My vote is not for sale to surveillance vendors.
Denver has no law governing what surveillance the city buys, what happens to the data, or who gets to see it. We know how that ends because we ran the experiment.
The short version
The company running Denver's license plate cameras let our data reach federal immigration agents. Council refused to renew the deal. The mayor's office extended it anyway at $498,500, just under the amount that requires council approval. The replacement contract passed 7 to 6.
I will vote no on every surveillance technology contract and renewal until Denver passes an ordinance that requires a public impact report and a council vote before the city buys tools that watch you.
That contract comes back while I'd be in office. One of the six no votes was Sarah Parady, whose seat this is. Keep the seat a no and the renewal lives or dies on a single wavering yes. Some of the yes votes said out loud they wanted rules first.
I'd give them the rules.
The details
What Denver has now
Nothing on the books. The Denver Revised Municipal Code contains no chapter governing acquisition or use of surveillance technology. Oversight currently consists of a task force the mayor's office convened in 2025 after council unanimously rejected a Flock extension, and it hasn't produced an ordinance as of July 2026.
The record this pledge stands on
- May 2025: council rejects a two-year, $666,000 Flock extension.
- July 7, 2025: the administration signs a five-month extension at $498,500, just under the $500,000 threshold at which Charter Section 3.2.6 requires council approval. In October, nine council members sign a letter to Auditor O'Brien calling the move undemocratic and asking whether it violated city contracting rules, and the mayor signs a further no-fee extension through March with a ban on sharing data with federal agencies.
- Reporting establishes Flock placed Denver data on a nationwide lookup network reachable by agencies doing immigration enforcement, with a previously undisclosed Border Patrol relationship.
- March 31, 2026: council approves a one-year Axon license plate reader contract 7 to 6, Council President Sandoval breaking the tie. Multiple yes votes state on the record they want an ordinance governing the technology before a longer commitment.
Why the city can't point to state law instead
Both 2026 state bills on this died. SB26-070, on historical location data, was pulled by its sponsors on the Senate floor in May 2026. SB26-071, the SAFE Act covering law enforcement surveillance tech broadly, was postponed indefinitely in committee on May 6, 2026. There's no state framework coming. If Denver wants rules, Denver writes them.
What the ordinance requires
Before any city agency acquires or materially expands surveillance technology:
- A published surveillance impact report covering capability, data retention, sharing agreements, and cost.
- Approval by council ordinance, not buried in a consent-agenda resolution.
- A binding data-sharing policy with a flat prohibition on federal immigration access, extending the term the city already negotiated into the 2025 Flock extension.
- Annual public audit of access logs filed with council.
Why 19 weeks is enough
The Axon contract is one year from March 31, 2026. Renewal lands around March 2027, inside the term. The 7 to 6 margin included Parady's no, and this pledge holds her seat at no, so the administration must keep every single yes, including a council president who called herself undecided and members who conditioned their yes on an ordinance. The ordinance has a natural sponsor coalition in the five returning no votes plus the yes votes who asked for rules. The drafting is the easy part, and the task force record is already built.
What this pledge does not do
It doesn't require ripping out existing cameras, doesn't touch red light or photo radar programs governed by state statute, and doesn't prejudge any specific future technology. It sets a process, then votes follow the process.