Denver auditor refuses to sign city's current surveillance cameras contract with Flock
The short version: A Denver city auditor is publicly balking at signing off on the city's Flock contract, a rare instance of an official pumping the brakes on ALPR expansion.
Our Take
Credit to CBS Colorado for surfacing this one, because it's not every day a sitting city official puts their name on the record refusing to bless a Flock Safety deal. Auditors exist precisely to ask the boring-but-essential questions — what are we paying for, what are the guardrails, who's accountable when the system gets misused — and when one of them balks at signing, that's a signal the paperwork isn't as clean as the sales pitch suggested.
This matters beyond Denver. Flock's pitch to city councils has been remarkably consistent nationwide: fast rollout, minimal friction, trust us on the retention policies and access logs. Contracts get rubber-stamped by procurement offices that treat ALPR networks like any other vendor software purchase, not like the mass location-tracking infrastructure they actually are. An auditor slowing that down — even briefly — is a reminder that these deals deserve the same scrutiny as any other multi-year surveillance commitment funded by taxpayers.
Whether this delay actually changes the contract's terms or just delays the inevitable is the real story to watch. In the meantime, if you want to see how thick Flock's coverage already is in your own city, check our camera map, and if you want to push back on a contract in your own town, our take-action page has a starting point.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS Colorado, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.