A San Jose police officer was dismissed from the force after conducting unauthorized surveillance on a municipal license plate reader system to help his cousin track a woman, according to department officials and local news reports. The termination, which took place in April, followed an internal discovery that the officer had abused the city's network of automated license plate readers to monitor the woman's vehicle movements.
According to reporting originally published by the Mercury News, the officer accessed the department's Flock Safety database on behalf of his cousin. The unidentified woman targeted by the searches had previously accused the cousin of domestic violence, raising significant concerns about the potential for police surveillance technology to be weaponized for personal harassment.
Internal investigators discovered that the officer used his personal mobile phone to query the Flock automated license plate reader system and gather sensitive location data on the woman's car. After extracting the tracking records, the officer shared the vehicle's whereabouts directly with his cousin, who subsequently used the information to track down and locate her.
Following the revelation of the misconduct, the San Jose Police Department immediately placed the officer on administrative leave. Department leadership simultaneously initiated an internal criminal investigation into the officer's improper data access before ultimately deciding to terminate his employment.
San Jose Police Chief Paul Joseph addressed the officer's actions in an interview with NBC Bay Area, describing the unauthorized use of the surveillance tool as a severe "betrayal of the public's trust." Joseph noted that the department moved swiftly to remove the officer from duty once the security breach was confirmed.
In the aftermath of the firing, Chief Joseph enacted new departmental rules designed to prevent similar abuses of the surveillance network. Under a directive reported by the Mercury News, all department officers and deputies are now strictly barred from accessing automated license plate reader data through personal electronic devices.
The termination highlights long-standing concerns regarding law enforcement's adoption of automated license plate readers, commonly known as ALPR technology. Mounted on stationary poles and street fixtures, these automated camera systems continuously photograph passing vehicles, logging license plate numbers, timestamps, and locations into centralized, searchable databases.
The San Jose Police Department's deployment of automated license plate readers has repeatedly drawn intense criticism from privacy advocates and legal organizations. The agency's surveillance practices previously prompted major legal action challenging the extent of police access to real-time and historical travel data.
In 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against Chief Joseph, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, and the City of San Jose. The legal action challenged the municipality's warrantless ALPR surveillance program, arguing that police officers should be legally required to secure a search warrant before querying the license plate database.
The civil liberties groups argued in their complaint that continuous automated tracking infringes upon the constitutional rights of regular drivers who are not suspected of any crime. According to the lawsuit, an individual who regularly travels through monitored corridors can have their vehicle's location recorded multiple times throughout a single day.
Attorneys for the ACLU and EFF emphasized that the cumulative data provides an invasive and intimate window into a resident's private life. The recorded travel patterns can reveal sensitive personal details, including daily commutes between home and work, school drop-off routines for children, visits to houses of worship, and attendance at political demonstrations.
The lawsuit also highlighted risks concerning healthcare privacy, noting that ALPR logs can record visits to medical clinics and doctor's offices. The plaintiffs warned that the surveillance network has the capacity to track whether an individual crossed state borders to obtain healthcare services in California.
The scale of automated surveillance across San Jose has grown significantly in recent years. Data published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation indicated that nearly 500 automated license plate readers were actively deployed along roadways throughout the city as of 2025.
Although San Jose Police Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment from SFGATE regarding the April termination, the incident has brought renewed focus to the balance between technological policing tools and civil liberties. The misuse of Flock databases to facilitate domestic tracking underscores ongoing calls from privacy advocates for stricter safeguards, transparency, and independent oversight of municipal surveillance systems.
(0)