Santa Monica parking officers will soon trade their chalk sticks for cameras after the City Council voted 7-0 to equip the city’s parking enforcement vehicles with automated license plate readers.
The council on Oct. 13 authorized the city manager to negotiate and sign a five-year agreement with ComSonics Inc. worth up to $700,000 for equipment, installation, software, maintenance and data storage. The cameras will be mounted on nearly all of the three-wheeled vehicles used by the Police Department’s Traffic Services Unit.
“This is probably the largest improvement in technology that we’ve seen for parking enforcement over the last 20 years,” said Alex Mendoza, a public services administrator with the unit.
The city’s 30 municipal lots hold 6,212 paid spaces. Drivers there now buy a receipt and leave it on the dashboard, and officers must walk the lots to check each one. Under the new system, drivers would register their license plate when they pay. Cameras would then alert an officer driving through the lot to any vehicle that has not paid.
Mendoza said the faster checks would “very likely heavily increase payment compliance” and could reduce the use of paper receipts.
The cameras will also replace tire chalking in time-limit zones. The system photographs a vehicle’s plate and the valve stem on its rear wheel, then tells an officer on a later pass whether the car has moved. Mendoza said a lack of time-limit enforcement is probably one of the most common complaints he hears from residents.
“It’s really about efficiency,” he said.
A staff report from Police Chief Darrick Jacob said the time saved would let officers focus on hazards in support of the city’s Vision Zero goals. Those hazards include vehicles blocking bike lanes and crosswalks, double parking and overstaying in loading zones.
The city also hopes to make residential parking permits virtual, ending the thousands of hang tags and stickers it now issues. Nearly 70% of the city’s residential districts are permit-regulated. Mendoza said that change is not part of the initial rollout.
Much of Mendoza’s presentation addressed privacy. He said he wanted “to get ahead of” concerns in the community.
“The city of Santa Monica will own the data,” he said. He added that ComSonics will only provide cloud storage and “will not have access to the data.”
Under existing Police Department policy, plate scans not tied to a citation will be purged after 30 days unless they are preserved for law enforcement purposes. Parking officers will see only real-time alerts in the field. They cannot search for plates, browse past records or write citations after leaving a scene.
“They have to make the citation in that moment,” Mendoza said.
He said even he, as unit manager, would not have access to the stored data. Turning to data sharing with federal agencies, including ICE, he said, “That’s not going to occur.” Only other local law enforcement agencies in California could request the data, and each request would require department review and approval, he said.
Councilmember Natalya Zernitskaya sought assurances about how the system would be used, asking Mendoza to confirm that it “will solely be used for parking enforcement.”
Mendoza agreed. He said the system would give the department another source of data, but that its “purpose is for parking enforcement.”
The staff report also lists “additional investigative tools and continuous data” for the Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center among the system’s benefits. The presentation to the council said any future investigative access would require separate authorization. Department Policy 429 governs use of the system. Mendoza said the policy is posted on the department’s website.
Zernitskaya said the presentation “answered all” of her questions before the council voted.
The city chose ComSonics without competitive bidding. Its procurement policy allows it to use contracts that other government agencies have competitively bid. Seal Beach requested bids in October 2024 and, after bids from three distributors, established its contract with ComSonics in February 2025. That contract’s initial term runs through February 2030.
ComSonics is a certified partner of Genetec, a company founded in Montreal in 1997. Genetec makes the camera system and the video management platform the Police Department already uses. Staff said the new system will integrate with Trellint, the city’s existing citation management vendor.
The agreement calls for $600,000 in the 2026-27 fiscal year and $100,000 in later years. The later funding is subject to council budget approval. The council also found the project exempt from state environmental review.