Following pushback from some community members about its use of Flock cameras, the City of Boulder has officially invited other companies to submit bids to provide automatic license plate readers to the city’s police.
The city issued a request for proposals on April 17, after announcing last month that it planned to open a competitive bidding process. For over four years, Boulder has contracted with Flock to provide more than 30 cameras to the city that track each time a car passes, recording identifying information like bike racks, car color and bumper stickers, in addition to license plate numbers. That information is stored in a database that is automatically shared with police departments across the state, which can search it without a warrant.
In recent months, Flock has received pushback across the country, including in Boulder, over privacy concerns and the potential for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access its data. An increasing number of cities have canceled their Flock contracts, including Denver.
In response, the city last week began soliciting bids from other companies to provide 49 automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) and related services “in support of the City’s public safety efforts.” City documents show the request was classified under government purchasing categories for surveillance and security cameras and equipment, traffic radar instruments, and systems described as “identity tracking devices.” The RFP requires that cameras be able to identify a vehicle’s make, body type, color and license plate, but not necessarily to capture information like bumper stickers or bike racks that Flock currently provides with AI-assisted technology.
In March, city officials told Boulder Reporting Lab that Flock was likely to submit a bid, but it has not done so yet. As of April 22, 61 companies had downloaded the RFP, though the city does not track bid submissions during the process, according to city spokesperson Sarah Huntley. The city will accept bids until May 29.
“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 March 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.”
Boulder Reporting Lab began reporting on these concerns last summer.
The RFP emphasizes privacy as a core priority, calling for vendors to demonstrate strong standards for transparency, accountability and data protection. Privacy considerations account for 20% of the overall scoring for bids.
“The ideal vendor is one that treats privacy with the sanctity it demands and who demonstrates those values in practice,” the RFP states. “Furthermore, the City wants to ensure that our contractors exemplify the highest degree of transparency, accountability, and integrity.”
One of the companies that appears likely to apply for Boulder’s contract is Axon, another automatic license plate reader company that Denver recently approved a contract for after community pushback on Flock. Boulder already contracts with Axon for some public safety technology, and is requiring the new vendor to integrate with Boulder’s existing Axon systems.
Like Flock, Axon uses AI technology to capture detailed vehicle attributes and allows searches without a warrant, but unlike Flock, it does not offer national data sharing. Boulder already contracts with Axon for other products, such as an AI tool to transcribe body camera footage. A variety of security companies, including Axis Communications and Mile High Security Solutions, also showed interest in the RFP.
The city manager’s office will select a shortlist of vendors for a pilot project around June 19. The pilot will require vendors to provide a camera at an intersection for two months over the summer and train city police staff on how to use their systems. That trial period will conclude in August, and in September a final vendor will be selected for a five-year contract with annual renewal, estimated to begin in February 2027.
The public will not be asked to weigh in on the new vendor.
“The decision about which firm to use is an operational one,” Huntley told Boulder Reporting Lab. “The city does not conduct any public process related to selections of vendors through RFPs.”
A new task force of data and technology experts selected by Rivera-Vandermyde that convened for the first time this month will also not be asked for input, but is instead meant to help the city develop overarching tech policies, according to Huntley.
As Boulder considers bids, a bill in the state legislature would limit police use of such cameras that track and record location data, restricting warrantless searches of the data to the past three days.
