The City of Boulder announced it will initiate a competitive bid process for automatic license plate reader companies to potentially replace the city’s current Flock contract.
Flock supplies the city with about 30 AI-powered cameras that record each time a car passes, capturing identifying information like bike racks, car color and bumper stickers, in addition to license plate numbers. Boulder automatically shares one month of that historical data with police departments across the state.
The announcement came March 13.
In recent months, Flock has received pushback for allowing warrantless search of individuals’ location data and for sharing data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The city renegotiated its contract with Flock to allow it to terminate the contract with 30 days’ notice without penalties and will issue a public request for proposals within the next month, according to a city press release. Flock is likely to submit a bid. The winning contract will be selected by the city manager’s office.
“I want to be clear that license plate readers have incredible value in protecting our public and officers as they prevent and respond to crime,” City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said in a statement. “At the same time, concerns about privacy, data use and potential harm to vulnerable populations are not peripheral considerations. They are central to how we approach the use of safety technology in Boulder.”
The city also made changes to its current contract to “incorporate Boulder’s updated data privacy and security requirements” and to schedule monthly meetings between Flock and the city to review data collected in Boulder.
The announcement comes as several cities, including Denver, have switched from Flock to Axon, another automatic license plate reader company that does not offer national data sharing, after months of intense criticism of Flock. The City of Boulder already contracts with Axon for other products, such as an AI tool to transcribe body camera footage.
The city also highlighted the formation of a new task force of data and technology experts selected by Rivera-Vandermyde and her staff to make policy recommendations to city council. Rivera-Vandermyde hopes the group will convene in mid-April.
While Deputy City Manager Chris Meschuk told city council this month that the city’s Flock contract is an administrative matter overseen by the city manager, not the council, the city attorney added that council can direct policy about broader issues like surveillance and privacy, which could then guide future contracts.
Boulder privacy advocate and founder of DeFlock, Will Freeman, said switching providers would not address many of his concerns.
“It’s going to another company for the same product,” he said. “I had an issue with Flock because of how irresponsible they were, and [with] the technology because of how dangerous it was. This fixes the irresponsible aspect, but it doesn’t fix the privacy issue.”
“This looks like they’re doing something better, when in reality, they’re just replacing one camera with another,” he said.
This is not the first time the city has shifted policy regarding Flock. In June 2025, following pushback from local privacy advocates, Boulder removed itself from the national Flock network, limiting its sharing to a state network. That move did not alleviate privacy advocates’ concerns about privacy or potential ICE access, in part because at least one Colorado police department is known to have granted federal agents access to its Flock account this year for ICE-related searches.
Advocates say that because Flock data can be shared among participating agencies, Boulder data could still reach federal agents through another department even if Boulder police did not provide it directly.
In August 2025, Boulder Reporting Lab was the first to report that the city’s Flock contract was up for renewal in March 2026. In December, a city spokesperson told Boulder Reporting Lab that the city planned to renew the contract. In February, the city’s Human Rights Commission drafted a letter opposing the renewal. Privacy advocates have spoken during city council public comment and emailed councilmembers urging them to reconsider the city’s contract with Flock.
Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn defended the department’s use of Flock in a February newsletter after getting numerous questions about the technology during a townhall. The department has said Flock has helped it “dramatically reduce auto theft in our community, among other crimes.” In his letter, Redfearn assured residents “that we will never use any technology that causes harm to our community” and that he has “seen this technology used time and time again to make our community safer,” adding that if Flock no longer aligned with the city’s core values, “we are committed to pivoting.”
He also cited a recent Virginia court ruling that found Flock’s data-sharing does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches related to people’s physical movements. The judge wrote that this conclusion could change as “the number and capabilities of ALPR [Automatic License Plate Reader] cameras expand.”
Several residents spoke at a March 5 city council meeting urging the council not to renew the city’s contract, with one calling the cameras “a fundamental invasion of privacy.” Others highlighted alternatives to contracting with Flock, including city-owned automatic license plate readers or contracting with a different company, like Axon.
The city’s decision follows a December decision from Longmont’s city council to pause data-sharing collected by its Flock cameras and a proposed bill from State Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder that would limit warrantless searches of Flock data.