Pushback at police use of automated license-plate readers — like Flock and Axon — has reached the head-scratching point.
As The Gazette reports, the Aurora Police Department in Colorado recently arrested four people thanks to a Flock camera on a high school campus in Aurora Public Schools after the system detected a car stolen in a carjacking.
Yet the city’s recently elected progressive City Council members didn’t celebrate. They instead requested the police pull the cameras from the five high schools that had them.
The contract is between Flock and the city, not the school district, so Aurora Public Schools must decide whether to make its own deal with the company if it wants to continue using the camera technology.
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The ACLU and Aurora’s teachers’ union say the cameras threaten students’ privacy and safety.
Safety? Aren’t students — and our streets — safer when carjackers are caught?
The carjacking was reported around 4 a.m. The next morning, a school camera spotted the stolen car. Four students were later arrested.
It’s not like the camera was spying on kids at their lockers. It flagged a stolen car in a very public place, a school parking lot. ...
The high-tech cameras use AI tools to scan license plates and other vehicle characteristics. The data gets processed by central servers over a cell network and is cross-checked against the National Crime Information Center and law enforcement vehicle watchlists.
License-plate readers are critical law enforcement tools that help solve Colorado crimes daily. This is hardly a unique case.
During Denver’s 12-month Flock pilot program, auto thefts fell from more than 12,000 in 2023 to 8,550. Denver Police made nearly 300 arrests and recovered 170 vehicles and 29 firearms.
At a recent Colorado Citizenry forum hosted by Gazette columnists Michael Hancock and Jimmy Sengenberger, three law enforcement leaders touted the cameras’ value in recovering stolen vehicles and shedding Colorado’s reputation as the nation’s auto theft capital.
The bipartisan group included Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain, Republican Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly and Democratic Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown.
The leaders noted stolen cars are often used to commit other crimes, including robberies and drug deals.
License-plate readers help investigators pursue violent crimes, too. As Gazette columnist Mike Rosen pointed out last week, a Boulder Flock camera flagged the car used by the terrorist who firebombed a Jewish vigil on the Pearl Street Mall last year — helping police make an arrest and achieve a conviction.
Not all critics are progressive. Sheriff Joseph Roybal, a Republican, recently ended El Paso County’s Flock program, citing civil liberties.
But those civil-liberties concerns have answers.
First, the cameras are placed in specific, public locations with targeted uses — not on every street corner, monitoring our every movement.
The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and warrants without probable cause. It doesn’t prohibit observations that police make in public.
A license plate that must be displayed on a public road is hardly private.
Similarly, as Rosen observed, travelers can be mass-searched by TSA agents at the airport, a “rational tradeoff to protect travelers” from another 9/11.
This isn’t a surveillance tool for Big Brother. It’s a highly effective way to identify stolen vehicles or those tied to other crimes. Local agencies control the data, not Flock or Axon — including how long the data is kept and who sees it.
Law enforcement must have practical, modern crime-fighting tools. If the guardrails aren’t sufficient, strengthen them. But don’t scrap what is a slam-dunk for public safety.
