Governor and AG Bonta Targeting El Cajon Again with Lawsuit over License Plate Data

Governor Gavin Newsom and California Attorney general Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Friday against the City of El Cajon and its police department for sharing automated license plate reader data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies. El Cajon is located in East County San Diego and has about 100,000 residents. The Globe talked with Bill Wells the Mayor of El Cajon who presides over one of the few conservative cities left in California.

Mayor Wells said license plate technology has helped catch hardened, repeat criminals, recover stolen vehicles, and protect families across the country. The city shared license plate information on a database of cities around the country recently when they got a hit on a car registered in Arizona, but currently in El Cajon. They contacted the Phoenix police department and discovered the hit was because the car owner had shot a woman, and he was now sleeping in the car in a fast food restaurant parking lot in El Cajon. El Cajon police did a check on the car and its owner, when he shot at them.

Another license plate hit on the database identified a murderer, Wells said. “This lawsuit isn’t about public safety or privacy. It’s about politics,” he said. The governor doesn’t like that our city refuses to fall in line with their far-left agenda, and now they’re using the courts to punish us for it.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta says El Cajon allegedly violated state law by sharing automated license plate reader data with federal authorities and law enforcement officials in more than two dozen other states, and in doing so violated Senate Bill 34, passed in 2015. SB 34 established regulations on the privacy and usage of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) data and expanded the meaning of “personal information” to include information or data collected through the use or operation of an ALPR system. But language in the bill specifies that the bill was largely focused on “prohibiting a transportation agency from selling or providing personally identifiable information of any person who subscribes to an electronic toll or electronic transit fare collection system or who uses a toll bridge, toll lane, or toll highway that employs an electronic toll collection system.”

AG Bonta said his office issued multiple warnings to the City of El Cajon “and its police department refused to comply with this law.”

Mayor Wells told the Globe that the governor is focused on him, accusing him of thought crimes, and the lawsuit is purely political. Wells said “Gov. Newsom even called me ‘nefarious’ at a press conference, which implies I am criminally guilty and evil.” Wells stated the governor held a press conference about the lawsuit before he was even notified about it.

Wells said the Attorney General’s Office and governor are not-so-subtly implying that El Cajon is sharing information on illegal immigrants and women who might travel to California for abortions. “No one is doing that,” he said. “And there is no such thing as thought crimes.”

The lawsuit even identified the law enforcement agencies which the El Cajon Police Department shared information via the national database: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

El Cajon police weren’t calling the feds, as AG Bonta claims.

The attorney general’s lawsuit is seeking “a permanent injunction barring Respondents from sharing ALPR data with out-of-state agencies, in violation of state law,” because we wouldn’t want El Cajon Police arresting repeat criminals from committing more crimes, even as AG Bonta and Governor Newsom are still emptying out California’s prisons. Once again, California’s Governor is prioritizing criminals and criminal illegal aliens over law abiding legal citizens.

A previous scrape El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells had with the governor and Attorney General was over the state’s mandatory motel voucher program that temporarily housed “homeless” drug-addicted vagrants: Two girls believed to be as young as 13 were raped by two convicted sex offenders wearing ankle monitors at a Motel 6 in El Cajon, the Globe reported in 2022 and 2023.

The Globe reported in 2022 on the homeless voucher program in El Cajon, in San Diego County: “There are 18 motels in San Diego County participating in the homeless hotel voucher program – eight of them, 44%, are located in El Cajon.”

Mayor Wells, El Cajon City Manager Graham Mitchell and Police Chief Mike Moulton objected and said the County “is saturating El Cajon with homeless and hotel vouchers” The AG even called the homeless transients “hotel guests” at participating homeless hotels paid for by California taxpayers.

They contacted the County asking them to spread their voucher-using homeless throughout the county, rather than sending the bulk of them to El Cajon. “We have the second highest poverty level in the county,” City Manager Mitchell said. “We also have the most immigrants,” noting the special circumstances these groups face, as well as reliance on the city and county.

The City sent letters to these motels, telling them they could face fines if they allow homeless vouchers to make up more than 15% of their occupancy.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta intervened and told the City to cease and desist with their 15% homeless voucher occupancy policy. The AG claimed in his letter that this was a discrimination and a fair housing issue. Specifically, the AG said: “Discrimination based on source of income is a civil right.”

Here is Mayor Bill Wells’ statement about the latest lawsuit: