The Denver City Council delayed a contract for a new license-plate surveillance system from Axon, but dozens of Denverites came out to debate the use of automated vehicle-tracking technology in the city.
Councilmember Kevin Flynn moved for the delay on the decision about the controversial technology. He did not give a specific reason, but council members pressed city staff for more details on the contract, with some saying they hadn't been given enough timesaid was not given to them with enough time to properly review.
The city has employed a similar camera system from a competing company, Flock Safety, for nearly two years. But Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration has moved to replace Flock with Axon after nearly a year of pushback and controversy.
Public anger about Flock was fueled by general concerns about surveillance, but also by federal immigration agents’ use of Flock systems around the country. Flock appeared to conceal the existence of a program that helped federal agents search Flock records, as 9News revealed. In Denver, officials were unaware for months that local surveillance data could be searched by agencies around the nation, as Denverite reported.
While the city initially defended its partnership with Flock, Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration eventually announced it would end the contract and award it instead to Axon, a competitor that is best known as the manufacturer of Taser products.
The $150,000, one-year contract passed a council committee last week. City officials framed Axon as a compromise between public safety and civil liberties. Unlike Flock, Axon has no national database, and law enforcement agencies cannot review each other’s information.
Axon’s network in Denver, at least initially, would be smaller than Flock’s.
Dozens of people spoke (and more wanted to)
Even before the city council met to vote on the contract, a number of members of Denver’s mayor-approved Surveillance Task Force urged elected officials to reject it.
“We have deep concerns about the city rushing into another contract with a new vendor for risky, untested (automated license plate recognition) surveillance technology absent any statutory regulation,” a letter cosigned by several task force members and community organizations said.
State lawmakers have proposed new restrictions on license-plate tracking, but the bills have not yet advanced out of the state Senate.
The letter’s signatories included the ACLU of Colorado, the Denver Office of the Municipal Public Defender, the Denver Classroom Teacher Association and others.
The letter called attention to a majority of Axon’s AI Ethics Board resigning in 2022 over plans to develop a Taser-equipped drone. After the blowback, Axon announced it would halt that project, but a year later, it bought a Belgian weaponized drone manufacturer.
In City Council chambers, public comment was more evenly split between supporters and opponents than in previous open discussions about automated license plate recognition, although the makeup of speakers was likely limited by the one-hour time limit.
Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said after the public hearing that over 40 people were signed up in opposition to the contract, more than triple the number of supporters.
Many who spoke in support of the technology said they were won over by the promise of stronger data protections.
“Eliminating this tool would not make Denver safer,” said Maria Alicia, a local business owner. “It would simply make serious crimes harder to solve.”
License plate readers in Denver capture millions of images of vehicles across the city, identifying each one by its license plate and other characteristics. Flock’s system can effectively track the path of automobiles across Denver and across the nation, since it’s used by so many police departments.
City officials say police have recovered hundreds of stolen vehicles, taken about 60 stolen firearms off the street and made hundreds of arrests since Flock’s cameras were installed in 2024.
While Denver’s proposed contract with Axon generally prevents the company from making Denver-specific data accessible to outside agencies, it makes exceptions in the case of subpoenas, judicial warrants or court orders. Axon has pledged to fight potential subpoenas in court.
Opponents say switching vendors doesn’t address their core concern: that the technology cannot be trusted in anyone’s hands and contributes to the growth of a surveillance state.
“This isn't just about ALPR cameras or data sharing. If we allow these conversations to be isolated and constrained to talking about individual contracts or single technologies, we will miss the forest for the trees,” said local community activist Katie Leonard. “We will be fast tracked to a future where we're all living in an AI-powered police state facilitated by a private multi-billion dollar company.”
Denver City Council started debating the contract.
While the council didn't vote on Monday night, members began grilling the city about the fine details of the contract.
Several council members questioned how the Denver Police Department decided the planned locations of Axon’s 50 cameras, how safe the data is from breaches, and what power the city had to fight off federal overreach.
Some questioned why the Surveillance Task Force wasn’t given enough time to review the contract before it was presented to City Council.
Denver City Council will reconvene next Monday to vote on the contract. There will not be another public hearing session, although the council usually holds a general public comment period around 5 p.m. at the beginning of meetings.
