Costa Mesa Keeps Flock

Last night, the City of Costa Mesa, near Los Angeles in Orange County, California, discussed whether it should keep its contract with Flock, after Costa Mesa police officer Robert Jay Josett was caught making unauthorized queries in CLETS^[1] and Flock.

Josett’s queries had targeted his wife, his mistress, and his mistress’s other romantic interests. Josett was placed on leave in December 2023. His Flock access was not revoked while on leave, and he was still running improper queries in June 2024 — locating his victim’s new boyfriend’s home address — while sending thousands of harassing messages (sometimes 100+ per day).

On June 28, 2024, Josett was served a termination notice and an emergency protective order at the station. After leaving the station, he drove by his mistress’ home, violating the order, leading to his arrest. In April 2026, he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors and received 3 years of probation, no jail time. His police certification is still under review.

Costa Mesa residents showed up in force. For five hours, they told city council about how their trust was violated by this officer, the city, and Flock. More than a third of Costa Mesa residents are Hispanic/Latino, and many voiced concerns about cameras being disproportionately placed in their neighborhoods.

But one of the evening’s most powerful comments came from a 59-year Costa Mesa resident:

I was born in a fascist dictatorship — Germany. I don’t want to die in one. Cancel Flock.

Other residents talked about the future of the community — including a mother who told Costa Mesa city council she keeps her seven-year-old inside, out of fear of cameras and federal immigration enforcement.

In front of a uniformed officer who had been posted beside the podium all evening — Axon camera blinking in “pre-recording” mode (just in case) — a representative of Pride at the Pier, an Orange County LGBTQ+ political advocacy group, further emphasized the harm being done to our young people by cities like Costa Mesa:

I want to talk about my nephew, who is currently reading his way through 1984 in school. And he came up to me, when I was visiting him and his mom, and said: “I don’t understand why this was such a big deal. Because we’re all watched all the time, right?”

Four hours in, city council decided they had had enough democracy for one night. In a 5-2 vote (Chavez and Gameros opposed), they cut public comment time from three minutes down to two. A few Gen Z speakers simply hit the 1.5x speed button, but others, like the ACLU’s representative, had to hastily condense or truncate their comments, or had their microphone cut mid-sentence.

The circumstances of how Josett’s systems abuse was uncovered aren’t clear. During the hearing, Lt. Barnes told the council, “During that internal investigation by Costa Mesa PD investigators, they found that this former officer had misused Flock, was conducting searches that were not law enforcement related.” They discovered he had abused systems during an internal investigation — not the other way around: they didn’t see suspicious searches that triggered an investigation. The phrasing suggests they stumbled across this while investigating something else.

Former Costa Mesa police chief Ron Lawrence — who first contracted with Flock in 2022, seven months after being made chief — delivered the marathon hearing’s only pro-Flock comment. He said Josett was convicted “because we, Costa Mesa PD, insisted that they file charges.” The implication: without the PD’s pressure, charges were no sure thing. All of Josett’s abuse occurred during Lawrence’s tenure. Lawrence retired in June 2025.

Councilmember Arlis Reynolds also specifically called out Lawrence’s procurement and decision-making process:

I realized tonight that our original Flock contract actually wasn’t made in public. We signed a $98,000 contract without transparency, without public disclosure. $98,000 is $2,000 short of what the city is allowed to do without public transparency … it strikes me that the locations chosen, or the number of cameras chosen, was not based on analysis of crime data or need…

Reynolds also pressed the PD on who has access. Rather, she asked the fairly straightforward question: how many people outside the department can access Costa Mesa’s data? The three Flock administrators present (out of nine total) could not answer.

Knowing who has access wasn’t a prerequisite for assuring Reynolds and the council that the PD has now implemented “rigid internal checks and balances to ensure that employees who no longer work for us or are on administrative leave have their access revoked.” They have been doing audits for the past 12 months, and they’re now using Flock’s new Audit Assistance tool.

None of the police or councilmembers present discussed which existing policies failed or why. Josett’s documented post-leave queries ran through Flock — a system with no external access-revocation requirement at all. Whether his CLETS access, which connects directly to the FBI’s NCIC and at minimum should have been disabled under existing policy,^[2] was ever cut, nobody asked. An assurance that a policy that was already in place now exists does not inspire confidence.

During his presentation, Lt. Barnes also talked about the retention limit: “Our data collection retention, it’s for a full year, it’s for 365 days. That’s something we believe strongly in.” A CMPD captain backed him up by saying retail theft is often not discovered for “up to 180 days plus”. When the council suggested cutting retention to 21 days, Chief Joyce LaPointe did not share that strong belief in the 365-day retention window:

I understand that 365 days is a long time and it’s not necessary… However, I do think 21 days is a little bit short for our investigative bureau… I think just if we were to increase it to 45 days, I think that would allow us to have the information that we need. I know that’s double what you guys are asking for… I know 365 days is quite an extensive amount of time to retain.

The council ultimately voted to keep the contract and change the retention period to 45 days.

All of this followed a now-familiar pattern: pay for the system, install the system, adopt the policy, vote on the system. In that order — an exact inversion of democratic process.

In Costa Mesa, as elsewhere, the contract was quietly snuck in right under a procurement limit. Former Chief Lawrence, Flock, or both, decided that they did not want to ask the community whether they wanted to be surveilled and have their daily life photographed, stored, and shared for a full year. They didn’t create or enforce an effective policy to prevent abuse, and they didn’t give the council an opportunity to go over the contract.

The community who showed up last night, staying past midnight, even after council cut their speaking time, made it clear exactly why these systems try to avoid the light of day. They also made it clear why we need to keep dragging them out from the shadows.

The contract will be renegotiated. Costa Mesa will be watching.