The San Diego City Council's Public Safety Committee voted in support Wednesday to advance the police department's proposal to use smart streetlights to investigate crimes.
The proposal was passed by a vote of 3-1. Councilmembers Marni von Wilpert, Raul Campillo and Jen Campbell voted in favor of the use of smart streetlights, while Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe voted against it.
Smart streetlights, along with Automated License Plate Recognition, will move forward to the full city council. If approved, the San Diego Police Department can continue with a contract for the technology, according to Lt. Adam T. Sharki with the department.
The City of San Diego's surveillance technology was the focus of Wednesday's special public safety committee meeting.
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This comes after city leaders voted to push the deadline back three years for reviewing hundreds of surveillance technologies used by various city departments.
Drones are among the more than 300 surveillance tools San Diego police use to keep watch over the city.
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Some of those tools used by law enforcement could have been turned off — temporarily — because a review of how they're used and affect communities would not have been completed by the September deadline.
Advocates pushing for more transparency on how those tools are used scored a major win Tuesday.
The San Diego City Council voted unanimously to extend the deadline to September 2026 to review existing technologies.
“The community needs to demand that if we're going to use this technology, it needs to be used properly, and there should be strong controls over it because we're a big city and there's a lot of people at risk here," explained Seth Hall of TRUST SD Coalition, a watchdog group that helped draw up the surveillance ordinance and extension.
After backlash over how the city and police were using the smart streetlight camera system, the city passed a new surveillance ordinance last summer.
It's geared at creating more transparency in how the city, police and other department's use surveillance technology.
It also requires a review of new technologies the departments want to use in the future, including a police push for a new network of smart streetlight cameras and license plate readers.
Hall said if the police want to use these tools, TRUST wants to see strong policies on paper that are enforceable.
“If you go out and look at people who make license plate tracking systems out there, many of them are banned for use in the United States because they're made by vendors who are from other countries who have different understandings of political norms than we do," Hall said.
NBC 7 reached out to the San Diego Police Department for comment about the extension after hours. We're still waiting to hear back.
NBC 7's Priya Sridhar contributed to this report.
