The reckoning Arvada is sitting inside

Flock Safety holds contracts with nearly 100 Colorado law enforcement agencies, plus more than 160 private entities and community-safety organizations in the state.[1] The crowdsourced OpenStreetMap dataset behind DeFlock recorded roughly 2,600 plate-reader cameras statewide as of mid-August 2026, itself an undercount.[2] Arvada's own order form describes Flock's nationwide lookup network as “boasting 10 billion additional plate reads per month.”[14]

Inside Jefferson County, Arvada's neighbors have deployed, and in two cases already reversed course:

SB25-276: in force

Signed May 23, 2025, Senate Bill 25-276 bars state and local governments from making personal identifying information available for federal civil immigration enforcement, except under a judicial warrant, subpoena or court order. Under Colorado law, license plate data falls inside that protected category, which places every municipal ALPR network in the state, Arvada's included, within the statute's reach.[9] Arvada's ALPR policy, PM 460, took effect nineteen days later and does not mention it; see The Policies.

SB26-070: killed

The bipartisan Senate Bill 26-070 would have supplied the operational rules the state still lacks:

• a warrant requirement to search ALPR data more than 72 hours after the crime under investigation;
• a bar on most out-of-state data sharing;
• a ban on selling historical data;
• mandatory audits of who accessed the data;
• a 30-day retention cap absent an active investigation.

It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 5–2 on February 24, 2026, then died on the Senate floor in late April amid pushback from law enforcement agencies and a veto threat from Governor Jared Polis over the warrant provision.[11][12]

Arvada's public position on the bill came in a television interview. Deputy Chief Todd Reeves told CBS News Colorado in February 2026 that “there are times when it takes up to 10 days to get warrants signed,” and that if the bill passed the department would “have to make that evaluation of whether this is technology we can still afford.”[20] Two companion measures died the same spring. Senate Bill 26-071, the SAFE Act, a broader bill on police surveillance technology, was postponed indefinitely in Senate Judiciary on May 6, 2026, and House Bill 26-1037, a ban on government purchase of personal data from third parties, was postponed indefinitely in House Judiciary on April 22, 2026.[21][22]

The Boulder lawsuit: testing the rules that remain

What the legislature declined to write, a court is now being asked to read. The Boulder class action puts two questions in front of a Colorado judge. Does a municipal Flock network violate the state constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures? And may a police department refuse to search its own plate-reader data for a citizen because its vendor contract reserves the system for law-enforcement use? Boulder's motion to dismiss argues the Criminal Justice Records Act “does not require custodians to generate a record for release.”[15]

Both questions reach Arvada. Its 2023 Flock agreement limits access to “the awareness, prevention, and prosecution of crime, bona fide investigations by police departments, and archiving for evidence gathering,” and PM 460 declares plate data “not open to public review.”[13][18]

Denver is the nearest worked example. Its council unanimously rejected a two-year, $666,600 Flock extension in May 2025; Mayor Mike Johnston extended the expired contract himself for $498,500 that July, using a budget provision to stay under the council approval threshold; the public found out weeks later. In February 2026 Johnston announced the city would drop Flock for Axon, and by March all 110 cameras were removed.[4][5][10]

Lakewood, next door, is the other. Its contract, like Arvada's, was signed by the police chief and never voted on. The first time the question reached City Council, on September 21, 2026, council voted unanimously not to renew.[17]

By the fall of 2026 the statewide ledger was long. Fort Collins, Steamboat Springs, Moffat County and Englewood had cancelled Flock contracts; Denver, Douglas County, Longmont and Durango had switched to Axon; Englewood then deadlocked on an Axon replacement of its own; Commerce City went the other way and approved a $4.5 million Flock contract in April. The statewide survey that reported those decisions, published September 25, 2026, does not mention Arvada at all.[23]