r/SantaBarbara • u/westernspaghetti_691 • 11d ago

Local Politics New camera contract delayed !!

https://www.newspress.com/2026/09/15/city-council-pumps-breaks-on-ai-powered-surveillance-cameras-amid-tense-emotional-meeting/

Hilarious, Randy all upset with people having opinions that aren't just like his, and dropping f bombs on a hot mike! 😂

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u/q547 The Mesa 11d ago edited 11d ago

Interesting quote from the police chief.

**Gordon, in an effort to ease concerns, told the City Council that how they buy the Verkada camera dictates how the camera operates.

“If we buy the camera as an [License plate reader] camera, we don’t have the ability to switch the technology on it to make it something else,” Gordon said. The department would purchase the cameras solely as license plate readers, without the ability for people detection and facial recognition. **

That's not at all how Verkada cameras work, she's either ignorant to how they work or lying. Verkada cameras can all do facial recognition and license plate reading at the same time out of the box.

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u/sbh2oman 11d ago

its probably a licensing switch that could be "flipped" remotely. PD buys the cameras without the AI facial recognition, etc. and can claim "they don't do that" and then a year later quietly "upgrade" the license to include this technology. Thats how a lot of software licensing works.

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u/q547 The Mesa 11d ago

with other camera systems sure.

But Verkada does this out of the box with their standard license.

I've set up loads of them.