Photo by MattGush - Getty Images
Flock camera with solar charger
A Flock camera surveils a city street for car license plates in Fullerton, California (2026).
Milwaukee needs to stop warrantless spying on its residents. Across Wisconsin, city after city and department after department are saying no to Flock. What do Dane County, UW Madison, Appleton, Sheboygan, Oshkosh, UW Oshkosh, Verona, Stoughton, Kaukauna, Monona, Chetek, Sturgeon Bay, Menasha, Fond du Lac, Waupun, Ripon, Winnebago, Winneconne, and Racine County know that Milwaukee doesn’t?
On September 3, about 80 Milwaukee leaders and community members attended the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission (FPC) hearing in City Hall demanding that Milwaukee end its expensive and intrusive relationship with Flock. Not one person spoke in favor of the creepy video system.
The next day, 12 more Wisconsin departments ended their relationships with Flock Safety—the mass surveillance system that continuously tracks, photos, and videos people without a warrant under the guise of simply reading license plates.
On September 9, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley stated he does not plan to include funding for Flock in the 2027 budget, opting not to waste precious resources on an easily abused mass surveillance system. The county’s contract with Flock ends this year.
No Cameras on Campus
The next day the University of Milwaukee (UWM) announced they were ending their contract with Flock and directed them to remove the cameras from school grounds.
Also, on September 10, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sued 12 municipalities in Waukesha for their use of Flock, including the City of Brookfield, City of Delafield, Village of Elm Grove, Village of Hartland, Village of Menomonee Falls, Village of Mukwonago, City of Muskego, City of New Berlin, City of Oconomowoc, Village of Pewaukee, City of Waukesha and Waukesha County. This is also significant because Waukesha contracts with the federal government (ICE) through their 287(g) agreement, thereby proving they are quite willing to share data with the federal government.
And yet, in the City of Milwaukee, our mayor and police chief have promised us more of the same—guardrails we can’t trust, audits that don’t prevent stalking, and a continued relationship with a third-party company that the FPC can’t oversee. Who is whispering in their ear that these shiny new changes will fool the people? The emperor's new guardrails will not protect us or our privacy.
Devil’s Bargain
The $223,100 question is: Why don't Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Police Chief Norman see the writing on the wall? If other cities and counties don’t mind incurring a small financial penalty for ending their contracts—a pretty typical consequence of a divorce from an abusive relationship—why should we? MPD received about $318 million in Milwaukee’s 2026 budget—making it by FAR the highest funded thing in our entire city budget. Next year, the MPD is asking for an unprecedented $345 million dollars! How much of that goes toward warrantless surveillance?
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Even the grants that the City and County applied for—such as the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance grant (JAG), or the Community Oriented Policing Services grant (COPS)—didn’t itemize their funds for mass surveillance systems like Flock or other Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems. The new problem is that under the Trump regime, these federal grants are tied to information sharing and compliance policies with ICE.
If the city takes this federal grant money does that mean it’s prepared to backtrack on their promises to its residents by complying with 8 U.S.C. § 1373—the federal statute which prohibits state and local governments from enacting laws or policies that restrict their employees from sharing individuals' immigration status information with the Department of Homeland Security (which includes ICE).
If the city takes federal grant dollars, does it mean they will comply with former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s "Sanctuary Jurisdiction Directives" which instructs the DOJ to condition eligibility for certain grants upon compliance with DHS and ICE?
In the latest set of Flock “restrictions,” MPD promised to “no longer share data access with surrounding jurisdictions.” No longer? How long were they sharing data access with other jurisdictions who had 287(g) agreements or shared data with immigration enforcement?
The high cost of stalking
We’ve seen via national headlines just how disruptive and violating it is to be stalked by local police officers who have access to such a powerful mass surveillance system. MPD officers Josue Ayala and Tehrangi Chapman both lost their jobs after stalking love interests with FLOCK. Most disturbingly, Detective Chapman was a member of the Internal Affairs Department (IAD) that was charged with investigating Ayala’s misuse of Flock. Who will watch the watchers when the watchers are busy stalking too?
The cost to privacy and safety—especially the safety of women—is high. What we haven’t explored as much are the financial implications.
Nationally, the cost of lawsuits for wrongful stops and misidentification alone are in the millions, and that’s just looking at information from Washington, Colorado and California. Wisconsin has had two recent, high-profile incidents involving U.S. Navy Veteran Napoleon Jones of Sussex, who was apparently being wrongfully and repeatedly stalked by Waukesha County law enforcement for filing a complaint about a deputy; and the case of mother of two, Amber Newell, who was pulled over at gunpoint twice because MPD “forgot” to remove her plate from Flock as erroneously tagged for being involved in a homicide. This resulted in Brookfield and Milwaukee police targeting her, one time with a car full of children. What are the emotional and financial implications of cases such as these? Time will tell.
You can’t always get what you want
Finally, I want to single out the reason Racine ended their relationship with Flock. It’s something I’ve brought up in testimony to the City of Milwaukee before.
It appears local and federal governments are sharing and selling data with private brokers and with each other despite Flock’s claims. 404 Media has written about this extensively. The instances of ICE accessing data prove this, and according to the Wausau Pilot and Review, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling ordered every Flock camera in his county torn down Friday, September 4, after “learning the company had been building a separate data set from his cameras’ images, keeping it for up to five years and marketing it to other government and private customers.” This was contrary to what he had agreed to and “what the public was led to believe.”
Of course, Flock isn’t the only problem here. In many cities, Axon has swooped in with cameras that are harder to identify, and systems that integrate easily with Fusus, their “real-time intelligence platform.” MPD already has other Axon products and I’m sure Axon is already selling MPD on their ALPR products behind our backs. his is why we need something like the ACLU’s Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS), so that decisions about new surveillance technologies and contracts involve the public and our local government commits to the transparency we deserve.
As obvious as it seems in the wake of individual officers stalking their exes and love interests, or ICE agents accessing local surveillance that cities were told was private, Milwaukee Police Chief Norman and Mayor Johnson are still fighting to keep Milwaukeeans in a dysfunctional and costly relationship with surveillance.
As the list of cities and departments that are dropping Flock expand weekly, as the Common Council and the people have made their concerns clear, as our neighbors at UW Milwaukee and Milwaukee County show that they are listening. hat is the city waiting for? The writing is on the wall. Mayor Johnson needs to end Milwaukee’s contract with Flock and all mass surveillance companies.
Emilio De Torre is Executive Director of the Milwaukee Turners Society.
