The City of Boulder launched a formal competitive procurement process on April 17, 2026, inviting vendors to bid on a contract to supply 49 automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) to its police department. The move effectively opens the door to replacing Flock Safety, which has operated more than 30 cameras across the city’s arterial road network for the past four years, following sustained community pressure over data privacy and the risk of federal access to the surveillance data.
A Contract Under Pressure
Boulder’s relationship with Flock Safety has been shaped by a growing national backlash. The company’s cameras record vehicle licence plates alongside AI-extracted attributes such as colour, body type, and bumper stickers each time a vehicle passes a sensor, storing that data in a database automatically shared with law enforcement agencies across Colorado without requiring a search warrant. In recent months, the arrangement has drawn criticism in Boulder and across the country amid concerns that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could access the data. Denver cancelled its Flock contract following similar public pressure, and Longmont‘s city council voted to pause data-sharing from its own Flock cameras in December 2025.
Boulder did not terminate its contract immediately. Instead, city officials renegotiated its terms in March 2026, securing an opt-out clause that allows the city to exit with 30 days’ notice and no financial penalties, along with updated data privacy and security requirements and a commitment to regular monthly transparency reviews. The existing cameras remain operational throughout the procurement process.
What the RFP Requires
The request for proposals, classified under government purchasing categories for surveillance and security cameras, traffic radar instruments, and identity tracking devices, sets out baseline technical requirements: cameras must be capable of identifying a vehicle’s make, body type, colour, and licence plate. Notably, the RFP does not mandate the capture of supplementary AI-generated attributes such as bumper stickers or bike racks, features that Flock currently provides as standard.
Privacy carries significant weight in the evaluation criteria, accounting for 20% of overall bid scoring. The city has stated that the selected vendor must demonstrate robust standards for transparency, accountability, and data protection, and that its values align with Boulder’s broader principles on data governance. A newly formed task force of data and technology experts, convened for the first time in April 2026, will not have formal input into the vendor selection, which the city manager’s office will handle as an operational decision. The public will not be formally consulted during the selection process.
Proposals are due by 29 May 2026. As of 22 April, 61 companies had downloaded the RFP. Flock Safety had not yet submitted a bid at that date, though city officials had previously indicated the company was likely to do so.
A Timeline Toward a Five-Year Contract
The procurement follows a structured pilot phase. Around 19 June, the city manager’s office will shortlist vendors and ask each to deploy one camera at a designated intersection. That two-month field trial will run through August, during which police staff will be trained on the respective systems. A final vendor will be selected in September, with a five-year contract with annual renewal options expected to commence in February 2027.
Axon Among the Likely Contenders
One vendor positioned to compete strongly for the contract is Axon Enterprise, which Denver recently approved following community pushback on Flock. Boulder already contracts with Axon for body-camera AI transcription services, and the new RFP explicitly requires the winning vendor to integrate with the city’s existing Axon systems, a specification that provides Axon with a structural advantage. Like Flock, Axon uses AI to capture detailed vehicle attributes and permits warrantless searches of its data; unlike Flock, its platform does not offer national inter-agency data sharing, which has been a specific point of concern in Boulder. Other organisations that showed interest in the RFP include Axis Communications and Mile High Security Solutions, among a broad field of security companies.
Colorado Springs is also transitioning from Flock to Axon for its ALPR programme, with the city’s police department planning to nearly triple its camera count. Axon’s growing footprint in Colorado positions it as the main institutional alternative to Flock across the state.
The Statewide Legislative Backdrop
Boulder’s procurement is unfolding against an active legislative debate at the state level. Colorado Senate Bill 70, co-sponsored by Boulder Democrat Senator Judy Amabile and Republican Senator Lynda Zamora Wilson, is currently advancing through the legislature. As amended, the bill would require a warrant before police can access ALPR databases for data older than 72 hours, cap data retention at 30 days, and restrict sharing across jurisdictions. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2026 following five hours of testimony and input from roughly 70 speakers.
If enacted, SB 70 would reshape the operating parameters for any vendor awarded Boulder’s contract, requiring warrant-based access for historical searches and capping the default retention window at 30 days. Boulder’s police department already operates a 30-day deletion policy under its current Flock agreement, but the statewide bill would embed that floor into law and extend it to other Colorado agencies that currently operate without retention limits.
The Broader Policy Tension
The Boulder case reflects a tension increasingly visible across US municipalities: ALPR technology has demonstrable operational value in recovering stolen vehicles and supporting criminal investigations, but the scale and permanence of the data it generates raises significant constitutional and civil liberties questions that local procurement decisions alone cannot resolve.
Boulder Police have pointed to a 34.5% reduction in motor vehicle thefts since adopting Flock cameras as evidence of the technology’s public safety impact. Civil liberties organisations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that ALPR networks, particularly when interconnected nationally, function as infrastructure for mass location tracking that is disproportionate in scope relative to the law enforcement benefits. The Brennan Center for Justice has similarly recommended that warrants be required before law enforcement accesses historical ALPR databases, drawing on the legal framework established by the US Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States.
With more than 100 communities across Colorado using ALPR technology and 42 holding direct contracts with Flock, according to reporting by the Colorado Sun, Boulder’s procurement outcome and Colorado’s legislative process are being closely watched by other municipalities navigating the same trade-offs.
