Aurora advances police plan to use facial-recognition software with vendor oversight and human review

Aurora City Council on Oct. 6 advanced a police request to use facial‑recognition software as an investigative tool, with staff presenting a draft policy, vendor accountability reports and proposed training.

Aurora Police Commander Pope told council the department is seeking council approval after a 2022 state law set conditions for local use. ‘‘We need to file with our reporting authority, which for the city is city council, and seek approval from city council to use the technology,’’ Pope said, summarizing statutory steps and the requirement for public review and vendor accountability reports. He said the department would hold three public meetings and post materials on the city website as required by state law.

The department proposed using two vendors and an algorithm vendor: Lumen (to search law‑enforcement mugshot libraries), ClearView AI (to search publicly available internet images), and the algorithm vendor ROC. Pope said Lumen would come at no direct cost to the city and that ClearView would be subscription‑based; he presented a training cost estimate of about $16,000 to train roughly 140 APD members and said ClearView subscription pricing would be discounted the first two years before reaching full price in year three.

Pope described authorized uses in the draft policy as limited to active investigations, cases where there is reasonable suspicion or imminent threat to life, identifying incapacitated or deceased people, corroborating leads and supporting critical incident response. He said the policy also specifies prohibited uses including harassment, civil immigration enforcement and persistent surveillance without a court order. Pope emphasized that the system would produce candidate lists, not definitive identifications, and that the statute requires ‘‘meaningful human review.’’ He described a layered review process including an operator review, peer review, supervisory approval and additional detective review before any lead is treated as actionable.

City attorney Manny McDonald and other legal advisers told council the policy and the statutory framework are intended to limit misuse; McDonald summarized that state law and the proposed local policy do not permit relying on an algorithmic hit alone for probable cause.

Council members asked questions about scope, privacy and false positives. Council Member Coombs said she was ‘‘very concerned’’ about the breadth of potential searches and the effect on witnesses and bystanders. Council Member Gardener said she was worried about documented cases elsewhere where misidentification led to long detentions and asked what safeguards would prevent that. Pope and legal staff repeated that a photo match would not alone establish probable cause and described the multi‑step review and corroboration the policy would require.

The presentation packet included draft policy language, vendor accountability reports, the algorithm vendor name, and white papers from law‑enforcement associations. Pope said the FBI will provide facial‑comparison training at no cost and that vendor onboarding and additional investigator training are planned.

When the council asked whether there was any objection to moving the item to the regular session for formal consideration, Council Member Coombs recorded an objection; the mayor directed the item to move forward despite that objection. The item will be on a future regular‑session agenda for formal action.

The discussion did not include a final contract authorization; council action at the regular session will determine whether the city formally authorizes vendor contracting or adoption of the proposed policy.