DENVER — Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas is urging the Denver City Council to approve a new contract with Axon, a new license plate reader technology provider.
After months of discussions about privacy concerns surrounding the company Flock, Denver decommissioned the license plate reader camera system run by the company on Tuesday, just hours before the city council's scheduled vote on whether to move forward with Axon.
“I certainly hope that we have the vote in support of starting this contract with Axon for license plate readers. I do think it is critically important for public safety. I think that the Flock system that we previously had was decommissioned just today. I think it was a very effective system. I understand some of the privacy concerns, in particular with the Flock company,” Thomas said. “We took a lot of the feedback from the community, from the task force, and engaged in an RFP (request for proposal) process, and Axon was the one that came out on top.”
Chief Thomas said he thinks Axon is a good compromise that balances community concerns with law enforcement's needs.
“We understood the privacy and protection concerns with Flock, and so all of those have been satisfied with this new Axon contract. We own the data. So, there's no opportunity for them to sell the data. There's no opportunity for anyone to gain access to our data. The only way that that would ever happen is if someone were to subpoena us for the data, and then we would vigorously defend that subpoena. And so we don't want this information to be used by anybody else,” Thomas said.
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Thomas said the department will also be working with fewer license plate reader cameras and has worked to address equity issues pertaining to where those cameras are placed.
“We went down from 111 to 50. And I think that they are dispersed pretty evenly across the city. And so, there's no one area of town that has a higher number of cameras than another neighborhood, and they are all chosen with sort of a matrix of violent crime and high injury accident networks and also stolen vehicles, and so just a very data-informed decision on where to put those cameras,” Thomas said.
Denver's top cop said the switch to Axon’s system will not change DPD’s ability to assist with investigations stemming from other jurisdictions.
“If someone were to provide us information on a significant crime that occurred that may have spilled into Denver, the suspect entered into Denver, we would be able to conduct that search and provide them that information that's useful for their investigation. We're not going to give another jurisdiction access to our system. We want to be very protective of the system. We understand that one of the community's concerns is that not only do we bar access from federal agencies, but also other law enforcement agencies that may not share our same values,” Thomas said.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston first announced the proposed contract in February.
Johnston does not need city council approval to move forward with Axon because the contract amount is less than $500,000. But Johnston said he brought the contract to the city council to provide transparency.
