The Aurora Police Department installed Flock Safety cameras outside nine of the city’s high schools last year, a decision student advocates say raises questions about how law enforcement is using the controversial surveillance technology to monitor teenagers.
The license plate readers, which use artificial intelligence, were installed in school parking lots in partnership with both Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek Schools, district and police officials confirmed to The Denver Post.
However, Cherry Creek Schools leaders removed the Flock cameras — which have garnered intense public scrutiny nationwide — from the district’s campuses earlier this year.
Aurora Police Department officials said the devices increase safety at the schools and the use of Flock cameras across the city has helped officers in their investigations, such as in identifying a 14-year-old suspect in a shooting at Sand Creek Park last month.
“We partnered with APS and CCSD to install (Flock) systems near the high schools to enhance community safety and to help protect students, faculty and staff,” Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan said in a statement.
But student advocates and civil rights attorneys argued the placement of Flock cameras on public school property raises additional concerns given most high schoolers are minors.
“What are children doing that you need to monitor (them)?” said JoJo Padilla, executive director of Denver Healing Generations Network, a nonprofit that works with students of color in metro Denver. “What do you think is happening? Because they’re taking away the ability for the kids and their parents to consent to this.”
Flock cameras are able to read license plates, data that is then used to check whether a vehicle has been stolen or used in a different crime. The devices have received criticism for the amount of data they collect, and privacy advocates argue their proliferation has created a mass-surveillance network that can be misused by police and other government officials.
A Texas officer used Flock cameras to track a woman who crossed state lines and was suspected of having an abortion. At least 50 law enforcement officers have been charged or accused of using Flock’s devices inappropriately, including to stalk women, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
Criticism of the cameras has only increased in recent years amid concerns that the data collected by Flock is shared with federal immigration officials as part of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation efforts.
Earlier this year, Denver leaders decided to end the city’s contract with Flock following months of public criticism. Other Colorado municipalities that have canceled or chosen not to renew their Flock contracts include Salida, Longmont, Fort Collins, Durango and Steamboat Springs. Some of those cities, including Denver, will switch to another company that provides license-plate-reading cameras.
In Colorado’s high country, people have cut down Flock cameras installed by their local police departments.
Aurora Public Schools entered into an agreement with the police department to allow Flock cameras on campuses last year. The document, which largely pertains to the district’s use of school resource officers, states that Flock cameras will be on campus for at least two years and were installed at no cost to the school district.
The police department has Flock cameras on five of the district’s campuses: Aurora Central High School, Gateway High School, Hinkley High School, Rangeview High School and Vista PEAK Preparatory, district spokesman Corey Christiansen said. The cameras are located in the schools’ parking lots, he said.
Christiansen declined an interview request and referred all further questions about Flock cameras to the police department.
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Unlike Aurora Public Schools, Cherry Creek Schools did not have a formal agreement with the Aurora Police Department.
Police installed the cameras in the parking lots of four high schools in 2025 after then-Superintendent Christopher Smith gave the department “verbal approval,” said Cherry Creek Schools spokeswoman Abbe Smith.
The district removed the cameras from those campuses — Overland, Grandview, Cherokee Trail and Smoky Hill high schools — in May at the direction of the Board of Education because there wasn’t an official agreement in place with the police department, she said.
“When Interim Superintendent Jen Perry came into office, she asked for the cameras to be removed from school properties,” Abbe Smith said. “…Dr. Perry was not made aware (of the devices) until she stepped into the role as interim superintendent. When she learned that we had Flock cameras at our Aurora schools and that the board had not approved the installation, she asked for them to be removed.”
Perry served as deputy superintendent at Cherry Creek Schools until she took the helm of the district following Christopher Smith’s sudden resignation in January.
Christopher Smith declined to comment for this story. But his attorney, Tony Leffert, refuted the district’s claim that Perry didn’t know about the cameras’ presence on campus, saying that Cherry Creek administrators — including those who reported to Perry before she became interim superintendent — were in direct contact with local law enforcement.
Cherry Creek did not pay the Aurora Police Department for the Flock cameras, although the district did give the agency $185,000 to fund eight school resource officers, according to a 2024 agreement.
Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek Schools are two of Colorado’s five largest K-12 districts. The two biggest school systems — Denver Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools — each told The Post that they do not have Flock cameras on any of their campuses.
The Douglas County School District briefly allowed the devices on campus as part of a pilot program, but removed the cameras after about six months in March 2023, district spokeswoman Paula Hans said.
Juvenile rights attorney Elie Zwiebel said it’s common for schools to use security camera footage in discipline proceedings with students, but districts’ decision to allow Flock cameras to be placed on their campuses presents new concerns about the surveillance of teenagers.
“For schools to work with companies like this, I think, demonstrates they have a higher priority in perception of safety that may not be rooted in reality,” he said.
A major concern relates to whether Flock’s software can also capture people’s faces — in this case, teens’ faces — and what they are wearing, said Denver civil rights attorney Andy McNulty.
Flock says on its website that its devices don’t use facial recognition technology, but hackers recently copied a camera’s data and the files showed the company’s software does detect people — not just cars and license plates.
“Your kids are going to school and their image and likeness is part of the internet record forever and forever,” he said. “…There are no guardrails in place. It’s a massive invasion of privacy… which is being implemented on kids.”
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