Flock Safety’s contract with Denver for automatic license plate readers ends on March 31. Public backlash over the company’s privacy practices and cooperation with immigration authorities convinced Mayor Mike Johnston to end the city’s partnership with the surveillance company.
But the company isn’t flying away from the city anytime soon.
Flock’s presence in Denver isn’t just public.
The company will continue to lease cameras to businesses, homeowners and neighborhood groups throughout the city.
Homeowners associations have been using the technology for years, allowing them to track vehicles through their neighborhoods. Flock allows users to see where and when the cameras spotted specific vehicles, based on their license plates and other information.
However, it will get harder for Denver police to access data from those privately operated cameras.
Currently, police can search for information generated by any private Flock customer who has chosen to share information with law enforcement.
But “when the contract expires, that access ends,” Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel wrote in an email.
Once Denver breaks up with Flock, local police will have to ask individual Flock customers to share data, much like they would with other surveillance cameras.
“If there is a private entity that captured some sort of evidence of that crime, then it's our duty to obtain that evidence and to make it part of our investigation and provide it to prosecution,” said Denver Police Commander Cliff Barnes, at a city council hearing.
In addition to privately owned license-plate readers, Flock has a free contract with Denver Police for a drone first-responder program. But residents shouldn’t expect to see those flying overhead, for now. A hardware shortage has made that impossible.
What comes next?
Flock was widely criticized in Denver because city data was accessible to federal immigration authorities — a practice that may have violated city and state law. The company actively encouraged police departments to share their access to data from the national Flock network with federal authorities.
Facing growing public anger, Mayor Mike Johnston decided last month to ditch the company and switch to a new tech provider.
On Wednesday, a Denver City Council committee will consider a $150,000 contract with the surveillance company Axon to replace Flock’s city-leased license-plate-reader cameras.
