60 new flock safety cameras possibly coming to Salinas

SALINAS, Calif. (KION) - The Salinas City Council is planning to discuss adding 60 new flock safety cameras during Tuesday's City Council meeting.

Salinas Police was granted $3 million as part of the Justice Assistance Grant.

This comes at a time when the Salinas Police Department is experiencing a staffing shortage of 20 people.

"We need to do whatever we can to keep our city safe and to keep it a place where where people feel comfortable living," said Tom Jones who lives in Salinas.

The City is planning to add 60 new cameras on top of the 40 they already have and the other 11 already in the works, bringing the total to 111 cameras across the city.

"It'll help us so that whenever we need to do investigative work, we can we can tap into those resources," said Orlando Osornio, Salinas City Councilmember.

The city will be leasing the cameras for five years, and will cost over $900,000.

"We do a lot of commercial theft nowadays. You hear about it, whether it's Macy's in Monterey or these other places that have these retail theft. So these cameras are really assist in locating people and finding our suspects," said Commander Brian Johnson for Salinas Police.

The city also wants people with privacy concerns to know that these flock cameras do not have facial recognition.

"The city attorney's office and the city attorney have been looking at policy to put into play that would make it so that we have guidelines of what we do with that technology, how we're using the technology," said Orsonio.

With this money coming from this grant, Salinas Police is planning to add two employees to help with investigation, two new cars, and 12 surveillance cameras.