San Diego PD’s Controversial Smart Streetlight Project – What’s Changed?

In December of 2023, the San Diego Police Department launched a new smart streetlight initiative, which would see 500 Ubicquia Ubihubs deployed, each equipped with AXIS cameras and a Flock Safety license plate reader. The goal? To bring information together and enhance investigation efficiency as well as safety. But this wasn’t the first time the city had launched this type of project. A similar one was shut down in 2020 due to privacy concerns. To ease those concerns, the city put together an ordinance set to regulate these types of projects and safeguard them from failure.

With the new scheme up and running, in this video, we interview Kristopher McAndrew, Watch Commander Lieutenant at SDPD, and Mike Grigsby, Director of Business Development at Ubicquia, to discuss the new initiative, ROIs and results as well as the privacy concerns that arose from the previous project and what changed to make this program possible.