Full transcript
Yeah,
Flock,
who fell out of favor with the city,
told me this afternoon
that it was finishing taking down its 100+ cameras
that were here in the city of Denver.
That contract expired today,
and now after a really tight vote,
it clears the way for about half as many Axon cameras to be put up.
Just hours after Flock took back its controversial license plate reading cameras,
Denver City council was torn on the company
that would replace them.
I know
that I'm the deciding vote.
Which again
does not
feel great.
That decision
came at the last possible second.
Honest,
to be honest with you,
I need like one more minute to think about this.
City council president Amanda Sandoval was the deciding vote
after a 6 to 6 split
on the contract with Exxon.
Tran.
Sandoval's deciding yes vote on the one year
contract came despite opposition from the ACLU,
immigrants,
trans,
and abortion rights groups who fear the
cameras could be used by the federal government
or law enforcement outside Colorado to track down people in those
communities.
This company will comply with subpoenas,
and it has to.
It doesn't have a choice about that.
Um,
if we create data,
we are at real risk of creating data
that does get subpoenaed.
Proponents say until that happens,
the technology
is too helpful for Denver police.
Or
before that,
if
we find out that ICE is accessing these cameras or we do start to see subpoenas
that we haven't seen,
um,
we can address those things between now and then.
The holdup Tuesday was also not on the Axon contract itself.
The 6 no votes came in from council members who wanted to see
a city ordinance regulating the cameras first before signing with a new vendor.
There is no way
we can trust
this mayor,
the police department,
or this council
if we don't craft a law.
That enforces people's constitutional rights.
Rushed or not,
the new Axon camera system is coming
despite a vote that could not have possibly been closer.
I mean,
I've made lots of hard decisions and I can't remember making a harder one.
Mayor Mike Johnston
had caught a lot of flak for how he handled the flock debacle,
but he celebrated the approval tonight of this contract and
said in a statement that this is common sense technology
with data protections in place
that'll keep the feds from getting access to the camera system.
Live in Denver,
Spencer Sawcher,
9 News.