Views on the use of the Flock camera systems at city intersections and federal agents’ immigration enforcement activity divided the six candidates seeking Encinitas city elected positions Thursday during a voter forum.
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Sponsored by the League of Women Voters North County, San Diego organization, the event attracted a nearly standing room-only crowd of some 150 people at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
Encinitas has three city races on the Nov. 3 ballot — the mayor’s position, plus the District 3 and District 4 City Council races. There are two candidates running for each of the three spots on the ballot, and all six people shared the stage during Thursday’s forum, answering pre-submitted questions in the league’s pre-determined rotation. While the candidates for each race sat next to each other, they didn’t often answer questions right after each other. Sometimes one candidate in a race went first, while the person’s opponent would be the last of the six people to answer the question.
On many questions, all six candidates were in agreement, but they split on some issues, particularly when it came to traffic camera use and U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement activities in Encinitas.
Incumbent Mayor Bruce Ehlers, District 4 Councilmember Marco San Antonio and Ed Sprague, one of the two District 3 council candidates, all said the city is doing what it can in a challenging situation when it comes to ICE enforcement, which has been ramping up since President Trump was elected.
Ehlers said Encinitas has created a web page developed to ICE activities within the city limits and posts information on arrests there. He said the city tries to get information from the federal government, but the response to its requests hasn’t been “real good.”
San Antonio said his parents were legal immigrants long ago, and “I believe ICE is doing their job.”
Sprague said most ICE activity in town is uneventful and ICE targets people who “need to go” because they have engaged in criminal activity.
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The three other candidates had a different view.
Rimga Viskanta, a San Dieguito Union High School District board member who’s running for Encinitas mayor against Ehlers, said she believes some immigrants’ rights are being violated and said Encinitas needs to do more to support families whose loved ones have been arrested, especially in situations where the person’s immigration status falls in a gray area where they once were considered to be legal and now are not.
Brad Lefkowits, one of the founders of the Parents of Encinitas Union School District community group who’s running for the District 4 seat against San Antonio, said he wants Encinitas to start putting “more honest information” on the city’s web site, rather than what he called “Trump propaganda.”
Arielle Golden, former chair of the North County Food Policy Council who is seeking the District 3 council spot, said she believes “ICE is tearing apart our community,” and Encinitas needs to do more to make residents feel “less afraid.”
Candidates also split over Flock traffic cameras, which take pictures of license plates as vehicles pass by the solar-powered camera systems, then scan law enforcement data bases to see if the vehicles are stolen or involved in criminal activity.
San Antonio said he supported the use of a different type of camera system to catch red-light runners at intersections, but not the use of Flock systems, saying they capture more data about people and thus invade people’s privacy.
Both Sprague and Ehlers said they supported the use of Flock camera systems.
Viskanta said government policies need to keep up with the new technology and law enforcement should have limited access to the images.
Golden and Lefkowits both said they had met with the Sheriff’s captain who manages the Encinitas station to discuss the camera usage, and said they still had some concerns. Golden said she worried about how the camera company might use the data it collects, while Lefkowits said his gut reaction is that pausing the use of the cameras might be a good idea.
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