The Denver Police Department (DPD) launched a drone pilot program in mid-October, utilizing Skydio X

Our Take

Credit to CODenverToday for digging into this one, because the pattern here should feel familiar to anyone who's watched Flock Safety expand its footprint city by city. Denver PD launched a drone pilot using Skydio X10s back in mid-October, quietly logging over 200 deployments, and several city council members reportedly didn't know the program — or the underlying contract with Flock Aerodome — even existed until it was already flying. That's not an oversight, that's a pattern: deploy first, disclose later, and let the public catch up once the infrastructure is already in place.

Flock built its business on license plate readers normalizing automated surveillance one small contract at a time, often without meaningful council votes or public hearings. Drones-as-first-responders is the same playbook with better optics — 'we're just answering 911 calls faster' is a much easier sell than 'we're logging every plate that passes a corner.' But faster response doesn't require zero guardrails, and Councilmember Gonzalez-Gutierrez is right to push for community input before this scales past a two-mile pilot radius near HQ.

If Denver residents are only finding out about eye-in-the-sky policing after 200 flights, imagine how many plate-reader cameras nearby are running with even less scrutiny. Check our camera map to see what's already logged near you, and hit take action if you want to push your own council for the disclosure Denver's didn't get.