2. PUBLIC COMMENTS
At this time, members of the public may address the Council on matters not listed on the agenda within the subject matter jurisdiction of the City Council, provided that NO action may be taken on off-agenda items unless authorized by law. Public Comments are limited to three (3) minutes per speaker unless a different time limit is announced.
Hi, My name is Marci Carey and I have lived in the city of Orange for over 30 years.
I’m writing today because I have concerns about the use of Flock Cameras in our city.
I want to make it clear that I’m not talking about the automated traffic enforcement cameras that catch speeding cars, people who run red lights, or don’t pay their tolls on the toll roads. I am totally ok with those cameras because those cameras are triggered by someone actually breaking the law.
What I am talking about are the FLOCK automatic license plate reader cameras that are tracking, logging and sharing our citizens vehicle data including the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even vehicle damage. Flock cameras register every vehicle that comes into the camera view and sends it through an AI algorithm to catalog. We all know how many mistakes AI can make! After AI massages our personal data, it is uploaded to a nationwide database. At that point, any law enforcement agency with a FLOCK contract is able to search the data with very little oversight as to how they use it.
There have been several horror stories as to how Flock data has been misused. In Dunwoody Georgia, Flock employees were accessing cameras in a children's gymnastics room, a playground, and a pool. ICE and Customs and Border Protection have used Flock data to go after immigrants without warrants. In Kansas, police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department. In Colorado a police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on Flock data. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because the cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen. In Joplin, Missouri, a police officer was accused of stalking after he ran one woman's license plate nearly 400 times using the Flock system. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin an officer used the Flock system more than 170 times over a two‑month period to track a woman he was dating and her former partner, and the list goes on…
As you know, the LAPD has recently decided not to renew their contract with FLOCK due to privacy concerns. LAPD is the third largest municipal police department in the United States. I think if a law enforcement agency of that size decides to discontinue using FLOCK, that should be a SCREAMING RED FLAG flag for the City of Orange to, at the very least, re-evaluate the decision to use FLOCK in our City.
You have a contract with OC Animal Care. Citizens have repeatedly informed you that, under its director Monica Schmidt, OC Animal Care habitually engages in gross misrepresentations. Yet your city has continued to blindly rely on the word of OCAC management.
Because others care about honesty and credibility, I received information suggesting that the OC Animal Care director has, for many years, maintained Texas residency, despite her management role with OC Animal Care.
I submitted a public records request to Harris County, Texas, and obtained the 2022 Homestead Exemption application of the Director of OC Animal Care. You can find it in Box here:
https://app.box.com/s/nizqbsv42ililju0mqz853dcx3ry3mak
Redactions on this form were done by Harris County. The form specifies that the homestead exemption applies to the “residence owned and occupied as owner’s principal residence”. On the form, Monica Schmidt (who was at the time Assistant Director of OC Animal Care) states: “**I had a residential exemption in 2017-2020. Suddenly it disappeared in 2021. Please reinstate and back date.“ The application includes a Texas driver’s license.
This document is not private. The homestead exemption application was provided to me by a Texas government agency and may be obtained by anyone via an email inquiry to the Texas agency, at openrecords@hcad.org. The competent government authority, then, has already made a determination of what to redact and what to make public. These are Texas documents that Texas freely discloses on request.
When I checked again this month, the property record continued to show “Exemption Type: Residential Homestead”. Look at this PDF from the Harris County website, just below the middle of the page:
You can look this up yourselves, by going to the Harris County website
https://hcad.org/property-search/property-search
choosing Property Search and entering the street address from the homestead application, 503 OLDCASTLE.
That’s not all. I received additional information. I submitted it by email to the county on Agenda Item 26 of the June 23 meeting of the Board of Supervisors. The clerk of the Board opted not to include it in the minutes, but it’s in the county records. The clerk of the Board and I communicated by email regarding my submission on June 26. You can make a Public Records request to the county. Ask for all information submitted by the public on Agenda Item 26 of the June 23 meeting of the Board, and all emails sent or received by the clerk of the board on June 26 in relation to the above Agenda item.
There is a broader context of false claims made by OC Animal Care and OC Community Resources leadership on shelter-related matters, which has received public attention before – and has been brought to your attention before.
Your residents expect you to uphold high standards. Will you?
On behalf of the reisdents of West Kelly Avenue, in the City of Orange:
We have been struggling with an individual - not a resident of our street - who has left an old, rusted vehicle parked on our street for well over a year. It is clearly visible in the Google Maps Street View image taken May 2025 in front of 403 West Kelly Ave, and it remains parked in the exact same spot at this very moment. This vehicle is being used for the storage of personal items, and has not left our street a single time in well over a year.
Over the last year, we have placed countless calls to the City of Orange Abandoned Vehicle hotline, which sometimes result in a parking enforcement officer coming, marking the vehicle, and leaving a 72 hour notice pursuant to Section 10.34.070 of the Orange Municipal Code. However, the vehicle owner comes every few days, and upon seeing a notice, moves the vehicle either 20 feet forward or backwards, or across the street. While this is still in violation of Section 10.34.070 because the vehicle has not been moved "at least one mile as evidenced by the car's odometer, or the vehicle must be removed from the street," the Orange Police Department has advised us that they are powerless to enforce this regulation if the vehicle moves AT ALL, as they have no way to identify whether it has moved "at least one mile." We would deeply appreciate any additional help or enforcement that the City could offer us to remedy this problem.
We are at a loss for what to do next, and this nuisance vehicle that does not drive anywhere takes away street parking spots on a cul-de-sac street with very limited parking. We often have residents that are forced to carry groceries and small children from nearby streets due to a lack of parking on our street, exarcerbated by this vehicle using our street as its personal parking garage.
The vehicle is a rusted-out white Chevrolet Caprice, CA license plate 083 ETW. It is now parked in front of 403 West Kelly Ave.
Hi, My name is Marci Carey and I have lived in the city of Orange for over 30 years.
I’m writing today because I have concerns about the use of Flock Cameras in our city.
I want to make it clear that I’m not talking about the automated traffic enforcement cameras that catch speeding cars, people who run red lights, or don’t pay their tolls on the toll roads. I am totally ok with those cameras because those cameras are triggered by someone actually breaking the law.
What I am talking about are the FLOCK automatic license plate reader cameras that are tracking, logging and sharing our citizens vehicle data including the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even vehicle damage. Flock cameras register every vehicle that comes into the camera view and sends it through an AI algorithm to catalog. We all know how many mistakes AI can make! After AI massages our personal data, it is uploaded to a nationwide database. At that point, any law enforcement agency with a FLOCK contract is able to search the data with very little oversight as to how they use it.
There have been several horror stories as to how Flock data has been misused. In Dunwoody Georgia, Flock employees were accessing cameras in a children's gymnastics room, a playground, and a pool. ICE and Customs and Border Protection have used Flock data to go after immigrants without warrants. In Kansas, police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department. In Colorado a police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on Flock data. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because the cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen. In Joplin, Missouri, a police officer was accused of stalking after he ran one woman's license plate nearly 400 times using the Flock system. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin an officer used the Flock system more than 170 times over a two‑month period to track a woman he was dating and her former partner, and the list goes on…
As you know, the LAPD has recently decided not to renew their contract with FLOCK due to privacy concerns. LAPD is the third largest municipal police department in the United States. I think if a law enforcement agency of that size decides to discontinue using FLOCK, that should be a SCREAMING RED FLAG flag for the City of Orange to, at the very least, re-evaluate the decision to use FLOCK in our City.
Thank you,
Marci Carey
Dear members of the City Council:
You have a contract with OC Animal Care. Citizens have repeatedly informed you that, under its director Monica Schmidt, OC Animal Care habitually engages in gross misrepresentations. Yet your city has continued to blindly rely on the word of OCAC management.
Because others care about honesty and credibility, I received information suggesting that the OC Animal Care director has, for many years, maintained Texas residency, despite her management role with OC Animal Care.
I submitted a public records request to Harris County, Texas, and obtained the 2022 Homestead Exemption application of the Director of OC Animal Care. You can find it in Box here:
https://app.box.com/s/nizqbsv42ililju0mqz853dcx3ry3mak
Redactions on this form were done by Harris County. The form specifies that the homestead exemption applies to the “residence owned and occupied as owner’s principal residence”. On the form, Monica Schmidt (who was at the time Assistant Director of OC Animal Care) states: “**I had a residential exemption in 2017-2020. Suddenly it disappeared in 2021. Please reinstate and back date.“ The application includes a Texas driver’s license.
This document is not private. The homestead exemption application was provided to me by a Texas government agency and may be obtained by anyone via an email inquiry to the Texas agency, at openrecords@hcad.org. The competent government authority, then, has already made a determination of what to redact and what to make public. These are Texas documents that Texas freely discloses on request.
When I checked again this month, the property record continued to show “Exemption Type: Residential Homestead”. Look at this PDF from the Harris County website, just below the middle of the page:
You can look this up yourselves, by going to the Harris County website
https://hcad.org/property-search/property-search
choosing Property Search and entering the street address from the homestead application, 503 OLDCASTLE.
That’s not all. I received additional information. I submitted it by email to the county on Agenda Item 26 of the June 23 meeting of the Board of Supervisors. The clerk of the Board opted not to include it in the minutes, but it’s in the county records. The clerk of the Board and I communicated by email regarding my submission on June 26. You can make a Public Records request to the county. Ask for all information submitted by the public on Agenda Item 26 of the June 23 meeting of the Board, and all emails sent or received by the clerk of the board on June 26 in relation to the above Agenda item.
There is a broader context of false claims made by OC Animal Care and OC Community Resources leadership on shelter-related matters, which has received public attention before – and has been brought to your attention before.
Your residents expect you to uphold high standards. Will you?
On behalf of the reisdents of West Kelly Avenue, in the City of Orange:
We have been struggling with an individual - not a resident of our street - who has left an old, rusted vehicle parked on our street for well over a year. It is clearly visible in the Google Maps Street View image taken May 2025 in front of 403 West Kelly Ave, and it remains parked in the exact same spot at this very moment. This vehicle is being used for the storage of personal items, and has not left our street a single time in well over a year.
Over the last year, we have placed countless calls to the City of Orange Abandoned Vehicle hotline, which sometimes result in a parking enforcement officer coming, marking the vehicle, and leaving a 72 hour notice pursuant to Section 10.34.070 of the Orange Municipal Code. However, the vehicle owner comes every few days, and upon seeing a notice, moves the vehicle either 20 feet forward or backwards, or across the street. While this is still in violation of Section 10.34.070 because the vehicle has not been moved "at least one mile as evidenced by the car's odometer, or the vehicle must be removed from the street," the Orange Police Department has advised us that they are powerless to enforce this regulation if the vehicle moves AT ALL, as they have no way to identify whether it has moved "at least one mile." We would deeply appreciate any additional help or enforcement that the City could offer us to remedy this problem.
We are at a loss for what to do next, and this nuisance vehicle that does not drive anywhere takes away street parking spots on a cul-de-sac street with very limited parking. We often have residents that are forced to carry groceries and small children from nearby streets due to a lack of parking on our street, exarcerbated by this vehicle using our street as its personal parking garage.
The vehicle is a rusted-out white Chevrolet Caprice, CA license plate 083 ETW. It is now parked in front of 403 West Kelly Ave.
Thank you.