El Segundo sends police data to LexisNexis four ways and won't say what's in the feed

El Segundo, a South Bay city of about 16,600 people, has at least four contracts that move police data to LexisNexis, one of the largest data brokers in the country. In September, its police department refused to release the records showing what data goes out and who can see it, calling them investigatory records.

Two LexisNexis products matter here. Accurint is a people-search database built from public and commercial records: addresses, relatives, vehicles, phone numbers. The Accurint Virtual Crime Center (AVCC) adds police records on top, pooled from departments that contribute their dispatch and incident data so subscribers elsewhere can search them. In other words, a department that feeds AVCC adds its local records to a national pool.

El Segundo's contracts, all posted on the city's own document site, show four channels:

1. Crash reports for sale. Since 2018, LexisNexis has held the sole and exclusive right to sell El Segundo's crash reports online and to distribute data extracted from them; the city's 2018 cut was 20 cents a page. The 2017 agreement required LexisNexis to keep each report at least seven years, and the 2023 renewal lets it keep selling reports it already holds after the contract ends.
2. A report-sharing pool. The 2023 agreement, signed by Police Chief Jaime Bermudez, gives "Participating Agencies" access to El Segundo's reports in exchange for access to theirs. Nothing in the contract limits who counts as a participating agency.
3. Online police reports. Reports and tips residents file online go through LexisNexis's Desk Officer Reporting System, which the city has licensed since 2018.
4. The Virtual Crime Center. El Segundo gets AVCC through the City of Hawthorne, which hosts the shared records and dispatch systems for several South Bay departments. A 2024 agreement between the cities lists AVCC among El Segundo's licensed applications, and a 2020 LexisNexis quote set El Segundo's share at $17,795.38 a year with records, dispatch, offender, crash and license plate reader interfaces included.

Neighboring Hermosa Beach joined the same Hawthorne arrangement in 2019 by signing a LexisNexis addendum that obligates it to contribute dispatch records, incident narratives and offender records, and grants LexisNexis an irrevocable, worldwide license to distribute them to other AVCC customers. El Segundo's version of that paperwork has not been released.

ICE buys AVCC too. The agency has paid LexisNexis for Accurint since 2021, and in August it posted notice of a roughly $6.7 million sole-source bridge contract that names the Virtual Crime Center directly and covers up to 11,200 users. California's Values Act limits what local police can share with immigration authorities, and state law asks agencies to keep their databases, including vendor-run ones, from being used for immigration enforcement.

FinePrint asked the department for the LexisNexis integration documents, the agreements governing its data, an export of what is shared and with whom, and any documentation that sharing stays local. It released only the 2017 crash report agreement, the oldest and narrowest of the contracts, and withheld the rest. It did not say whether any document limits El Segundo's sharing to local agencies.

The full El Segundo record, including the contracts and the Hawthorne arrangement, is on the Accurint Files: FinePrint