TL;DR: Denver Police Department is running two competing drone-as-first-responder programs: one with Skydio (free through March 2026) and another with Flock Safety's Aerodome (free through August 2026). Drones arrive at scenes before officers 84% of the time. Nobody on the city's surveillance task force knew about the programs until reporters started asking questions. In February 2026, a woman spotted a drone hovering outside her bathroom window while she was bathing. This is what surveillance creep looks like: free trials, no oversight, and promises that get harder to reverse.
Two Drone Vendors, Zero Oversight
Denver Police are testing drones from two different surveillance companies at the same time. Both are free trials. Both were signed without city council approval. And both were news to members of the city's own surveillance task force.[1]
The Skydio program launched in October 2025. Two Skydio X10 drones and two docking stations were installed on the roof of the Denver Police Administration building on Cherokee Street. By February 2026, those two drones had flown 297 missions, reached scenes before officers 88% of the time, and were the sole response in 80 of 199 calls.[2]
The Flock Safety Aerodome contract was signed August 11, 2025. It's a one-year free trial running through August 2026. Members of the city's Surveillance Technology Task Force told Denver7 they learned about it only recently.[1]
Councilmember At-Large Serena Gonzalez-Gutierrez sits on that task force. When reporters reached her, she said it was the first she'd heard about either drone program.[3]
The Numbers Denver Is Selling
Here's what Denver PD wants you to know: through February 12, 2026, drones responded to 622 calls for service. They arrived first 84% of the time. In 36% of those calls, drone pilots determined no patrol response was needed at all.[2]
The pitch is efficiency. A drone can be at a scene in under two minutes. It can stream video to officers en route, showing them what they're walking into. Two pilots monitoring incoming calls decide which ones warrant drone deployment. Robberies, burglaries, assaults, fights, weapons calls, and narcotics reports all qualify.[4]
But the numbers tell another story too. If drones are the sole response in roughly a third of calls, what happens when something goes wrong and there's no officer on scene? And who reviews the footage from those 622 deployments?
Flock Safety's History in Denver
Flock isn't new to Denver, and the relationship hasn't been smooth.
In May 2025, Denver City Council unanimously rejected a $666,000 contract extension for Flock Safety's automated license plate readers (ALPRs). Residents had packed town halls for weeks, demanding the city stop sharing ALPR data with federal immigration enforcement.[5]
Council said no. Mayor Mike Johnston's office said yes anyway. The administration allowed Flock cameras to keep running through a "task force" review period, effectively extending a contract the council had voted down.[5]
Gonzalez-Gutierrez put it directly: "After everything that we have gone through with the automated license plate readers... it's very, very concerning that we're continuing to do business with this company."[3]
Now Flock isn't just selling cameras. The Aerodome platform is designed to put those same surveillance capabilities airborne. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that "the integration of Flock Safety's flagship ALPR technology with its Aerodome drone equipment is a police surveillance combo poised to elevate the privacy threats to civilians."[6]
Denver says it won't use the ALPR capability during the pilot. That's a promise, not a policy.
The Drone Outside the Bathroom Window
In February 2026, a Denver woman named Eden was taking a bath around 8:30pm when she saw a flashing light outside her second-floor window. A drone was hovering there.[7]
Her boyfriend Carlos saw it from another window. They called Denver Police, who confirmed a DPD drone had been in the area responding to a suicidal person call near their apartment building.[7]
Denver PD's response: flight logs show the drone was at about 200 feet (roughly 18 stories high), and the camera was pointed away from the couple's apartment the entire time. The closest the drone flew was three buildings south of where they live.[7]
Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. The point is that four months into a drone program most residents didn't know existed, people are already asking why police aircraft are hovering near their homes at night.
Eden told reporters she felt violated. That's the word she used. Whether the camera was pointed at her or not, she didn't consent to police surveillance equipment outside her bathroom window.
What These Drones Actually Do
The Skydio X10 isn't a hobbyist quadcopter. It's a professional surveillance platform:[8]
- Speed: Up to 53 mph
- Camera: 400x zoom capability
- Sensors: Thermal and night vision
- Range: 2 nautical miles from docking station
- Autonomy: Launches, flies missions, and returns without human pilot on-site
Flock's Aerodome platform offers similar capabilities with one key difference: it's designed to integrate with Flock's network of license plate readers, cameras, and data analytics. The pitch to police departments is a unified surveillance system: ground cameras and airborne drones feeding into the same monitoring platform.[6]
Flock claims drones can reach calls in an average of 86 seconds, that 20% of calls get resolved without dispatching officers, and that subject location rates increase 89% in cities using the system.[2]
The Transparency Problem
Denver has a Surveillance Technology Task Force specifically created to review police surveillance programs before they launch. The Skydio contract was signed in October 2025. The Flock contract was signed in August 2025. Task force members say they learned about both from reporters, not from the department they're supposed to oversee.[1]
Neither contract required city council approval. Both were structured as "no-cost" trials, which means they slid under the dollar thresholds that trigger council review. That's how surveillance quietly becomes permanent: free trials that nobody votes on, followed by paid contracts that officials call "renewals" rather than "new programs."[5]
Gonzalez-Gutierrez called for "regulations and guardrails in place" and for allowing the task force to actually implement oversight. But neither Colorado nor Denver currently has comprehensive regulations governing police drone use.[2]
Where This Goes: The Chula Vista Warning
Want to see Denver's future? Look at Chula Vista, California.
Police there have flown 20,000 drone missions over six years. Residents report the drones fly predominantly over Latino and working-class neighborhoods. One community advocate told the Colorado Sun: "It feels like our home is not ours anymore."[9]
The data from drone flights feeds into predictive policing systems (notably Palantir's software), creating what sociologist Sarah Brayne calls the "big data dragnet": surveillance that is "suspicionless, programmatic, ongoing, cumulative, remote, invisible, automated, preemptive."[9]
That's not paranoia. That's the documented trajectory of drone programs that start with free trials and end with permanent aerial surveillance infrastructure.
What You Can Do
Contact the Surveillance Task Force
Denver's task force is supposed to review these programs. Tell them to do their job before the pilots become permanent.
Demand Council Votes
Free trials shouldn't bypass democratic oversight. Contact your council member and demand votes on surveillance programs regardless of cost.
Track the Flight Logs
DPD posts drone flight information. Use it. Know when drones are flying over your neighborhood.
Support State Legislation
Colorado has no comprehensive drone surveillance law. SB26-070 would require warrants for prolonged ALPR surveillance. It's a start. Push for more.
The Bottom Line
Denver Police are running a competition between two surveillance vendors. Neither trial was approved by city council. Neither was reviewed by the surveillance task force. Neither requires any ongoing oversight.
The free trials end this year. One runs through March. One through August. Then comes the conversation about paid contracts. By that point, the drones will have flown thousands of missions, generated terabytes of footage, and become part of the department's standard operations.
That's how surveillance gets normalized: not with a vote, but with a pilot program that nobody noticed until it was already flying.
References
- Denver7 - Denver Police Quietly Launch Drones as First-Responders (2026)
- Denverite - Denver Police Has a Contract with Flock for Drone First Responders (October 2025)
- Denver City Council - Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez
- CBS Colorado - Pilot Program Using Drones Helps Denver Police Respond to Emergency Calls (2026)
- EFF - "Free" Surveillance Tech Still Comes at a High and Dangerous Cost (February 2026)
- EFF - Drone As First Responder Programs Are Swarming Across the United States (2024)
- 9News - Woman's Report of Drone Outside Window Puts Focus on DPD Drone Program (February 2026)
- Skydio - X10D Drone Specifications
- Colorado Sun - Opinion: Denverites Want Flock License Plate Cameras Out of Town. Air Surveillance Should Be Next. (February 2026)