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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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After months of financial strain, Planned Parenthood will get a $140 million lifeline to offset losses it sustained after Congress in July cut funding for the health system, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

The money will help Planned Parenthood keep 109 California clinics open. In a statement, Newsom said the move reflects the state’s continued commitment to abortion and reproductive health care.

“Trump’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood put all our communities at risk as people seek basic health care from these community providers,” Newsom said.

Lawmakers will also take up the issue in January when the Legislature reconvenes.

The news comes a week after the nonprofit organization announced it would eliminate primary care at clinics in Orange and San Bernardino counties. Five other clinics also closed in July in the Bay Area, Santa Cruz and Central Valley, all in response to federal defunding.

Planned Parenthood needs roughly $27 million monthly to operate all of its local facilities, according to Jodi Hicks, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, the organization’s statewide advocacy group.

“We’re incredibly grateful that we’ve found a way to get some funding out to our Planned Parenthood health centers so they can remain operating and continue services,” Hicks said.

California is the fourth state, following Washington, Colorado and New Mexico, to pledge public funds to keep Planned Parenthood afloat. Lawmakers in Oregon and New York are also considering similar moves.

Republicans have lambasted and targeted Planned Parenthood for decades over contraceptive and abortion services. A 1977 law banned federal funding for abortions, but this summer President Donald Trump took additional steps to cut down the nation’s largest abortion provider.

His sweeping tax and budget bill prohibited Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid dollars for any kinds of services, including mammograms, pap smears, birth control and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.

According to Planned Parenthood, abortions account for less than 10% of its services, while other reproductive health services make up the bulk of medical care provided.

Federal funding losses have forced Planned Parenthood to close clinics across the country, where half of all patients rely on Medicaid. In California, where 80% of Planned Parenthood patients have Medicaid – known as Medi-Cal in the state – the losses are even greater.

“There was definitely an outsized impact on California,” Hicks said.

Primary care closures ripple across the state

Democratic lawmakers, Newsom and Planned Parenthood have spent most of the year searching for a funding solution that protects reproductive health access without cash from federal coffers. But, faced with a multibillion-dollar state deficit, solutions have been slow to appear and challenging to maintain.

“We’ll fight like hell to maintain access to care in the coming months and years,” said Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat who leads the Legislative Women’s Caucus,

Even with the state’s pledge to protect sexual and reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood clinics face growing uncertainty driven by federal grant freezes, lawsuits and even some proposed state cuts.

Last week, Planned Parenthood in Orange and San Bernardino counties announced facilities would close primary care services on Dec. 13. The group, which runs nine health centers, added primary care more than a decade ago to serve low-income patients unable to find appointments elsewhere.

Dr. Janet Jacobson, medical director of the Orange and San Bernardino counties clinics, said the federal actions are “destroying our primary care program.” She said she worries patients with urgent mental health needs or chronic conditions won’t be able to quickly find another provider. Many communities in the region have too few doctors, according to state data.

Roughly 13,000 patients will lose access to care and Planned Parenthood will lay off 77 staff.

“It’s inhumane to take away people’s health care,” Jacobson said. “Folks that have Medi-Cal should be able to see the provider of their choice for primary care.”

Aguiar-Curry called the loss of primary care “unacceptable and dangerous.”

Seeking stability as ‘financial cliff’ still looms

Farther north, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte — which runs 30 health centers along the California coast, Central Valley and Nevada — closed five health centers in July shortly after Trump blocked Planned Parenthood’s funding.

Mar Monte Chief of Staff Andrew Adams said the organization has been working to maintain its financial stability. The closures helped preserve services at the organization’s other clinics until the end of the year, but Adams warned that it could hit a “financial cliff” in January.

“We are planning for an environment where there is no federal funding,” Adams said. “What that looks like is having to potentially charge patients some amount of money for services we provide.”

Other Planned Parenthood groups in the state are exploring ways to cut costs and boost revenue while keeping clinics open for patients.

Dr. Neda Ashtari, a former Planned Parenthood and Medi-Cal patient, emphasized the importance of ensuring more than 1 million patients continue to have access to cancer screenings and other reproductive health services. When Ashtari was a teenager, her mother died of breast cancer after missing routine scans that could have detected the cancer earlier, she said.

“It really crystallizes that this preventative care is the difference between life or death,” Ashtari said.

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Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

Rebecca Ann Gillette
August 10, 1965 – October 11, 2025

Rebecca Ann (Throne) Gillette passed away peacefully on October 11, 2025, at 6:48 p.m., surrounded by her beloved children, grandchildren, and cherished pets. She was 60 years old. Rebecca was born on August 10, 1965, at 7:07 a.m. in Martinez, California, to Carol Ann Weatherby and Roberto Azcarate. She was later adopted and lovingly raised by Tommy Throne, whom she knew as her father.

She spent her formative years in California’s Central Valley, where she met William Gillette as a young teenager. Their connection was instant, and together they shared a spirit of adventure, traveling across Europe—a journey that deepened Rebecca’s lifelong love of French culture, food, architecture, and art. Upon returning, she pursued her artistic passions at the San Francisco Institute of Art, studying theatre makeup, sculpture, modeling, and painting.

Rebecca and William went on to have two children, Jarred and Lexis, of whom she was immensely proud. Both pursued higher education, earning advanced degrees and working from prestigious institutions including the University of California, Stanford University, and Vanderbilt University. Rebecca’s pride in her children was immeasurable, and she took every opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments.

After her marriage to William ended in 2006, Rebecca relocated to Humboldt County, where she rebuilt her life as a devoted single mother. She worked tirelessly in various roles while searching for her purpose. That search led her to College of the Redwoods, where she discovered a calling in social work. She continued her studies at Humboldt State University, ultimately earning her master’s degree in social work and becoming a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Rebecca dedicated over 15 years to the mental health and wellness of her community, serving through Humboldt County Mental Health Services and most recently with Redwood Rural Health Center. Her compassion, advocacy, and commitment left an indelible mark. Ever a student of life, she continued to grow and recently became certified in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through the Psychedelic Institute, expanding her ability to heal and support others.

Diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer at the age of 50, Rebecca endured multiple surgeries and several rounds of chemotherapy. She triumphed against the disease and enjoyed seven cancer-free years. Tragically, the cancer returned a year ago and did not respond to further treatment. Despite the immense challenges, she met every moment with courage, tenacity, and grace. She fought fiercely until the end.

Rebecca will be remembered as an inspirational force—bold, courageous, outspoken, and full of light. Her strength touched all who knew her.

She is survived by her mother Carol Lewis; her father Tommy Throne; her brothers Toby and Bobby Throne; her children Jarred and Lexis Gillette; her grandchildren Ohana and DaraDeGrazia; and her beloved pets, Poppy and Simba. She also leaves behind many nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and dear friends who became family.

Special gratitude is extended to those who supported and cared for Rebecca during her final days, especially Chris Breedlove, whose devotion, prayers, and blessings brought her great comfort.

May Rebecca rest in peace, free from pain, and may her memory be a blessing to all who knew and loved her.

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We’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Humboldt. After years of patiently waiting for northbound air service, we’re finally getting direct flights to Seattle!

Starting in April, Alaska Airlines will offer non-stop, daily air service between the Humboldt County Airport and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. No word yet on how much the flights will cost, but here’s what the County of Humboldt is willing to share with us at this point:

Alaska Airlines has announced new nonstop air service between the California-Redwood Coast Humboldt County Airport (ACV) and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) beginning April 8, 2026.

This will be the Redwood Coast’s only nonstop flight to the Pacific Northwest, which will connect to 79 cities in a single stop, including Alaska’s new service to Asia and Europe. Flights will be on sale today at Alaskaair.com.

“We’re delighted to begin flying our guests between our hometown airport in Seattle and the Arcata-Eureka area. Those heading to Northern California can enjoy the region’s stunning scenery, including the towering redwoods, while flyers making their way to Seattle can take advantage of convenient connections across our network, including to Alaska and Hawai‘i,” said Kirsten Amrine, vice president of revenue management and network planning at Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines last served the community in 2011, with flights to Portland. These new flights represent ACV’s first-ever nonstops to the Seattle area.

“Humboldt County is thrilled to welcome Alaska Airlines back to the Redwood Coast,” said Second District Supervisor and Board Chair Michelle Bushnell. “Residents and travelers have been asking for a Seattle flight for a long time, and this new service is the result of years of work with Alaska to prove the viability of our market. The Aviation Department and many agencies across the county really pulled together to partner with Alaska and make this possible. I want to thank everyone who worked so hard to bring this service to our community.”

Starting today, travelers can book a flight on Alaska to SEA. Starting April 8, 2026, flights will run seven days a week, with a mid-morning departure from SEA to ACV and a mid-afternoon departure from ACV to SEA, catering to the needs of all travelers.

All flights will use Embraer 175 aircraft with 76 seats and no middle seats, giving every passenger a window or aisle. Wi-Fi and entertainment will be available, and all first-class seats will include power outlets.

For more information or to book a flight, visit Alaskaair.com. 
For more information on the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport and the Humboldt County Department of Aviation, please visit FlyACV.com.

Humboldt County’s aviation staff has been trying to secure northbound air service for years. In 2022, Congressman Jared Huffman, the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission (RREDC) and Volaire Aviation helped the Department of Aviation bag a $850,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to help airport officials attract northbound flights, either to Portland or Seattle. 

A little over three years later, which apparently isn’t unusual for airline deals, we’ve got a direct line to Seattle! Let’s celebrate with a little Robyn Hitchcock, shall we?

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PREVIOUSLY

• The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Appears to be Violating Its Own Policy and State Law on Automated License Plate Readers

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This morning, shortly after the Outpost published its investigation into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) program, Undersheriff Justin Braud came by our office and delivered printed-out responses to the questions we had submitted back on Sept. 26.

He also informed us that the Sheriff’s Office has an updated version of its ALPR policy that differs from the one we referenced in yesterday’s story. The current version of the policy, which starts at page 498 of the Policies and Procedures manual accessible through this link, includes many changes and lists information about Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that supplies the Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR equipment and stores and maintains the associated data in its “secure cloud.”

While the updated version of the policy is still not conspicuously posted on the Sheriff’s Office’s website, as required by California Civil Code, Braud informed us that the agency has established an online transparency portal, as Sheriff William Honsal vowed to do last year when the ALPR program was launched. 

That portal lists all 293 of the California law enforcement agencies that have been granted access to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data, but it does not list information about the hundreds of thousands of monthly searches through which those agencies gain access to the data. Instead, it lists information about searches conducted by the Sheriff’s Office own staff. One hundred eighty-eight of them were conducted in the last 30 days, and the agency’s ALPR cameras detected 117,586 vehicles over that period, according to the website.

A recent CalMatters investigation found that roughly a dozen police and sheriff’s departments throughout Southern California shared such data with federal immigration agencies, a violation of Senate Bill 34. Similarly, Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing the City of El Cajon for illegally sharing license plate data with out-of-state law enforcement. We asked Braud what, if anything, the Sheriff’s Office is doing to prevent outside agencies from accessing its ALPR data for illegitimate purposes or from sharing it with federal agencies. 

He said that while the Sheriff’s Office does not inspect and approve each individual search request before granting access to its ALPR databases, it does conduct after-the-fact audits. He also said Flock Safety is working to cut down on misuse of its technology.

“I talked to the sheriff about it today,” Braud said. “Flock realizes this is a big deal, and they’re introducing new protocols that will intercept activity like that and not allow it to go through.”

As for the behavior of outside law enforcement agencies, Braud said, “All agencies are required to follow policy and law. We’re trusting that they’re adhering to that. They promise to do so when requesting permission, and if we find out they’re not, we would discontinue allowing them to access our system.”

The City of El Cajon, which is being sued by the Attorney General for repeatedly violating state law by sharing ALPR data with law enforcement agencies in more than two dozen states, is still listed on the Sheriff’s Office’s transparency portal as one of the external organizations with access to its data. So are the Los Angeles Police Department and sheriff’s departments in San Diego and Orange counties despite a recent CalMatters investigation found that found those agencies searched license plate readings on behalf of ICE.

Braud said the updated ALPR policy has been in place since March, which means it was in effect prior to the searches documented in the data logs reviewed by the Outpost, which covered searches conducted in June and July. Unlike the earlier version of the policy, the updated one says access to the Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data is given to “any HCSO employees who have reason to access the ALPR system as part of their job duties.”

“This includes, but is not limited to, all ranks of Deputy Sheriff, Dispatchers, Evidence Technicians, and Crime Analysts,” the policy says.

While the new version of the Sheriff’s Office’s policy does negate some of the apparent internal rule violations we reported yesterday — for example, there’s no longer a requirement that requests to access the agency’s ALPR data be submitted in writing — the agency still appears to have violated elements of both its own policy and state law, according to the data logs we obtained through a California Public Records Act request. 

The responses we received from Braud today don’t explicitly acknowledge any violations of law or policy, but they do refer generally to potential “discipline of employees” while adding that information about such measures can’t be shared publicly.

As reported yesterday, the logs we inspected show that the Sheriff’s Office allowed nearly 300 outside law enforcement agencies to conduct hundreds of thousands of searches per month of its ALPR data, often without first obtaining legally required information such as the reason for the search and the identity of the officer conducting it.

The logs also show that outside law enforcement agencies were granted access to the Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data even when the “Reason” entered to justify the search referred to federal agencies, including the Homeland Security Investigations Unit of the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and simply “fed.”

In answer to a question about this practice, the printout we received this morning says:

Note that Humboldt County only shares with other agencies in California. There has historically been some disagreement among some agencies about their ability to work with federal agencies on task forces related to specific investigations. Flock Safety has made a number of product enhancements to address the concerns raised by this question. For example, within the state of California, if an agency conducts a license plate reader search and inputs a search reason that indicates it is related to an impermissible purpose in the state (e.g. immigration), those searches are blocked. This fall, the mandatory free text search reason field will become a mandatory offense type drop down list to address concerns about vague search reasons and bolster the system’s ability to block impermissible searches.

The Sheriff’s Office’s updated ALPR policy still says each request to access its ALPR data must include the name of the agency, the name of the person requesting the information and the intended purpose of obtaining it. Many of the searches documented in the logs we reviewed did not include that data, or the information provided was so minimal and/or vague as to appear meaningless. 

The updated policy also says each request to access the Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data must be “reviewed by the Admins Services Bureau Manager or the authorized designee and approved before the request is fulfilled.”

When asked how Sheriff’s Office staff can ensure that searches are being conducted for legitimate law enforcement purposes, the agency said it audits the search data after the fact, as you’ll read below, where we’ve reproduced more of the questions we submitted to Lt. Conan Moore along with the responses provided by the Sheriff’s Office.

We note, however, that several of the answers appear to not exactly address the questions asked. They seem to be referencing policies in place for when the Sheriff’s Office’s own employees query the ALPR system, not when officers from outside agencies access the agency’s data, which was the intent of many of our questions. Braud said he’s researching further and will get back to us for clarification. 

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Outpost: How many Flock cameras does HCSO currently have in operation?

Sheriff’s Office: Currently we have eight full time cameras and two flex cameras that can be moved around the county for special events.

HCSO’s Policy 437 makes numerous references to an Administrative Services Bureau Commander. Is that you?

The Administrative Services Bureau Commander is Undersheriff Braud, however, control of the FLOCK system has been delegated to Lieutenant Moore. 

I understand that the access logs provided to me were collected from Flock. Does the HCSO maintain its own records of access?

No, we contract through FLOCK for our ALPR system. Our Records are stored in their system.

The office policy says, “ALPR system audits should be conducted on a monthly basis.” Is that being done? What is the process?

Yes. The administrator in charge reviews our use of the FLOCK system monthly to ensure we are following law, policy, and procedure. That information is then shared with the Sheriff.

HCSO’s policy says each written request must be “reviewed by the Operations Services Bureau Commander or the authorized designee and approved before the request is fulfilled.” Do officers seeking access to Humboldt County’s ALPR data submit access requests for each and every search? Or does the HCSO grant California law enforcement agencies default open access to its Flock camera ALPR data?

HCSO receives requests from California Law enforcement agencies detailing what they would like [us] to share. This can be [done via the] “search” feature, where an agency can put in a license plate and if it was seen on one of our cameras the agency will be notified of the date and time the license plate was hit on the camera,  [or via the] “Hotlist” feature, where a vehicle reported stolen in Humboldt County is placed into the system.

If the license plate hits one of the requested agencies cameras they are notified of the date and time of the hit and that the vehicle is reported to have been stolen out of Humboldt County.

This is basically the same thing as the DMV system that every California Law Enforcement Agency has access to. The only difference is the only thing provided is a license plate, date, time, and location of license plate. To see specific information for the license plate the officer would have to check the DMV database which is recorded by the agency on what officer made the inquiry.

HCSO’s policy also says approved requests must be retained on file. Is the office doing so? Where are these files?

Yes, HCSO retains files of who we share with. This is kept in our Flock system.

The logs released to me thus far document more than 360,000 searches from more than 280 different agencies. [Those numbers increased as more documents were released.] If these requests were not reviewed and approved individually, how can you be sure that the searches were conducted for a legitimate law enforcement purpose rather than, say, to stalk an ex or harass a neighbor, as has happened in other jurisdictions?

HCSO conducts monthly auditing. Flock has continued to enhance audit tools and will be introducing proactive audit alert tools to alert agencies about anomalous activity.

Many of these entries do not have a specific reason listed but rather just a number — apparently criminal codes and case numbers, for the most part. But many [others] entries are unclear or simply left blank. How does your office determine the legitimacy of these searches?

All entries require a cfs [call for service] or case number. Any that don’t, have [been], or will be addressed with the employees to verify they were lawful and to enforce proper documentation. Discipline of employees, if/when warranted, can’t be shared publicly.

Some reasons have been redacted. Who did those redactions and why?

Under California public records law, information related to investigations may be excluded from release. Some agencies are redacting certain information from audits for this reason.

In other cases, the listed reason is quite general, such as “investigation”/”inv”/’invest,” “patrol,” “follow up” and “criminal justice.” Are those considered sufficient justification for access?

No. All entries require a cfs or case number. Any that don’t, have [been], or will be addressed with the employees to verify they were lawful and to enforce proper documentation. Discipline of employees, if/when warranted, can’t be shared publicly.

[Senate Bill] 34 says ALPR operators and end-users must develop a usage and privacy policy, which must be conspicuously posted on their website and must contain provisions designed to “protect ALPR information from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.” Has HCSO developed such a policy? If so, where is it posted?

Our policy should be posted, and he refers to it in this inquiry. [The “he” in that sentence apparently refers to this reporter.] We don’t have a separate policy regarding this policy.

HCSO Policy 437 says an ALPR administrator “shall be responsible for developing and maintaining guidelines and procedures” that include training requirements for authorized users, procedures for maintaining records and the name and title of the person overseeing ALPR operations. Has that been done? Where are those guidelines and procedures? (They should be “conspicuously posted on the office’s website,” according to this policy.)

All of that should be included in the policy. Do you have an older version? Updating policies occurs whenever we identify things that should be changed.

Many of HCSO’s own searches of ALPR data only list “investigation” or “suspect vehicle” as the reason. Some such entries have no accompanying case number. How do you know that these searches are tied to legitimate investigations?

Per HCSO policy 437.5(b) “However, there must be a sufficient investigative reason to conduct searches using the Flock Safety ALPR database, and that reason shall be documented in the system with each individual search. A case number or call for service (CFS) number is required to justify any search and shall be entered into the database.”

This was added to the policy several months ago as we noticed the “investigation” being used in the reason. With the case number or CFS number now being mandatory we will be able to confirm the reason for the inquiry. Again, all entries require a cfs or case number. Any that don’t, have [been], or will be addressed with the employees to verify they were lawful and to enforce proper documentation. Discipline of employees, if/when warranted, can’t be shared publicly.

How many crimes has the HCSO helped to solve thanks to these Flock cameras, and how?

The most recent case I know of was the homicide in the Glendale area. This is where a subject was shot and killed near the mad river. Deputies were able to get a description of the vehicle from witnesses. ALPR data was checked with that data and the suspect vehicle was seen leaving the area on the Blue Lake camera. Detectives were able to see the license plate; conduct follow up and the two suspects were arrested and booked into the HCC on murder. There have numerous other cases from missing persons vehicles being located to stolen vehicles being located because of the ALPR hits.

Last year, Sheriff Honsal said there would be a transparency portal for this ALPR program. Is there one? Where can I find it?

https://transparency.flocksafety.com/humboldt-county-ca-so 

As we mentioned last week, the Eureka-based skywatchers at the National Weather Service are signaling that the North Coast has a wet few days to look forward to. 

Starting Friday night and continuing through Sunday before petering out Monday, heavy precipitation is expected from Del Norte all the way down to Lake County with northern Humboldt expected to receive the storm’s brunt. The NWS posted a series of handy graphics to help you wrap your head around this thing:

NWS warns that “moderate to heavy rain will cause minor rises in creeks and streams, increased risk for rock and mudslides, and ponding on roadways.” So act right.

PREVIOUSLY:

• The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Appears to be Violating Its Own Policy and State Law on Automated License Plate Readers 

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Drivers in Los Angeles County have a powerful new privacy advocate after the Board of Supervisors pushed to restrict how their license plates are scanned by law enforcement.

The board recently voted to ask the Sheriff’s Department to more stringently regulate its use of the license plate data it collects through high-tech camera systems mounted on patrol cars and above roads. The measure it approved cited reporting from CalMatters that roughly a dozen police and sheriff’s departments throughout Southern California shared such data with federal immigration agencies.

The September motion requests that the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which operates independently from the supervisors, conduct yearly privacy training for deputies with access to license plate cameras and that the data not be used for non-criminal immigration enforcement.

It also requests the department delete plate sightings after 60 days unless they are flagged on criminal lists.

The Sheriff’s Department “welcomes” the motion and plans to review its practices and policies, the department told CalMatters. Per the motion, deputies are to report their license plate reader policy changes to the county by January. It told the Los Angeles Times last month that it operates 931 automated readers.

Depending on the result of that report and whether Sheriff Robert Luna decides to follow the board’s direction, said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who was lead author of the legislation, supervisors may take additional action to further regulate license plate readers in L.A.

The sheriff’s department told CalMatters it has no “current” arrangements for sharing license plate data with federal agencies. A California law enacted in 2015 prohibits the sharing of plate data with out-of-state and federal entities, and requires agencies that use plate readers to have a usage and privacy policy for them.

Many of the regulations in the L.A. County motion mirror those in a piece of statewide legislation vetoed by the governor earlier this month. That measure, Senate Bill 274, sought to prevent misuse of license plate data by limiting the lists of license plates law enforcement can track and by requiring police to detail a specific case or task force use when they use data from the cameras.

Solis said she put forward her motion in part because she wanted to publicly support SB 274 before Newsom decided on it.

CalMatters did not find that the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department shared data with ICE or the Border Patrol, but some Los Angeles area agencies did. The Los Angeles Police Department declined to comment when asked about such sharing.

License plate readers “remain a powerful investigative tool for recovering stolen vehicles, identifying violent crime suspects, and finding missing persons,” supervisors wrote in a September letter urging the governor to sign SB 274 into law. But “its public support depends on confidence that the sensitive location data it generates will never be repurposed for impermissible civil immigration enforcement.”

Board Chairperson Kathryn Barger cast a lone “nay” vote against endorsing SB 274. Barger disapproved of the proposed limit on the time frame over which law enforcement agencies could retain plate data.

Barger told CalMatters she believes this time limit would have endangered the public and made it harder for police to solve crimes, and that she supports Newsom’s veto. Newsom also opposed a 60-day data retention limit in the state bill, citing similar reasons.

But that’s the same license plate data retention period followed by the California Highway Patrol, and last year the governor’s office called a 28-day retention period a balance between public safety and privacy.

“When so many of our neighbors live in fear, sharing sensitive data only increases risks.”
— Eunisses Hernández, Los Angeles City Councilmember

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors has made immigration issues a priority, fast-tracking both the license plate motion and another requesting a report on progress using new state laws to protect schools from ICE raids.

The county motion does not apply to police departments such as LAPD since they are governed by local city councils. The Los Angeles City Council has acquired about $400,000 worth of license plate reader technology for LAPD since June.

Two Los Angeles city councilmembers, Eunisses Hernández and Hugo Soto-Martínez, consistently vote against the police department’s use of license plate readers, citing concerns over their use in immigration enforcement.

“At a time when so many of our neighbors live in fear, sharing sensitive data only increases risks and erodes confidence,” Hernández wrote in a statement to CalMatters.

Law enforcement agencies using automated license plate readers throughout the state continue to break the law.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the El Cajon Police Department earlier this month for violating state law. Reporting by KPBS earlier this month found that this includes federal agencies like ICE. The attorney general’s office has also sent letters to 18 agencies statewide since 2024 for potential violations of state law.

Following CalMatters reporting in June, subsequent reporting by Palo Alto Online and the San Francisco Standard found that police departments in Atherton, Menlo Park, and San Francisco violated state law. In the wake of that reporting, last month Jennifer Wall, a city council member in the Bay Area city of Woodside, called on the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to be more transparent about how deputies conclude that searches included in quarterly reports to the council comply with local policy.

When municipalities use automated license plate reader technology, “we need to make sure it’s used appropriately and mechanisms [are] in place to ensure it’s used appropriately,” she told CalMatters. “There has to be accountability for how they’re used.”

UPDATE, 3:18 p.m.:

After this story was published, Undersheriff Justin Braud provided the Outpost with answers to the questions we submitted last month. Read more here.

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Original post:

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The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office appears to be routinely violating its own policy and state law with its handling of information collected by automated license plate readers (ALPR). Data logs obtained by the Outpost show that the Sheriff’s Office is allowing outside law enforcement agencies to conduct hundreds of thousands of searches per month of its ALPR data, often without first obtaining legally required information such as the reason for the search and the identity of the officer conducting it.

While many of the searches list criminal codes or case numbers as the reason for accessing Humboldt County’s ALPR data, thousands of them include no justification at all, a violation of both California law and the Sheriff’s Office’s own policy. Tens of thousands of other searches were allowed despite listed reasons that contained only one- or two-digit numbers or generic terms such as “crime,” “case” or “investigation.”

Such vague justifications not only violate state law governing the handling of ALPR data, but civil liberties advocates say they fail to provide the level of accountability and transparency needed to justify the use of such surveillance technology.

The data logs reviewed by the Outpost also reveal that hundreds of searches were conducted by state and local law enforcement agencies that referenced federal agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to justify accessing the information. State law expressly prohibits the sharing of such data with federal agencies, though investigations have found that this law is routinely broken.

The Outpost sent a long list of questions about these practices to the Sheriff’s Office nearly a month ago. On Sept. 30, Lt. Conan Moore, who oversees the office’s ALPR program, said via email that he was working on answering “all the questions” and would respond as soon as possible. He assured us several times since then that he was working on responses. As recently as Oct. 14, Lt. Moore said he’d try to answer the questions by the end of the day, but to date he has yet to do so. An email sent to Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal Wednesday morning has also not received a response.

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Last year, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office formally launched its automated license plate reader program by announcing and explaining it at a Board of Supervisors meeting. This technology, which has grown increasingly popular among law enforcement agencies despite privacy concerns on both the left and the right, employs high-resolution cameras to record and analyze the license plates of passing vehicles along with the make, model and color of each car and other identifying features, such as scratches and dents. 

Advocates of the technology say it gives law enforcement a powerful tool to help locate criminals, stolen vehicles and missing people. Critics, meanwhile, argue that it enables a form of mass surveillance capable of tracking an individual’s movements close enough to reveal where they live, work and visit. Such technology is prone to misuse, these critics argue, particularly given the potential to target immigrant communities by sharing data with federal agencies such as ICE.

At the Board of Supervisors meeting on April 9, 2024, Sheriff Honsal and Undersheriff Justin Braud said their office would use its ALPR cameras — supplied by Atlanta-based police technology company Flock Safety — to enhance public safety while respecting the privacy rights of local residents.

However, the Outpost found that the office’s official ALPR policy contains numerous provisions that the agency is not complying with. Among those is a requirement that each request to access the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data be submitted in writing, then reviewed and approved by the administrator (or an authorized designee) before being granted. [CORRECTION: The current policy does not require requests to be submitted in writing. See our more recent post for more info.]

We asked Lt. Moore whether that’s being done, but it hardly seems possible given the volume of searches the Sheriff’s Office is allowing. Data logs obtained through a California Public Records Act request show that, in one 30-day period, from early June through early July, the Sheriff’s Office allowed more than 781,000 searches of its ALPR data, granting access to 285 different state and local agencies. That amounts to more than a thousand searches per hour, 24 hours a day.

Mass Surveillance 

Dave Maass, investigations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has spent more than a decade investigating the civil liberties implications of ALPR and its use by law enforcement. 

“The thing to know about license plate readers is that they’re a mass surveillance technology, and by that I mean they collect information on everyone, regardless of whether you have any nexus to a crime at the time that it’s collected,” he said in a phone interview. “That means an officer can sit down at a computer and type in your license plate and then see everywhere you’ve been seen on camera.”

Data held by Flock is typically deleted after 30 days, but there are few limits to how often the information can be accessed, and there’s lax oversight of data sharing, according to Maass.

“Given the current political climate, there are a lot of concerns about how this might be weaponized against certain targeted or vulnerable communities,” he said. “That might be ICE using it to go after migrants; it might be malicious law enforcement agencies going after journalists; it could be trying to find people who are seeking abortions or trying to get their children gender-affirming care.”

Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director for the nonprofit group Oakland Privacy, said such concerns have been exacerbated by recent political and legal developments, including a Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for ICE to use racial profiling as grounds for immigration stops.

“A lot of these hypothetical concerns become 100 percent real right away if you are, in fact, hunting people — and the federal government is, in fact, hunting people,” Rosenberg said. “This [ALPR technology] is a really good tool to find out where they are.”

Back in February, the Eureka City Council unanimously rejected a proposal from the city’s police department to install a network of ALPR cameras after many residents said they worry the information could be obtained by federal immigration officials and used to target undocumented community members.

A decade-old California law known as Senate Bill 34 bars state law enforcement agencies from sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities. Likewise, the 2017 California Values Act restricts state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources for federal immigration enforcement.

“But what we’re seeing is that individual police departments are, from time to time, basically breaking that safety net,” Rosenberg said.

A 2023 investigation from civil liberties groups found that 71 California law enforcement agencies had broken SB 34. Attorney General Rob Bonta subsequently issued an advisory providing specific guidance on how state and local agencies should follow the law. He reminded them not to share ALPR data with the feds and reiterated the requirement to document the reason for their inquiries every time they access the information, as noted in a recent CalMatters story.

Still, many agencies continue to violate the law. A recent investigation by tech journalism website 404 found that ICE was accessing Flock’s nationwide network of cameras by having local law enforcement agencies search the databases on its behalf, thereby “giving federal law enforcement side-door access to a tool that it currently does not have a formal contract for,” the story found.

A subsequent CalMatters investigation in June found that Southern California police had violated state law more than 100 times in a month by sharing ALPR data with federal agents. San Francisco and Oakland also appear to have repeatedly broken state law by sharing ALPR data with federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and ICE, according to a recent investigation by the SF Standard.

Earlier this month, Attorney General Bonta sued the City of El Cajon, accusing its police department of repeatedly violating SB 34 by sharing ALPR data with law enforcement agencies in more than two dozen states. 

Despite such examples misuse, Governor Gavin Newsom this month vetoed a bill that would have strengthened regulations on ALPR use, saying it would have impeded criminal investigations.

Numerous law enforcement agencies alleged to be violating state law, including the El Cajon Police Department, the Oakland Police Department, the Menlo Park Police Department, the Sacramento Police Department and several SoCal agencies, have routinely been granted access to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s ALPR data.

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While there’s no indication from the logs we reviewed that the Sheriff’s Office is sharing its ALPR data directly with federal agencies, it appears to be allowing outside agencies to do so routinely. 

The logs, which are maintained by Flock, document every time the data captured by our local sheriff’s offices cameras is accessed, whether by outside agencies or local officers and deputies. Each entry is supposed to identify the requesting officer and agency, the reason for the request, the timeframe being searched, the date and time of submission and the number of Flock networks included in the search, but, as detailed below, they often don’t.

But when reasons do get listed, they are often the names or acronyms of federal agencies. For example, we found a dozen entries listing HSI, which refers to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, according to Maass. Another 93 searches listed the FBI. More than 70 others listed USMS (the U.S. Marshals Service) and nine simply listed “fed.”

Insufficient Documentation

In the logs obtained by the Outpost, more than 2,200 searches left the “Reason” field blank. Tens of thousands of others entries listed reasons so vague (“investigation,” “suspect,” “case,” “law enforcement,” “criminal justice,” etc.) that they could apply to virtually any investigation. (Meanwhile, in the documents turned over to us, more than 400 entries in the “Reason” field had been partially or completely redacted. It’s not clear who made the redactions or why.)

Rosenberg said such entries violate both the spirit and the letter of SB 34.

“Although that state law is not, shall we say, super specific, it’s fairly clear that what they meant [by “Reason”] was an identifiable purpose that could be articulated and identified in the interests of basically any kind of audit or review,” she told the Outpost. “The primary problem with writing something like ‘criminal justice,’ which, as far as I know, is an academic field of study, [is that] it doesn’t tell you anything. … Nobody knows [what it means] except the individual who just put that entry into the journal. And if enough time goes by and they’ve done a number of these, they won’t even remember!”

Even the entries that list case numbers or codes likely don’t comply with state law, she said. 

“It makes it very difficult for anyone who is auditing, reviewing [or] supervising unless there’s a standardized way for doing this,” she said. “Do these codes mean exactly the same thing at each department? … The penal code does, but some of these references don’t match up to the Penal Code. They’re just numbers and letters or somebody’s initials or whatever.”

Other entries in the logs turned over by the county don’t identify the officer who conducted the search of its data. Thousands list only a single letter in the “Name” field. At least three dozen searches conducted by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center put the number 4 in the “Name” field. Seven searches by the Fullerton Police Department listed just a period.

Without the ability to trace who accessed this data and why, it’s impossible to know whether the searches were done for legitimate law enforcement purposes, Rosenberg said. Sometimes they’re not.

For example, a 29-year-old fitness influencer in Riverside County is suing the county sheriff’s department, alleging that after meeting one of its deputies at a festival in 2023, the officer used his law-enforcement access to stalk her, running database searches, tracking her movements and showing up at her house, making her feel unsafe.

In a similar case, the author of SB 34, former State Sen. Jerry Hill and his wife hired a private investigator to pull information from a Sacramento ALPR database regarding Hill’s spouse. The investigator obtained a photo of her car outside an area gym, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

“My wife is an ordinary citizen, and the database was used to track her down,” he told the paper. “Anybody could abuse the power too easily, and that’s the genesis behind SB 34. It’s too easy for bad actors to help themselves to data.”

But even that state law is not preventing abuses, according to civil liberties groups including the ACLU. 

Rosenberg said the growing ubiquity of ALPR technology only increases privacy concerns.

“When there were only 10 percent or 20 percent of police departments using Flock equipment, it was more anecdotal, right?” she said. “But now that we are at, like, 85 percent saturation and growing — and police departments that have these cameras are getting more and more and more of them — it’s becoming a much more invasive and comprehensive surveillance technology.”

Other Policy Violations

The only ALPR policy available on the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s website that the Outpost could located is this one, which is buried deep on page 498 of the office’s policies and procedures manual. It appears to be a boilerplate document based on a template employed by many other law enforcement agencies in the state, and it contains multiple provisions that the Sheriff’s Office does not appear to be following.

For example, it quotes a California Civil Code section that says all ALPR users must “develop a usage and privacy policy, which must be conspicuously posted on their website, and must contain provisions designed to “protect ALPR information from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.”

If the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has developed such a policy, it is not posted conspicuously on its website. Attorney General Bonta reiterated in his 2023 guidance to law enforcement agencies:

Inclusion of such a policy in a manual, without noting on the main web page of their agency the existence of and/or link to such a policy, may not satisfy SB 34’s requirement that such policies be “posted conspicuously on that Internet Web site.”

Furthermore, both the Sheriff’s Office’s policy and state law say that the administrator of each agency’s ALPR system shall develop guidelines and procedures that include, among other things:

• the name and title of the person overseeing the ALPR program,
• training requirements for all authorized users, and
• a description of how the ALPR system will be monitored “to ensure the security of the information and compliance with applicable privacy laws.”

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office does not appear to have done so.

The policy also says ALPR system audits should be conducted on a monthly basis. We could find no evidence that the Sheriff’s Office is conducting such audits. 

When Sheriff Honsal and Undersheriff Braud announced its ALPR program to the Board of Supervisors last year, Braud said, “This type of technology is going to do nothing but improve our ability to serve the constituents of this county, and also do it in a way that respects their privacy and their rights to not be infringed upon.”

Honsal told the board that his office would soon implement a “transparency portal” for its ALPR program so that the community could track how the technology is being used. 

“The transparency portal that we’re going to have is going to provide that information to the public to say, ‘This is how we’ve utilized the technology, these are the successes of the technology,’ and hopefully we can see that grow, and that would be the ultimate goal,” Honsal said.

More than a year and a half later, no such portal has been made available to the public.

Among the questions we submitted to Lt. Moore was whether a transparency portal exists and why the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office appears to not be complying with several elements of state law and its own policy. We will update readers when and if anyone from the office responds.