The California Attorney General filed a lawsuit against the city of El Cajon Friday over its controversial license plate surveillance program.
The lawsuit comes nearly two months after KPBS reported the El Cajon Police Department’s open defiance of a 2023 legal bulletin from Attorney General Rob Bonta. The bulletin advised law enforcement that SB 34 specifically prohibits sharing data from license plate reader systems with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies.
El Cajon’s system captures the license plates of hundreds of thousands of vehicles each month and uploads that information to a searchable database. In other states, police departments have used those systems to search for immigrants who are in the country illegally.
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The El Cajon Police Department appears to be the only law enforcement agency in San Diego County that shares its data with out-of-state agencies.
“When information about Californians leaves the state, we no longer have any say over how it is used or shared,” Bonta said in a statement. “That’s why the California Legislature passed SB 34 — to ensure information about Californians remains here in California. Yet El Cajon has knowingly and repeatedly refused to comply with state law, jeopardizing the privacy and safety of individuals in its community.”
The Attorney General first questioned El Cajon’s compliance with SB 34 last August. That’s when Bonta’s office sent the El Cajon Police Department a letter asking the police chief to contact his office and “confirm whether your agency is sharing (automated license plate reader) information with out-of-state or federal agencies.”
A year later, El Cajon Police Chief Jeremiah Larson told KPBS that his department was still sharing data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies. He defended that decision by citing multiple examples of how out-of-state sharing helped solve local crimes, including a multistate retail theft ring.
Larson also told KPBS that he had explained his position to Bonta’s office and, because there had been no follow up enforcement, he believed the El Cajon Police Department was compliant.
“We do not believe we are in violation of state law and the Attorney General’s Office is aware of our stance on this topic,” he wrote in an email to KPBS in August. “They must not feel strongly we are in violation of SB 34, or I'm sure some sort of further action would have been taken by now.”
That further action came on Friday, in the form of a lawsuit asking a California Superior Court judge to declare Larson’s current practice unlawful and order the department to stop sharing data outside the state.
“Today, we’re asking a court to put this issue to bed and definitively affirm that California law prohibits the sharing of license plate data with federal and out-of-state agencies,” Bonta said in a statement.
Ongoing tensions
This isn’t the first time Bonta has clashed with El Cajon.
Soon after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells pledged his support of Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
In January, Wells introduced a resolution declaring the city’s intent to help the federal government enforce immigration laws. That resolution sparked fierce public backlash from El Cajon’s immigrant community and failed to secure enough votes to pass two times. But it ultimately passed on a 3-2 vote in February.
However, Larson has told KPBS that “nothing’s changed for us as far as immigration enforcement.” Officers are still bound by state sanctuary laws that prohibit them from asking about someone's immigration status or using local resources for enforcing federal immigration law.
During a January visit to San Diego, Bonta dismissed the local mayor’s resolution.
“The state of California makes the law for the state of California and it must be followed by cities,” Bonta said at the time. “So whatever they do, it might be symbolic for them, performative for them, but it’s not the law. It’s not enforceable.”
Regardless, immigrant rights advocates said the resolution sent a chilling message — that El Cajon stands with Trump instead of its immigrant population.
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