The University of Colorado Boulder Police Department is sharing information publicly from camera technology installed a year ago.
CU Boulder installed 11 Flock Safety cameras around campus last summer for about $35,000. Flock Safety cameras capture vehicle and license plate images of cars that drive through the CU Boulder campus.
Now, CUPD is sharing the data the cameras have collected through a public online dashboard.
“They’re specifically license plate reader cameras so there’s no facial recognition,” CUPD Commander Eric Edford said, adding, “Flock Safety are not ongoing recording cameras, they are just capturing, basically, snapshots of vehicles as they’re going by.”
The dashboard provides more information about the cameras, including the number of vehicles, hotlist hits and searches detected in 30 days. Data is retained for 30 days to maintain the privacy of law-abiding citizens and is never shared or sold to third parties.
The hotlist is a list of vehicle license plates associated with missing persons, warrants, stolen vehicles, stolen license plates or other criminal offenses as provided by the National Crime Information Center and the Colorado Crime Information Center.
“We’re super excited to be able to share this information with our community and it goes in alignment with our dedication to ensure accountability in policing and transparency in policing,” CUPD Police Chief Doreen Jokerst said.
“I think from the moment we put the cameras up, it has definitely strengthened our proactive investigations and helped our investigation team. And now it’s exciting that we can share some of that information with the public that’s really helping us solve crimes.”
Edford said the cameras have been working well. For example, CUPD was investigating an attempted homicide in Williams Village more than a year ago and the cameras helped detect the vehicle associated with that crime.
The system runs all hours of the day, every day of the year.
“At the end of the day we can’t have officers or our staff be at every intersection or every location that a crime may be occurring,” Jokerst said “So it’s really using advanced technology to help us problem solve, be proactive and help detect crime.”
The cameras do not do facial recognition or collect any information about gender or race, Jokerst said, which helps alleviate some of the privacy concerns. CUPD has not received any complaints about the cameras since they were installed.
The online dashboard includes information on when it’s not acceptable to use the cameras, including for immigration enforcement and traffic enforcement.
“I think it goes toward our mission, vision and values in regard to sharing the information that we have,” Jokerst said, adding, “Anytime we can do to be transparent and share that information I truly believe that’s the way policing should be done.”
Jokerst said the Flock Safety cameras are a good step forward in building out more technology and camera systems across campus. For more information, visit transparency.flocksafety.com/university-of-colorado-boulder-campus-pd-co.
