Denver will end its contract with Flock Safety, the controversial provider of a network of license plate-reading cameras, and will propose a new deal with a competing company, Mayor Mike Johnston confirmed Tuesday to The Denver Post.
After facing months of public criticism over the city’s relationship with Flock, the mayor’s office is proposing a new contract with Axon, which already provides other technology for the Denver Police Department.
Over the past year, hundreds of Denverites had criticized Johnston for repeatedly extending the city’s contract with Flock despite reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs agents had used Flock’s database to aid in President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign.
The company has also faced scrutiny of its nationwide camera system, which many critics is essentially a mass-surveillance network ripe for abuse.
“We feel like we heard from Denverites and we got feedback. And we have spent the last nine months listening to the community, working with City Council, working with privacy experts … and law enforcement on what people wanted from a system that would meet everyone’s concerns,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview with The Post.
When asked about his views on Flock, Johnston said he concerns had grown “over the course of the process” of working with the company and that, ultimately, it was “not the right fit.”
“It’s not whether I like them or dislike them. It’s a matter of whether they can deliver the service that we best need,” he said.
The proposed contract with Axon would have some differences with the one with Flock, he said. Axon doesn’t have a national database of any kind for local or federal law enforcement agencies to tap into. The new deal will also have a shorter retention policy for the photos the cameras snap — 21 days instead of 30 days under Flock.
“Axon has the single highest level of security protections,” Johnston said, while talking about all the companies that submitted bids. “It’s essentially the same standard used for storing people’s personal medical information.”
Axon will use the same database that it uses for Denver police officers’ body-worn camera footage, he said. The photos its new cameras will take will also focus only on vehicles and license plates, he said — not people’s faces. The company has also agreed not to give ICE access to the data.
“I understand there are some people who want no cameras at all,” he said. “The reality is, my job is both to protect civil liberties and to protect folks from crime and we have to find a middle ground on that.”
DPD used license plate data in about 40% of its homicide investigations last year and in about a third of the non-fatal shooting investigations, according to a city news release about the new contract. The cameras have also played a role in the recovery of more than 400 stolen cars.
Johnston said that in his conversations with residents, “very few to nearly none” of them said they didn’t want the city using cameras of any kind.
Denver also plans to stop sharing the camera data with any other police departments, Johnston said. Once the new system is in place, the city will begin inviting certain agencies in the surrounding area to use the data if they agree to set rules.
The city’s latest contract with Flock, which the mayor’s office unilaterally signed in October without council approval, will end March 31. The Axon contract would begin immediately after.
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The council unanimously rejected a two-year contract with Flock last May, partly because the mayor’s office requested that it do so after hearing backlash from council members and the public. Johnston’s administration then twice extended the contract without council approval.
Under the latest extension, Johnston’s administration added new requirements to Flock’s contract that were intended to protect sensitive data.
The state legislature is now considering a bill that would block government agencies from using license plate data without a warrant.
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