A Ring video of a Colorado woman being handed a criminal summons for a porch-package theft she did not commit recently went viral after the accusation rested on a Flock Safety automated license plate reader hit. Now, the woman involved in that case, Chrisanna Elser, is suing Flock Group, the towns of Columbine Valley and Bow Mar, Sergeant Jamie Milliman, and Chief Bret Cottrell in federal court on behalf of herself and other Coloradans whose plates the company has logged.
Flock allegedly spotted this Colorado woman's truck around the time and location of a package theft.
What ensued was a Kafkaesque scene in which she insisted it wasn't her, while an officer who came to her door said he had indisputable proof—but refused to show her unless she… pic.twitter.com/2KCmwfwP1o
— reason (@reason) August 18, 2026
Milliman already had the paperwork in his hand when he knocked on her Fort Logan door on September 27th, 2025. “I guess this is a shock to you, but I am telling you, this is a lock,” Milliman told Elser at the time. “One hundred percent. No doubt.”
All of This Over a $25 Package
The package in question was worth $25, and it disappeared from a Bow Mar porch shortly before noon on September 22nd, 2025. The Colorado Sun reported that six Flock cameras cover Bow Mar. Bow Mar contracts its policing to Columbine Valley, and Milliman told Elser nobody gets in or out without the department knowing.
What those cameras actually recorded, according to the filing, was her Rivian entering Bow Mar at 11:52 a.m. and leaving at 12:09 p.m. Milliman also told her the truck had been through town about 20 times in the prior month. The complaint says she was being fitted for a gown more than a quarter mile away and that the onboard cameras in the Rivian, the truck’s GPS, and her phone’s location history showed two drive-throughs and no stop at the porch.
The court filing also says the tailor’s own surveillance placed her at the fitting and that a doorbell video of the theft depicts a woman who does not look like Elser, who fled on foot and never got into a vehicle. When delivering the summons, Milliman told Elser she could see his video evidence if she went to court, and that a denial meant he would not extend her any courtesy.
Elser and her husband then contacted Columbine Valley and Bow Mar officials a dozen times over nine days, the complaint says. None of them agreed to look at the supporting evidence she had assembled. On October 7th, 2025, ten days after Milliman called the case a lock, the department posted on Nextdoor asking neighbors for video of a dark green Rivian, the complaint says.
On October 11th, 2025, Elser sent Cottrell a letter with the evidence she had been trying to show the department. This included the Rivian video of the two drive-throughs, the truck’s GPS, her phone location history, and footage from the tailor. Cottrell wrote back a few days later, “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons we issued.”
The Colorado Sun reported that a November 2025 letter of reprimand called Milliman’s demeanor unprofessional and inconsistent with the standards of a sworn police officer. Local coverage of the summons has not named another suspect.
As all of this unfolded, the complaint says Elser lost five pounds in three days, then more than 15 over the following weeks, and developed stress-related hair loss that needed medical treatment. It also says she reported the accusation to her employer in the financial industry before a client could hear it somewhere else, that the employer nearly placed her on administrative leave, and that she withdrew from a keynote she had been preparing for more than a month.
What the Suit Wants From Flock and Law Enforcement
Elser filed the proposed class action on Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver, and the class claims against Flock are limited to Coloradans, not every driver in the national network.
The Fourth Amendment search claim names every defendant and treats the warrantless pull of her location history as an unreasonable search. The complaint’s theory for naming Flock, a private company, is that Flock acted jointly with the towns.
Malicious prosecution is pleaded only against Milliman, Cottrell, and the two towns. Separate counts under the Colorado Constitution run against the two officers. The claims aimed at the company are intrusion upon seclusion, plus negligence and negligent design, on the theory that Flock sold a searchable archive and refused to require a warrant, a case number, or a supervisor’s sign-off before an officer could run a plate.
According to the filing, Flock’s chief executive personally emailed Cottrell, and told him that signing on would give the department around-the-clock access to the cameras. Elser is asking the court to make Columbine Valley, Bow Mar, Cottrell, and Flock delete the retained location data, to bar them from keeping it unless it is tied to an open case number, and to make Flock require a warrant, a case number, and a supervisor’s approval before a Colorado agency can search the system.
Milliman’s initial hiring is also part of the oversight claim. The complaint says the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office fired him in 2013 for shoddy investigative work and failure to follow the Constitution, including missed citizen reports and incomplete paperwork. Columbine Valley hired him anyway and later promoted him. The suit says the town “empowered him to use Flock’s mass surveillance system without any oversight.”
Elser said in a public statement, “The scariest part is what happened to me can happen to anyone. I had no idea the Flock cameras existed and no idea a private company was keeping a record of every time I drove past my own neighborhood, or that any officer could pull it up without asking anyone or giving a reason for doing so.”
Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel issued a statement that the system accurately identified the location of Elser’s vehicle, and that interpreting the hit was the department’s job. “Flock stands by the accuracy and integrity of its technology and intends to vigorously defend itself in this litigation,” said Lewbel.
To Lewbel’s point, Elser’s suit says the license plate scans were correct and it was the conclusions law enforcement drew from them that were wrong.
Anti-Flock Momentum is Building
The filing lands in a week when a federal judge already used language similar to what is included in Elser’s complaint. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill suppressed evidence in United States v. Melisa Susan Kyle after a Tulsa County deputy ran a warrantless search of automated license plate readers, including Flock. Hill called the systems “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance” and wrote that the tool “collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times.”
The day after Hill’s order, Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley, along with Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced the Ban Flock Act, which would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers or the data they collect, and cut federal grants to state and local governments that keep the cameras.
Sanders said, “We cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement.”
And this sort of criticism is coming from both sides of the aisle. Last month, Republican Senator Josh Hawley said he wanted Flock’s chief executive in front of the Senate. “Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley stated.
Hawley has a separate Stop Flock Abuse Act, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both Republicans, have already moved to limit the cameras in their respective states.
