Read What a Police Chief Wrote About Voiding a Theft Summons.

A theft summons, a package valued at $25 or less: Columbine Valley says exculpatory evidence was submitted for review about two weeks later. The police chief’s email, as the Sun quotes it: “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons we issued.”

By William Douglas Baker

Founding Editor

In September 2025 a Columbine Valley police sergeant issued Chrisanna Elser a theft summons over a package valued at $25 or less; the police chief voided it by email, The Colorado Sun reports. This edition’s question comes after that: how the end was written down. Flock Safety, a defendant in her lawsuit, says: “As noted in the complaint, the Flock system accurately identified the location of Ms. Elser’s vehicle, while law enforcement retained responsibility for interpreting and weighing that information as part of the broader investigation.”

The complaint in Elser v. Flock Group, Inc. et al., No. 1:26-cv-04977-NYW, filed October 5, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleges that on Monday, September 22, 2025, someone took a package from the front porch of a home in Bow Mar, shortly before noon. On September 27, the complaint alleges, Sergeant Jamie Milliman of the Columbine Valley Police Department knocked on Elser’s front door in Denver with a criminal summons already in his hand. The Sun, which viewed her doorbell video, reports that he told her, “you’ve driven there about 20 times in the last month.”

What the sergeant said he had

The proof, according to Milliman and as the Sun reports it, was “Footage from Flock surveillance cameras showing Elser’s forest green Rivian driving through the town from 11:52 a.m. to 12:09 p.m. on the day of the theft.” The complaint alleges Flock’s cameras captured her truck entering Bow Mar at approximately 11:52 a.m. and leaving at approximately 12:09 p.m., and that the photographs did not show who was driving. Flock’s Rights & Safeguards page, as fetched on October 7, 2026, states: “Flock ALPR does not identify drivers or passengers.” The same page says: “The system reports what a vehicle looks like, not who someone is.” Those are Flock’s descriptions of its own product. The Sun writes that Elser “had, in fact, driven to Bow Mar that day, but it was to visit her tailor, more than a quarter-mile from where the package was stolen, for a noon appointment.”

The Sun also reports that Milliman said he had a video from the theft victim that allegedly showed Elser ringing the doorbell, grabbing a package and running away. The Sun then quotes him: “this is a lock. One hundred percent. No doubt.” The complaint alleges he based his claim that she stole the package “on nothing more than a Flock hit showing that her truck had driven through Bow Mar on the day, and near the time, of the theft.” We did not view the video he described. The Sun adds that when Elser offered footage from her Rivian’s onboard cameras, Milliman said she could bring it to court.

What the Town and the chief wrote

Town Administrator J.D. McCrumb’s statement of November 11, 2025, as CBS Colorado prints it, describes “a theft investigation in the Town of Bow Mar.” The statement continues: “Our officer, using the evidence and information available to him at the time, had a reasonable belief in issuing a summons. It was not until approximately two weeks later that exculpatory evidence was submitted to our department for review, and the decision was made to drop the charges.” In the statement as printed, the Town names no one who submitted the evidence and no item that was submitted. “Reasonable belief,” “exculpatory” and “charges” are the Town’s words, not ours, and this edition adopts none of them.

The complaint supplies the dates: it places the summons on September 27, 2025 and Elser’s email to the chief and the sergeant on October 11. The Sun dates the chief’s email to October 15. The Town says the evidence was submitted about two weeks after the summons, and gives no calendar date. The complaint disputes why it took that long: it alleges the evidence was submitted two weeks later in part because Milliman refused to look at it on September 27, not because Elser withheld it.

What the complaint says she sent

The complaint alleges that on Saturday, October 11, 2025, at 7:53 p.m., having been unable to reach anyone by phone, Elser emailed Chief Bret Cottrell and Sergeant Milliman a written timeline of her movements on September 22, with links to her truck’s recordings, her phone’s location history, the tailor’s security camera photographs, a map of her route and a photograph of the outfit she had worn. That date is fourteen days after the summons date the complaint gives. The complaint alleges she wrote in the same email that additional verification of her route was available from the Flock cameras at the entrance to Bow Mar and at the intersection of Tufts Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard. The Sun quotes Cottrell’s email to Elser, which it dates to October 15, four days after the email the complaint describes: “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons we issued.” We did not read the chief’s email; the wording above is the Sun’s quotation.

Minutes at the start, a verb at the end

On our reading, this summons is documented at two levels of detail. The start, as the Sun reports the sergeant’s proof, comes with clock times. The end comes in verbs. The Town says evidence “was submitted” and a decision “was made,” and names no submitter and no item. The chief’s sentence, in the Sun’s quotation, names no item either. The complaint says her email linked to recordings, location history, photographs, a route map and an outfit photograph, and also said verification was available from Flock’s cameras. Even that account does not say which of them the sentence means. What the chief means by “the evidence,” this edition cannot say.

“Faced with a high-tech accusation,” the Sun wrote in October 2025, Elser “turned to a different form of electronic surveillance to prove her innocence.” The framing is the Sun’s.

Elser’s own lines come near the end of each report. She told the Sun: “It’s fortunate that we have our own footage to fight back something like this.” She told CBS Colorado: “Now it’s about proving where you are and what you’re doing, instead of fighting crime.” Neither is a finding about how the summons ended.

On our reading, and in this case alone, her two lines describe one reversal: showing where a person was becomes that person’s work. What this edition adds is smaller. It asks of the sentence that closes a matter what a reader would ask of the one that opens it: which item, from whom, dated when.

The Agentics read

Agentics reads this record through Digital Derangement Syndrome™ (DDS™): AI-mediated systems failing to recognize legitimate authority. On our mapping, not any source’s finding, the closest fit is Decision Exclusion, the fifth clinical characteristic: decisions made without the entity ever entering consideration. The entity is the footage she offered at the door, as the Sun reports; the decision, the summons the complaint dates to September 27. The Town says its officer issued it using “the evidence and information available to him at the time.” The fit is partial: that decision was a person’s, and the Sun reports the sergeant named a camera record as his proof. At the end, the chief’s sentence that the Sun quotes names no item within “the evidence” she provided. The mapping is not a finding that anyone or anything failed, and it makes no claim about what the system did.

Where the argument stops

Everything contested has a source: the complaint’s allegations, Elser’s statements, the Town’s and Flock’s statements, and the reports of the Sun, CBS Colorado and Denver7. We did not view the doorbell video, the Flock photographs or the files the complaint lists. As of October 7, 2026, none of the sources we read says Flock’s cameras misread her plate, took her truck for another vehicle, or placed it at a wrong place or time. Denverite, 9News, KDVR and 404 Media could not be read.

The CourtListener docket, as fetched October 7, 2026, lists no answer, motion or ruling on the merits. This edition makes no finding on what the system did. The Sun reported her turn to her own recordings before this edition did. Its quotation is our only source for the chief’s full sentence. The mapping to DDS™ is an editorial judgment, not any source’s finding.