Denver officials defend limits on Flock license-plate data as council demands audits and clearer rules

Denver City Council's Health & Safety Committee heard a detailed briefing Oct. 29 from the Mayor's Office, Denver Police Department and Technology Services on the surveillance technology task force and a recent administrative extension of the city's contract with Flock, a license-plate reader vendor.

The mayor's office said it has closed off national searches of Denver's Flock data and limited access to the Denver Police Department, added a dropdown of restricted search reasons tied to Colorado or Denver-specific criminal conduct, prohibited searches tied to immigration or reproductive-health matters, and inserted a $100,000 contractual penalty for improper disclosure. "We turned off access to all jurisdictions other than jurisdictions within the state of Colorado," Tim Hoffman, director of policy in the Mayor's Office, said during the briefing.

Why it matters: councilmembers and task-force members said those steps are necessary but insufficient without meaningful transparency. Councilmember Sarah Paradis (at-large), a task-force member, said the group has not been given unredacted audit logs or a full picture of who used the system. "I finally learned last week that 1,300 people have logged logins to the Denver system," Paradis said, pressing for audit access and clear user accountability.

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