By Eddie Cota

Whittier's city council voted 3-2 on July 14 to reject a police data software contract. The vote may matter less than what it revealed: council members pushing for clearer disclosure on no-bid contracts, and closer scrutiny of what companies do with residents' data.

The software contract, with Peregrine Technologies, would have let police search across the department's existing records systems from one dashboard. The deal would have run five years: $96,000, then $98,880, then $101,840, with two optional years adding $104,895 and $108,040. Total: about $509,655.

Council Members Vicky Santana and Aida Macedo, and Mayor James Becerra, voted no. Cathy Warner and Mary Ann Pacheco voted yes.

The rejection of Peregrine came the same night the council approved a larger drone contract with Axon Enterprise, which the same records show no sign of having a competitive bid. Macedo, who also cast the only no vote there, said one reason was Peregrine's connection to Axon's systems.

A Push for Clearer Disclosure

Santana asked directly whether Peregrine was a sole-source contract, awarded without bids because of how proprietary the technology is. The city manager's office confirmed it was.

Chief Aviv Bar defended that, saying Peregrine doesn't have a real competitor. "I'm not aware of a company that has a similar product that does what this does," he told council, adding he'd checked with other chiefs.

Bar described Peregrine as "an internal search engine for your internal data," pulling dispatch records, records management, and evidence data into one dashboard.

That function isn't unique to Peregrine.

Axon, the same company Whittier already contracts with for body cameras and drones, sells its own version called Fusus, which its marketing describes as connecting live video, CAD data, and records systems into a single view.

Motorola Solutions, another major law enforcement technology vendor, advertises similar cross-system search capabilities through its CommandCentral software.

Whether any of them would have worked as well for Whittier, cost less, or fit better with the department's existing systems is unknown, because the contract was never opened to competing bids in the first place.

That's the gap: not that Peregrine is necessarily the wrong choice, but that no one can say whether it was the right one, since the comparison was never made.

Santana isn't against sole-source contracts on principle, comparing it to buying Android accessories that only work with a device she already owns. But she asked the city to change how these decisions get disclosed.

"If we can just be clear in our staff reports, I would appreciate it," she said, asking that sole-source deals be labeled as such, with reasoning spelled out, and that competitive processes disclose bidder counts and selection rationale.

That standard would apply well beyond this contract. If adopted, every future no-bid deal would have to show its work.

How Much Attention Is Data Privacy Getting?

The second thread worth watching is how closely the council now scrutinizes what companies can do with residents' data.

Mayor Becerra read straight from the contract. Peregrine, he pointed out, can generate "usage analytics" about how the department uses the service, and use that "for Peregrine's internal business purposes and to operate and improve Peregrine's proprietary software and services." That data isn't deleted until the city asks for it, and only after the contract ends.

Bar said Peregrine's access was limited to how often the system gets used, not what's being searched. "They do not have access to our actual data to be able to analyze, like, crime data," he said.

Becerra wasn't convinced, and asked whether the city could negotiate the terms of the contract to limit how long Peregrine could hold the data. The city attorney said that probably wouldn't work. Companies like Peregrine serve agencies nationwide and are "disinclined to modify their forms" for one city, and pushing too hard could mean losing access altogether.

Macedo reached the same conclusion, saying "We don't have any bargaining power with them."

If walking away is really the city's only leverage, the question going forward is whether Whittier is willing to use it: will future software contracts get this same scrutiny, and will the city actually say no again if a vendor won't budge on protecting residents' data? 

Three Different No Votes

Becerra's objection was the most technical. He read the contract's data-use language aloud and pressed on whether the city could negotiate better terms. When the city attorney said that wasn't realistic, that settled it for him.

Santana was more resigned generally, comparing the spread of home cameras, license plate readers, and now integrated search tools to a train that's already left the station. "I feel that the train has left the station," she said, noting she'd argued against license plate readers more than twenty years ago, only to watch that technology expand far beyond what she once opposed. Still, the sole-source process and vague data terms pushed her to no.

Macedo said the current moment, with growing concerns about AI and data oversharing, calls for more caution, not less. "I think it's my job as a council member to protect the residents of Whittier's data and privacy as much as I can," she said, adding she avoids posting photos of her own son online for the same reason. "I just don't want you to think this is an attack on the department, or my support of the police. I just think that weighing the benefits of something like this against the cost of privacy to residents, to me, that is more important."

What's Next

Whether Santana's request for clearer disclosure shows up in future staff reports is something Whittier Informed will be watching, along with whether council keeps asking these data questions on the next contract.

It's also unclear whether the department will bring Peregrine back, seek another vendor, or drop the idea.