los angeles county

Los Angeles County is moving to add more checks on how federal immigration officials can access data collected by the Sheriff’s Department that can be used to track where people drive on any given day.

County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a motion, introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, to beef up oversight of data gathered by law enforcement devices known as automated license plate readers.

It’s already illegal in California for local law enforcement agencies to share information gleaned from license plate readers with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant.

But after a summer of ramped-up deportations, the county supervisors decided to impose more transparency on who’s requesting license plate data from the Sheriff’s Department — and when the agency provides it.

The change will create a clear policy that the data cannot be “disclosed, transferred, or otherwise made available” to immigration officials except when “expressly required” by law or if they have a warrant.

“In a place like Los Angeles County, where residents depend on cars for nearly every aspect of daily life, people must feel safe traveling from place to place without fear that their movements are being tracked, stored, and shared in ways that violate their privacy,” the motion states.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole no vote. Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said the supervisor voted against the motion because it calls for the county to support a bill that would limit the amount of time law enforcement can keep most license plate data to 60 days. Law enforcement has opposed that bill, she said.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies use cameras to collect data on millions of vehicles, poring over the records for clues to help find stolen vehicles, crime suspects or missing persons.

A sheriff deputy’s patrol car is equipped with a license plate scanner. The plate numbers are instantaneously processed and if the registered vehicle owners are wanted for felonies or certain types of misdemeanors, if they are registered sex or arson offenders or if an Amber Alert has been issued, an alarm will sound to alert the officer.

(Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement it has roughly 366 fixed licensed plate readers from Motorola Vigilant and 476 from Flock Safety in contract cities and unincorporated areas. An additional 89 mobile systems from Motorola are mounted on vehicles that patrol these areas.

The department said its policy already prohibits it from sharing data from plate readers, known as ALPR, with any entity that “does not have a lawful purpose for receiving it.”

“LASD shares ALPR data with other law enforcement agencies only under an executed inter-agency agreement, which requires all parties to collect, access, use, and disclose the data in compliance with applicable law,” the statement read. “LASD has no current agreements for ALPR data sharing with any federal agency.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the agency has multiple resources at its “fingertips to ensure federal law is enforced in Los Angeles, and throughout the entire country.”

“These sanctuary politicians’ efforts to stop the Sheriff’s Department from cooperating with ICE are reckless and will not deter ICE from enforcing the law,” McLaughlin said.

Southern California law enforcement departments — including LAPD and authorities in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties — have been accused of routinely flouting state law by sharing license plate data with federal agents. A recent report from CalMatters cited records obtained by the anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy that showed more than 100 instances in a single month when local police queried databases for federal agencies.

“When you collect this data, it’s really hard to control,” said Catherine Crump, director of UC Berkeley’s Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “It’s no different from once you share your data with Meta or Google, they’re going to repackage your data and sell it to advertisers and you don’t have any idea which of the advertising companies have your data.”

Even with the board cracking down on data sharing, advocates say it’s nearly impossible to ensure federal agents are barred from license plate data in L.A. County.

Dave Maass, the director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said private companies that operate in California still collect and sell data that ICE can use.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has its own license plate readers around Southern California, he said.

Maass said even if a county bars its local sheriff’s department from sharing data with ICE, it’s difficult to guarantee the rule is followed by the rank-and-file. Immigration officers could informally pass on a plate number to a deputy with access to the system.

An L.A. County Sheriff’s Department patrol car equipped with a license plate reader can scan somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 plates a day.

(Los Angeles Times)

“Maybe they run the plate,” Maass says. “Unless there’s some public records release from the Los Angeles side of things, we just really don’t know who accessed the system.”

Under the motion passed Tuesday, the sheriff department would need to regularly report what agencies asked for license plate data to two county watchdogs groups — the Office of Inspector General and the Civilian Oversight Commission.

“Having somebody who is somewhat independent and whose role is more aggressively overseeing reviewing these searches is actually quite a big deal,” Maass said.

A cadre of civil rights groups brought a lawsuit late Wednesday challenging Riverside County’s use of cash bail to detain people as they await trial, citing squalid conditions inside the county’s jails where dozens of inmates have died in recent years.

The class-action suit is the latest to challenge the legality of cash bail systems in California after a 2021 state Supreme Court ruling found it is unconstitutional to jail defendants solely because of their inability to pay their way out from behind bars.

“Every day, Riverside County imprisons people based on nothing more than their inability to pay an arbitrary, pre-set amount of cash that Defendants demand for their release,” attorneys for the civil rights groups argue in the 80-page complaint. “These individuals are not detained because they are too dangerous to release: The government would release them right away if they could pay. They are detained simply because they are too poor to purchase their freedom.”

The suit was brought by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Civil Rights Corps, Public Justice in Oakland and several other law firms on behalf of two people incarcerated in Riverside County jails and two local faith leaders. It names as defendants the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Superior Court system and the county.

Lt. Deirdre Vickers, a sheriff’s department spokesperson, said she could not comment on pending litigation, as did a representative for the county court system. The county executive’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While the suit argues money bail is unconstitutional across California and seeks an injunction ending its use, attorneys said they are focusing on Riverside County following a spate of deaths in the jails in 2022. That year, Riverside County recorded 18 inmate fatalities, the highest number in a decade.

The following year, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, a Democrat, opened what remains an ongoing investigation into complaints about living conditions in the county jails and allegations that deputies use excessive force against detainees.

Inmate deaths have fallen since 2022. The county reported 13 jail fatalities in 2023 and six last year, according to Vickers.

Bianco — a law-and-order conservative who has joined a crowded field of Democrats to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2026 election — has previously dismissed the state’s investigation into his jails as politically motivated. Bianco maintains the jail deaths, many of which authorities attribute to drug overdoses and suicides, are a reflection of the inmates’ life choices rather than a sign of any problem with the jail system.

“Every single one of these inmate deaths was out of anyone’s control,” Bianco said after news of the state investigation broke. “The fact of the matter is that they just happened to be in our custody.”

The cash bail system has deep roots in the U.S. as a means of pressuring defendants to show up for scheduled court appearances. Attend trial, and the sizable cash payments are returned to you or your family; skip court, and you forfeit your deposit.

Critics argue it effectively creates a two-tiered justice system, allowing wealthy defendants to pay their way out while awaiting trial, and leaving low-income defendants stuck behind bars. Proponents of eliminating the bail system contend that decisions about whether to jail defendants ahead of trial should be based on the severity of their crimes and the risk they pose to public safety, and not hinge on their income status.

Brian Hardingham, a senior attorney with Public Justice, said people sometimes spend days in jail awaiting their first court appearance, only for a prosecutor to decline to file a case presented by local police. That stint behind bars can have an outsize effect on people’s lives, especially if they are low-income, Hardingham said.

“You meet people with 6-month-old kids in jail who, if they’re lucky, there is a partner or a parent or someone who can watch their kids,” he said, adding that even a brief stretch in a county jail can result in people losing their job, vehicle or even their residence.

Supporters of the cash bail system, including many law enforcement groups, say that doing away with it would leave too many defendants free to potentially flee and re-offend, leading to crime spikes.

The issue grew increasingly controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus spread with deadly consequences through the state’s jails and prisons. Los Angeles County instituted a zero-bail policy for most offenses in 2020, trying to reduce jail crowding at a time when the virus was spreading rapidly. That policy was rescinded in June 2022.

Despite concerns from police groups, a 2023 report to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors showed re-arrest and failure-to-appear rates remained relatively static among those freed pre-trial while the zero-bail policy was in place.

A similar lawsuit to the one filed against Riverside County prompted Los Angeles County court officials to revise their bail policies in 2023. Under the new system, the vast majority of defendants accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies are now cited and released, or freed under specified conditions after a judge reviews their case. Defendants accused of serious offenses, including murder, manslaughter, rape and most types of assault, still face a stiff cash bail schedule.

Fears that the new system would result in a crime spike have not been borne out. Total crime in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fell by about 2% in 2024, the first calendar year the reduced bail policy was in place, according to department data. The city of Los Angeles has seen significant decreases in the number of robberies, property crimes and aggravated assaults committed this year, as of mid-May, records show.

Given the 2021 state Supreme Court ruling and the changes in Los Angeles, Hardingham said he is hopeful other counties will shift their bail policies without having to engage in a court fight.

“We would hope that they would be willing to see the writing on the wall and make the changes that are necessary,” he said.