Vallejo Needs a Community-Owned Surveillance Accountability Board

The Vallejo Police Department is one of the most deadly and abusive police forces in the nation. For years they have been secretly purchasing invasive surveillance technologies from profit-hungry tech companies, tightening their grip on the community without regard for people’s rights or safety.

Surveillance is the trigger that sets our most violent and unjust systems in motion. It focuses the crosshairs so these systems can identify their next target. Vallejo Police's unchecked surveillance power growth threatens to increase the number of people killed and imprisoned.

Sign the petition to shift power away from the police and towards the community. We need an advisory board that equips activists with new tools to expose, organize against, and explore ways to eliminate police surveillance. Join us in calling for a strong board that is staffed by the community, not the police. When we fight against surveillance, we free funds that can be used to lift people out of poverty and provide community healing.

Sign the petition and help build the power we need to and bring surveillance in Vallejo under control of the community.

Here is the petition message we are submitting to Mayor McConnel and the Vallejo City Council:

It’s no secret that after years of suffering violence and abuse at the hands of the Vallejo Police Department, the community does not trust those charged to keep them safe. Of utmost concern is how the ever-increasing strength of surveillance technology will be used by a department that is in desperate need of change.

A community-owned surveillance advisory board is one part of the change that must come to the VPD. A strong board should be exclusively staffed with members of the community who have the power to propose alternatives to surveillance that improve the City’s health and safety.

Right now, the balance of power overwhelmingly favors the police and the people of Vallejo have had enough. The recent lawsuit around the police department’s illegal acquisition of Cell Site Simulator technology is an example of the danger when the community is not centered in these conversations. It’s also a testament to how it important it is to us, your constituents, that we be heard on these issues.

There can be no trust if the Vallejo Police continues to operate in the shadows, purchasing the latest surveillance tech peddled by companies who harvest our information without regard for people’s rights or well-being. As Big Tech develops surveillance tech that enables law enforcement to reach deeper and deeper into our lives, more people are being imprisoned, killed, and taken from their families. And like all our most unjust systems, the harms fall hardest on Black and Brown people.

The people of Vallejo deserve to decide the role that technology will play in their lives. If we don’t act, surveillance technology will perpetuate our city’s worst racial and economic disparities. Resources will continue to be siphoned into police budgets and punitive approaches that don't prevent crime instead of being used to proactively connect the community with resources and opportunities.

In order for the surveillance advisory board to work, it must be made by and for the people. Police officers cannot be part of the board’s composition or else it will lose its legitimacy and effectiveness. It’s an obvious conflict of interest for police to be tasked with reviewing their own proposals, and we’ve seen in the past that this makeup doesn’t work. But it also goes against the will of the community who has been so active and vocal in speaking up for the need to be in control of this board.

We hope that you all hear the calls of your constituents and act as the leaders that the people of Vallejo deserve.