Flock Cameras in San Diego, CA: Locations, Map & Count

San Diego Police Department is the dominant operator, with 690 of the 1,357 mapped cameras — 51% of the metro, ahead of Chula Vista Police Department on 142. That lead share ranks 22nd of the 251 metros BanditKin tracks, so San Diego is a concentrated network.

Retail plate readers are part of the picture around San Diego: The Home Depot (14), Lowe's (9), Simon Property Group (1). Of the cameras with a recorded operator type, 9 are private.

For the thing that actually matters when routing, San Diego is poorly documented: 743 of its 1,357 mapped cameras — 55% — record which way they face, ranking 242nd of 251 on bearing coverage.

Public records cover 13 agencies around San Diego in the EFF Atlas of Surveillance against 18 operators on the map — the difference between a records project and a mapping project, not a contradiction.

The network is regional rather than municipal. Beyond San Diego Police Department, the operator table runs through Chula Vista Police Department, Poway Police Department, El Cajon Police Department, Santee Police Department and National City Police Department, with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department at 39 — none of which individually dominates the metro.

Read from the live map on 13 October 2026. Since 5 October 2026 the 10-mile count moved from 619 to 621 (+2) and the metro-box count moved from 1,305 to 1,357 (+52). The underlying records are OpenStreetMap entries plus community submissions — nobody who operates a camera is obliged to declare it, so these are the documented minimum rather than the full picture. The metro is a box roughly 50 miles across centred on San Diego.

San Diego ranks 33rd of the 251 metro areas BanditKin tracks by mapped cameras, between Overland Park, KS and Saint Paul, MN, and 138th by operator count.

Its cameras-per-operator figure of 75.4 ranks 2nd, its lead operator's 51% share ranks 22nd, and its 55% bearing coverage ranks 242nd — all of 251.

Ranked against the 251 metro areas BanditKin tracks, every one read from the live map on 13 October 2026. Metro areas are drawn as a box around the city centre, so neighbouring metros can share cameras and these counts must never be added together.

These are all 18 operators. Where OpenStreetMap names an operator we use that name; otherwise the camera is attributed to whichever jurisdiction it stands in (470 cameras here), which is a sound inference rather than a confirmed fact. 193 cameras record no operator of any kind.

Manufacturer is a free-text field, so spellings and legal names have been consolidated here. 84 of 1,357 mapped cameras name no manufacturer at all, which makes the actual distribution broader than shown. 2 further manufacturers fall below the eight shown. These count cameras on the map, not purchase orders.

Most readers sit on a dedicated pole a few metres up, angled at one lane of traffic, with a solar panel above. Where the mount is recorded around San Diego:

One camera covers one approach, so its heading is what decides which journeys end up recorded. Around San Diego the mapped bearings distribute like this:

Bearings come from public map data and describe an approximate capture zone, never an exact field of view. 614 mapped cameras have no recorded bearing.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Atlas of Surveillance. Summaries are the Atlas's own wording, trimmed to a complete sentence.

This page is part of the California camera hub, which counts every camera inside the state line rather than by metro box. New to this? Read what ALPR cameras capture, how long it is kept, and who can search it. Not in San Diego? Search the full map by any city.

ALPR camera maps for nearby and related cities: Los Angeles, CA · San Francisco, CA · Riverside, CA · San Jose, CA · Sacramento, CA · Fresno, CA · Las Vegas, NV · Phoenix, AZ · Tucson, AZ · Provo, UT · Albuquerque, NM.