Two San Diego men are suing the city, claiming officers used automated license plate reader data from the Flock surveillance system, leading to their wrongful arrest.
Hugo Parra and Ariel Alonso Beltran were both arrested on Nov. 26 of last year after getting into Beltran's red Alfa Romeo and driving to Churchill Cigar Lounge in Old Town.
At the same time, according to the lawsuit, two officers were searching for a suspect who had allegedly pointed a gun at someone in the Golden Hill neighborhood. Police had seen a suspect's car — a red Alfa Romeo — driving away quickly nearby.
The lawsuit alleges officers then got a Flock hit on the same make and model of car, 5 miles away — the red Alfa Romeo that Beltran and Parra were in, and that officers did not get the license plate of the suspect's car.
"The challenge is, if you're applying that to a network that's in the entire city, that's just going to pull in a lot of people, a lot of cars," attorney Alex Coolman said.
The victim of the crime then identified Parra as the person who had held a gun at him, and both men were arrested.
Coolman said the technology could have worked in their favor, had officers searched Flock using Beltran's license plate. He alleges that officers failed to do so.
"Flock has the potential to be exculpatory, too," Coolman said.
The lawsuit says had officers searched Flock using Beltran's license plate number, they would have found that Beltran did not drive from the crime scene to the cigar lounge - he drove straight from the apartment complex to the Cigar lounge. The apartments the two men left from also have surveillance footage, and the lawsuit says if detectives had pulled that video, they would have seen the men were never at the crime scene.
Lawsuit documents say that Beltran was able to post bail, while Parra could not afford bail and remained in jail until mid-December. The charges were ultimately dropped, according to the complaint.
The two men are now suing for damages to their reputation, false arrest, negligence, unreasonable detention, and failure to perform a follow-up investigation.
The City Attorney's Office said it does not comment on pending litigation.
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