DENVER — As the city continues to struggle with a surge in reported car thefts over the last five years, Denver police hope more than 100 license plate reader cameras will help them track and recover stolen cars throughout the city.
9NEWS Investigates requested the list of locations of where the cameras may be installed and the city provided about 60 proposed locations. There are expected to be 111 automatic license plate reader cameras to be installed by the end of the summer at a cost of $339,000 through a contract with Flock Safety, an automatic license plate reader company out of Georgia.
According to the list of locations, license plate reader cameras would be situated along the city’s busiest roadways like Federal Boulevard, Alameda Avenue and Speer Boulevard.
Colfax Avenue would see the most cameras with about 10 locations along the corridor.
According to the Denver Police Department’s crime data dashboard, reported auto thefts have surged over the last five years from 5,233 in 2019 to 12,125 last year, putting pressure on city officials to do more to curb thievery.
According to the city, police have made 41 felony arrests and recovered 25 stolen vehicles over the last year through some of the cameras that have already been installed by Flock Safety.
While the cameras are proving successful, civil rights groups like the ACLU continue to express concern about mass surveillance and potential for law enforcement to abuse the data.
“Automatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse,” the ACLU writes on its website.
According to the city’s contract with Flock Safety, the data is not owned by the company and is controlled by the Denver Police Department. All data, except information collected for investigative purposes, is deleted every 30 days, according to the city.
“Only officers/detectives that are involved in direct investigations of criminal incidents and/or investigate and prepare cases for prosecution have access to search the Flock system. Other users, such as general patrol officers, only have the ability to receive alerts of vehicles reported as wanted/stolen, Amber or Silver alerts, or associated with violent criminal incidents,” Department of Safety spokeswoman Andrea Webber said to 9NEWS in an email.
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