October 13, 2025
Table of contents
This report is based on data obtained via California Public Record Act requests 25-4039 and 25-6890 for data related to the ALPR system operated by the San Diego Police Department (hereafter SDPD). It covers the period January 1, 2024 through August 31, 2025 for the network audit, and June 1, 2024 through August 31, 2025 for the organization audit (with a few days missing at the end of May 2025 in both).
The SDPD decided to redact the case number and reason from the Organization and Network audits. Consequently, there is not enough data to reconstruct (even approximately) cases and each query is treated as a separate case.
The Transparency portal.
The requests did not ask to 1:1 sharing data. However, the transparency portal reports that on October 10, 2025, no external organization have access to the SDPD data.
Prior to January 18, 2024, SDPD shared its data with other California agencies, at which point all sharing was disabled.
The 25 agencies with the largest number of cases involving SDPD data (prior to January 18, 2024):
| agency | cases | queries |
|---|---|---|
| San Diego CA PD | 310,558 | 310,558 |
| Riverside County CA SO | 2,037 | 2,037 |
| Orange County SO CA | 1,225 | 1,225 |
| Los Angeles County CA SD | 531 | 531 |
| Alameda County CA SO | 307 | 307 |
| San Mateo County CA SO | 284 | 284 |
| Santa Barbara County CA SO | 270 | 270 |
| Kern County CA SO | 257 | 257 |
| Solano County CA SO | 255 | 255 |
| Murrieta CA PD | 220 | 220 |
| El Monte CA PD | 220 | 220 |
| San Bernardino County CA SO | 208 | 208 |
| Santa Clara CA PD | 168 | 168 |
| Contra Costa County CA SO | 168 | 168 |
| Fontana CA PD | 153 | 153 |
| Morgan Hill CA PD | 150 | 150 |
| San Joaquin County CA SO | 145 | 145 |
| Garden Grove CA PD | 144 | 144 |
| San Bruno CA PD | 122 | 122 |
| San Francisco CA PD | 121 | 121 |
| San Diego County CA SD | 117 | 117 |
| Los Angeles CA PD | 104 | 104 |
| Irvine CA PD | 104 | 104 |
| Corona CA PD | 102 | 102 |
| West Covina CA PD | 99 | 99 |
Most of the 261,441 queries made by SDPD involve, among others, cameras controlled by the SDPD. 1,394 queries involve only non-SDPD cameras.
| month | cases | queries |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-06 | 10,424 | 10,424 |
| 2024-07 | 14,273 | 14,273 |
| 2024-08 | 16,483 | 16,483 |
| 2024-10 | 17,699 | 17,699 |
| 2024-11 | 17,759 | 17,759 |
| 2024-12 | 21,207 | 21,207 |
| 2025-01 | 23,496 | 23,496 |
| 2025-02 | 23,880 | 23,880 |
| 2025-03 | 22,727 | 22,727 |
| 2025-04 | 17,395 | 17,395 |
| 2025-05 | 15,763 | 15,763 |
| 2025-06 | 18,984 | 18,984 |
| 2025-07 | 22,451 | 22,451 |
| 2025-08 | 18,900 | 18,900 |
The first column is the number of agencies that queried the data, which by construction must be 1 in an organization audit.
The second column is the maximum number of cameras involved in a query. While most agencies operate a relatively small number of cameras, they can search data captured by other agencies.
The next column, “% 0-100” is the percentage of queries that involved less than 100 cameras. Similarly, the following columns are the percentages for 100 to 1k cameras, 1k to 10k cameras and more than 10k cameras respectively.
| month | agencies | max cameras | % 0-100 | % 100-1k | % 1k-10k | % 10k+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-06 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2024-07 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2024-08 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2024-10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2024-11 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2024-12 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-01 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-02 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-03 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-04 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-05 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2025-06 | 1 | 1,484 | 4 | 63 | 32 | 0 |
| 2025-07 | 1 | 1,486 | 3 | 65 | 31 | 0 |
| 2025-08 | 1 | 1,500 | 3 | 55 | 41 | 0 |
SDPD redacted out the number of cameras for the period June 1 2024 to June 23 2025.
The Organization audit list 945 distinct user names.
In addition to the situation over the whole audited period, we also look at the period since January 18, 2024, when sharing completely stopped:
| since | cases | queries | agencies |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1, 2024 | 321,094 | 321,094 | 170 |
| January 18, 2024 | 310,062 | 310,062 | 1 |
Over the recent period, that amounts to one query every hour.
| month | cases | queries |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-01 | 13,705 | 13,705 |
| 2024-02 | 7,049 | 7,049 |
| 2024-03 | 7,291 | 7,291 |
| 2024-04 | 7,752 | 7,752 |
| 2024-05 | 8,405 | 8,405 |
| 2024-06 | 10,350 | 10,350 |
| 2024-07 | 14,174 | 14,174 |
| 2024-08 | 16,283 | 16,283 |
| 2024-09 | 16,866 | 16,866 |
| 2024-10 | 17,512 | 17,512 |
| 2024-11 | 17,675 | 17,675 |
| 2024-12 | 21,077 | 21,077 |
| 2025-01 | 23,328 | 23,328 |
| 2025-02 | 23,728 | 23,728 |
| 2025-03 | 22,600 | 22,600 |
| 2025-04 | 17,248 | 17,248 |
| 2025-05 | 15,742 | 15,742 |
| 2025-06 | 18,964 | 18,964 |
| 2025-07 | 22,445 | 22,445 |
| 2025-08 | 18,900 | 18,900 |
See this previous section for the meaning of the columns.
| month | agencies | max cameras | % 0-100 | % 100-1k | % 1k-10k | % 10k+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01 | 170 | 77,538 | 6 | 1 | 14 | 76 |
| 2024-02 | 1 | 7,930 | 20 | 19 | 59 | 0 |
| 2024-03 | 1 | 8,094 | 13 | 36 | 49 | 0 |
| 2024-04 | 1 | 9,850 | 10 | 27 | 62 | 0 |
| 2024-05 | 1 | 10,358 | 12 | 26 | 61 | 0 |
| 2024-06 | 1 | 8,700 | 10 | 31 | 58 | 0 |
| 2024-07 | 1 | 9,055 | 14 | 57 | 27 | 0 |
| 2024-08 | 1 | 9,188 | 43 | 55 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-09 | 1 | 10,521 | 43 | 55 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-10 | 1 | 11,166 | 43 | 56 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-11 | 1 | 11,414 | 39 | 59 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-12 | 1 | 11,796 | 48 | 22 | 23 | 6 |
| 2025-01 | 1 | 12,021 | 96 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-02 | 1 | 13,351 | 15 | 24 | 0 | 59 |
| 2025-03 | 1 | 13,701 | 5 | 28 | 1 | 64 |
| 2025-04 | 1 | 13,953 | 4 | 36 | 6 | 52 |
| 2025-05 | 1 | 1,465 | 3 | 63 | 32 | 0 |
| 2025-06 | 1 | 1,484 | 4 | 63 | 32 | 0 |
| 2025-07 | 1 | 1,486 | 3 | 65 | 31 | 0 |
| 2025-08 | 1 | 1,500 | 3 | 55 | 41 | 0 |
The transparency portal reports that on October 10, 2025, SDPD operates 500 cameras. While SDPD does not share its data, that does not prevent other agencies, in California or not, from sharing theirs.