet to come.’"

The tagline of The Pantry when it reopens under the new partnership will be “a second serving”, as a nod to that second chance.

But the nostalgic draw of the diner is not lost on Craft.

The Original Pantry Cafe in 1979.

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William Reagh

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection

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The Original Pantry Cafe, on the northwest corner of Figueroa and 9th streets, in 1978.

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Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection

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Courtesy L.A. Public Library

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He said Hope the Mission is going to honor the history and legacy of the space (logo and several layers of flooring included) while giving it a new lease on life.

The organization’s chefs have been working on an updated menu. Craft said it’ll include some of the classic food customers came to love, including pancakes and hash browns, along with a new dessert line and some healthier options.

The overall goal is to replicate the feeling people had when they ate at The Pantry decades ago, with the same style and much of the same staff, while the diner evolves into the next philanthropic chapter. Craft said he wants to make sure The Original Pantry Cafe gets back on the map.

“Not only will you get an amazing meal and a wonderful experience, you're going to be actually investing back into the community,” he said.

The counter was full on The Pantry's last day open in March 2025.

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Dañiel Martinez

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LAist

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The scene on the last day of The Pantry's operation in March 2025.

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Dañiel Martinez

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LAist

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Officials are working to reopen The Pantry between May 1 and June 1, Craft said. All the business’ profits will go toward supporting people experiencing homelessness through Hope the Mission’s shelters, services and meal programs.

What’s old

Kurt Petersen, the co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, the union representing the restaurant’s workers, told LAist they’ve come to an agreement with Hope the Mission so that all the staff who lost their jobs when The Pantry closed will be able to return to their previous positions.

Petersen said the union also reached an agreement that will provide free family health insurance, legal services and training funds for those workers.

“The folks who've been there 10, 20, 30, 40 years — they're really listening to them about what this needs to be in order to be a beloved institution going forward for Angelenos, “ he said.

“At the same time, they have some thoughts about how it should be run and hopefully the marriage of those two concepts will bring The Pantry forward so that it'll be open another 100 years,” Petersen continued.

José Moran, who worked at The Pantry for more than 45 years, told LAist he’s excited to start serving Angelenos again.

José Moran said he's "very happy" to be going back to work at The Pantry.

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Courtesy UNITE HERE Local 11

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“I feel great, I feel very happy,” Moran said. “I never thought I was going to work again there.”

Moran described the restaurant staff as a “family” — both figuratively and literally. His brother, Jesus, also worked at The Pantry a little longer than José.

Moran said he’s been missing his brother since they stopped seeing each other every day when the diner closed. But now, they’re both looking forward to coming back to the greasy spoon.

José and Jesus Moran were both servers at The Pantry for more than 45 years. José Moran said they're both looking forward to returning for the reopening.

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Courtesy UNITE HERE Local 11

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How we got here

The diner shut its doors last year after more than a century of serving breakfast staples.

The owner at the time, the Richard J. Riordan Administrative Trust, told LAist’s media partner CBS LA that the restaurant was never profitable and that selling the property would help keep the foundation’s charitable mission. The trust took over ownership after former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, who bought the restaurant in 1981, died a few years ago.

But UNITE HERE Local 11 said the trust abruptly closed the diner after staff insisted that any new owners must protect their jobs and honor the union.

Kurt Petersen, the co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said the staff who lost their jobs when The Pantry closed will be able to return to their previous positions.

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Courtesy UNITE HERE Local 11

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“I saw some of the guys crying, and because, you know, we all got families and we have to support them,” Moran said. “I know how they were feeling, because I was feeling too the same. At the beginning, that was very sad.”

Last September, the union announced a “landmark agreement” with the new owner, Leo Pustilnikov, who’s also a real estate developer.

Petersen said because the staff fought for their jobs with the support of residents and city officials, they are now going back to work with an operator and owner who share the mission that The Pantry needs to be one of the great restaurants in Los Angeles.

“So this is all good news,” Petersen said. “and God knows we need good news right now.”

Pustilnikov told the Los Angeles Times last fall that he planned to reopen The Pantry on New Year’s Eve, pending the necessary permits and licenses. Petersen said there were some delays when a car crashed into the building shorty after.

The restaurant’s website still reads “temporarily closed” as of Thursday.

Pustilnikov didn’t immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

How to get involved

Hope the Mission is also launching a fundraising campaign with opportunities for the community to support The Pantry’s reopening.

There are various donation levels, with people giving $100,000 or more getting the chance to name a drink or item from the menu. Craft said they’ve already had a few takers.

Gifts of $50,000 or more will get to sponsor a booth at the diner, with the donor's name or business displayed on the table.

People who donate $5,000 or more will have their name permanently displayed on a sign inside The Pantry.

“We're looking to the business community and people that love L.A. to partner with us in helping to make sure that it's a successful launch,” Craft said.

You can learn more here.

Monterey Park voters will decide in June whether to ban data centers citywide, setting up a potential legal battle with the developer behind a proposed project.

The City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved placing a measure on the June ballot that would ask voters to amend the city’s General Plan to prohibit the facilities.

The council, also by unanimous vote, directed staff to begin drafting a city ordinance banning data centers ahead of the June election that could potentially take effect before then. It also extended a 45-day moratorium on data center development to January 2027.

City Attorney Karl Berger said the multi-prong approach would give Monterey Park the strongest legal footing.

“I like the belt, suspenders and girdle approach to most things just to make sure that everything's buckled down,” Berger said.

The council votes come after months of mounting resident outrage over a proposal to build a 250,000-square-foot data center in a business park — a project they fear would bring high energy use, noise and limited economic benefit.

Many said they did not learn about the project until the end of last year through word-of-mouth and social media, and faulted city leaders for failing to properly inform them.

Developer HMC StratCap has threatened litigation over the council’s moves toward banning data centers.

On Wednesday, before the council voted, Bryan Marsh, an HMC StratCap executive, gave public comment to boos from the audience, saying the company purchased the land in December 2024 after the “city provided assurances about the viability of data center development.”

He urged the city to work with the company on finding “alternative land uses” for the property.

“Forcing a ballot proposition with a special election in June 2026 severely degrades our ability to work together,” Marsh said.

The council appeared unmoved. Berger, the city attorney, said the developer currently does not appear to have a legally vested project.

There is an application on file, he said, but no public hearing has been scheduled. Berger added he had been authorized by the council to initiate litigation against HMC StratCap if the company were to file suit.

Opponents of the data center rejoiced over Wednesday’s votes and expressed relief that they had mobilized against the project before HMC StratCap’s application had advanced any further.

“The City Council has listened and is listening,” said Hrag Balian, a resident who helped found the group No Data Center in Monterey Park! “ I feel very optimistic that data centers are going to be banned from Monterey Park in the foreseeable near future.”

A group in South Pasadena gathered Wednesday to urge their city council to end its contracts with Flock Safety, the controversial surveillance company that operates AI-powered automated license plate readers in thousands of communities across the U.S., including many in California.

The small town has 27 Flock cameras that monitor the cars that come and go in the community of around 25,000 people — one of the highest densities in the region, according to the mayor. That information is temporarily stored in a database that's shared with law enforcement agencies across the state.

The South Pasadena City Council is now taking a deeper look at its contracts with Flock, after reports that some local law enforcement agencies in Southern California illegally shared license plate reader data with federal immigration agents. Those included the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, which South Pasadena shares its data with.

"I’m deeply concerned for the safety of our community. Flock has proven to be careless with our data," Olivia Ramirez, a South Pasadena resident, told the city council in public comment Wednesday. “Continuing to work with Flock will erode public trust and, as a consequence, will harm public safety.”

The speakers are part of a growing movement, as residents across California push local law enforcement and city governments to reconsider their ties with the Flock over concerns about surveillance and how their data could be used in the federal government's mass deportation campaign.

How other communities are responding

Santa Cruz killed its contract with Flock in January following reports that the city's data was accessed by agencies outside of California and shared with ICE. Last month, Mountain View Police Department shut off its Flock cameras after an audit found that federal agencies had accessed its data in 2024. Other local governments in the Bay Area have followed suit.

The Oxnard Police Department also suspended its use of Flock license plate readers last week, after an audit revealed that data from the city's cameras was made available to federal law enforcement agencies between February and March of 2025 through a "nationwide query" setting, against the city's wishes and state law. A California law prohibits sharing license plate reader data with agencies outside of the state.

Flock acknowledged the incident in a blog post this week, saying that out-of-state law enforcement agencies' access to some of its camera networks was "inadvertent" and it was not possible in some cases to determine the cause.

The post also said that Flock had strengthened its protections, including by excluding federal agencies from national and statewide lookup networks, and implementing guardrails that keep California agencies from accepting or initiating data sharing with federal agencies or out of state entities.

"Flock sincerely regrets the confusion and mistrust this has created within several communities," the blog post reads. "Flock takes full accountability for this situation, and has made changes and improvements to significantly enhance agency ability to effortlessly comply with applicable laws, regulations, and community norms that govern information sharing."

That wasn't good enough for Sam Gurley, who rallied with his neighbors in South Pasadena on Wednesday night.

“It isn't until they get caught that they say, 'Hey, I know that this is a law in California. We got caught, let's fix it,'" said Gurley, who said he became alarmed when he learned that Flock cameras were deployed. " Now that I have a better understanding of how the system, the city use and share this data with each other, I'm more terrified than I've ever been."

How Flock works

Flock has contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies around the nation that use its cameras and license plate readers. The cameras are sometimes attached to street poles — including one on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena near the entrance to the 110 Freeway, where cars streamed by the nondescript camera under a small solar panel on Wednesday evening.

There are 27 Flock cameras installed around the city of South Pasadena.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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Flock cameras "continuously scan and record images" of vehicles' license plates numbers, color, and make, according to a report put together by city staff in South Pasadena. The cameras record the date, time and GPS location every time a car passes by. According to Flock's website, the cameras also pick up other identifying features of cars, like stickers and roof racks.

The technology automatically cross references license plate numbers with law enforcement databases and alerts the police department if it detects a vehicle connected with a criminal investigation, according to the report.

Flock's database also allows law enforcement agencies to search the location of vehicles outside of their own city. Flock stores the data for 30 days and then automatically deletes it, although cities can adjust the length of time they retain the data. Flock emphasized to NPR that cities control how the data they collect is shared.

Law enforcement agencies have hailed the technology for helping them locate suspects and stolen vehicles. At a February city council meeting, South Pasadena Sergeant Andy DuBois called the Flock cameras a "force multiplier" for officers trying to solve crimes.

" It allows agencies to share relevant information in a secure and regulated way. By participating in this network, we benefit from broader technological coverage without needing to add additional staffing," DuBois said.

Nick Hidalgo, senior staff attorney with ACLU of Northern California who has done work on automated license plate readers for years, called the technology a "dragnet.”

"What they are collecting is a person's location — because any license plate information can be connected very easily to a driver," he said. "You can capture a ton of information about where a person lives, works, etc. We're talking about truly sensitive information here."

A deeper look at the law

In California, state law SB 34 prohibits agencies from sharing information gathered by automated license plate readers with out-of-state and federal agencies. Police departments also must keep a record of their queries of the system. Another state law, SB 54, limits California law enforcement agencies from assisting with immigration enforcement.

In 2023, the state's attorney general Rob Bonta issued two bulletins to state and local law enforcement on complying with those laws when using automated license plate reader data.

"The majority of California law enforcement agencies collect and use images captured by ALPR cameras, but few have appropriate usage and privacy policies in place," a press release from Bonta's office said at the time.

Last year, Bonta sued the city of El Cajon in San Diego County, saying it had shared data from its system of Flock automated license plate reader cameras with more than 100 out-of-state law enforcement agencies. The mayor of that city responded with defiance, saying it shares data with other states because "crime doesn't stop at the border."

Flock Safety says that it does not work with ICE or any agency within the Department of Homeland Security. It also emphasizes that it is local agencies that own the data that their cameras collect, not Flock.

South Pasadena faces a deadline

The city of South Pasadena pays around $83,000 annually for two contracts with Flock – one which sunsets this month, on March 19. The council has until March 18 to decide whether or not to auto-renew the contract for two more years.

If the city decides to terminate the contract, it will have to repay a federal grant of around $45,000 it used to install 14 cameras. The city could also decide to end its second contract with Flock before its March, 2027 end date. That would cost the city a $6,500 termination fee, but it would receive a refund for the unused days of service, according to a city report.

South Pasadena Mayor Sheila Rossi told LAist that she's concerned about Flock's system and reports about data being shared out of the state of California. She also told the city council in February that South Pasadena had a far higher density of cameras than many surrounding communities, saying it reached "the category of surveillance."

South Pasadena says it's implementing changes to its camera policies, including requiring monthly audits of how the system is queried and requiring agents that search the data include a case number.

Councilmembers in February also raised the idea of reducing their system's data retention to less than 30 days. The state of New Hampshire requires law enforcement agencies to delete automated license plate reader data after three minutes if it does not yield a hit with criminal investigations.

Rossi said the council will look into options including contracting with other automated license plate readers and canceling one of the city contracts with Flock.

" Cities have a responsibility to make sure the safeguards around these tools keep pace," she said.

Susan Seager, a First Amendment lawyer and South Pasadena resident, said she wants the cameras gone, period.

" I don't trust Flock and I don't trust our federal government, and I want to be able to trust our local police department," she said. "I don't think our little small city should be part of that surveillance state."