Data update: El Cerrito CA PD (Mar 2026)

Records from the El Cerrito CA PD were added, covering April 2023 through March 1, 2026. El Cerrito is a city of roughly 25,000 residents in Contra Costa County, California, on the east shore of San Francisco Bay, adjacent to Berkeley and Richmond. Records were obtained via MuckRock FOIA request.

#Organization audit

• Type: Organization audit
• Timespan: Apr 1, 2023 – Mar 1, 2026 (~35 months)
• Records: 27,071

El Cerrito PD’s own searches are dominated by vehicle-description queries: 82.5% of records are search type (description-based), versus 17.1% lookup (plate-based). This ratio is unusual — at most agencies in this dataset, plate lookups outnumber description searches by a wide margin. The remaining records are a small mix of freeform, multiGeo, and visual types.

#Network audit

• Type: Network audit
• Timespan: Apr 1, 2023 – Mar 1, 2026 (~35 months)
• Records: 10,384,763
• Organizations: 2,739

#The August 2023 shutdown

The most striking feature of this dataset is an abrupt and near-total network access shutdown in August 2023. In the week of August 6, volume was running at roughly 20,000 searches per week from over 1,000 agencies. The following week — August 13 — volume collapsed to 1,498 searches from just 7 organizations.

This was not a data gap. It was a deliberate policy change.

NBC Bay Area reported in August 2023 that El Cerrito PD had discovered federal agencies, including the FBI, had been accessing its Flock cameras without authorization since the cameras were installed in June 2023. In response, the department took direct control of its camera network and restricted access to non-federal California law enforcement agencies only. The cutoff appears in the data as an overnight drop from 1,247 orgs to 7.

The rebuilding process was slow. Weekly search volume stayed below 10,000 — less than half the pre-shutdown level — until December 2023, nearly five months later. Organization counts grew from 7 in mid-August to roughly 160 by the end of the year, and continued climbing steadily through 2024.

By mid-2024, volume was back in the 40,000–70,000 range with roughly 220–250 agencies. The recovery took approximately 16 months to reach levels comparable to the pre-shutdown period.

#Volume and organization count

After the recovery plateau stabilized in mid-2024, weekly volume grew from roughly 45,000–55,000 in spring 2024 to 95,000–122,000 through most of 2025, with organization counts settling around 255–290. The trajectory reflects the gradual expansion of the authorized agency list following the August 2023 shutdown.

Two significant volume events stand out:

• February 16, 2025: 153,825 searches — the highest single week before December 2025 — with no corresponding increase in agency count. The same spike appeared at Morton Grove IL PD that same week, suggesting a platform-wide event.
• December 7, 2025: Volume jumped sharply to 221,340 and remained elevated — above 200,000 per week — through January 2026. Agency count held steady at roughly 285–290, meaning the same pool of agencies was each running significantly more searches. Volume settled back to roughly 115,000–120,000 in February–March 2026.

#Search types

Of the 10,384,763 total network records:

El Cerrito’s network shows a notably high proportion of description-based (search) queries — 44% — compared with the typical agency where lookups account for 75–85% of network traffic.

#Top searchers

The top ten is dominated by California agencies, consistent with the post-August 2023 access restriction to non-federal California organizations. Riverside County SO leads with 848,394 searches — roughly 8% of all network traffic — despite being about 400 miles to the south.

NCRIC — the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a DHS-funded law enforcement fusion center serving the Bay Area — ranks sixth with 364,847 searches. Its presence in the top ten is notable given that fusion centers are not traditional law enforcement agencies.

#Immigration enforcement

7,677 network audit searches reference immigration or HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) in their reason field. Given the post-shutdown access restriction, this figure reflects California state and local agencies only.

California Highway Patrol leads, followed by NCRIC. San Francisco CA PD — in a self-declared sanctuary city — appears fourth with 575 immigration-flagged searches.