Milwaukee County Board committee advances resolution to remove Flock from parks

This story was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.

A committee of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to advance a resolution to remove Flock automatic license plate reader cameras from county park property. The unanimous vote, made in the committee on parks and culture, comes as Flock cameras have grown increasingly unpopular around Wisconsin. The resolution will be taken up for a full county board vote on Oct. 1. 

Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and their license plates passing within their view on roadways. The images are stored by the AI-powered cameras, allowing police to enter specific license plates or vehicle descriptions to determine where a vehicle has been. A single search can span hundreds, or even tens of thousands of cameras across Flock’s network. 

“With great power comes great responsibility,” said Supv. Justin Bielinski in a statement. “Big tech have proven themselves time and again to be ill-suited to this responsibility. It is critical that we as elected officials ensure whatever technology is being used in our name respects civil liberties — for everyone.” 

Supv. Juan Miguel Martinez told the Wisconsin Examiner that “the entire community needs to be worried about Flock.” Martinez called Flock “surveillance” and “technology that’s not fully fleshed out yet.”

Thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country use Flock, including both the Milwaukee Police Department and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. Police leaders often tout the cameras as useful in developing leads for serious crimes such as assault, homicide, carjacking and kidnapping. In 2025, the Examiner found that at least 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used Flock during that year.

Privacy advocates and concerned citizens fear Flock is a kind of perpetual and warrantless surveillance. There have also been numerous cases nationwide of officers using the cameras unlawfully to monitor current or estranged romantic partners. Wisconsin has seen four such cases in Menasha, Kenosha County, and two in the city of Milwaukee. In each of those cases officers or deputies were charged with misconduct in public office. 

The Menasha officer, Cristian Morales, was sentenced to six months in jail in August. In Milwaukee, officer Josue Ayala was given probation in lieu of jail time. The cases involving Kenosha County deputy Frank McGrath and Milwaukee detective Tehrangi Chapman are ongoing. Chapman worked in internal affairs, and was involved in investigating Ayala’s unlawful use of Flock before his own alleged misuse was reported to the department. Morales, Ayala, and McGrath were all accused of using Flock to monitor current or former girlfriends. Chapman used the cameras to monitor someone he had been watching  for years before Milwaukee adopted Flock. 

Some have also expressed concerns the cameras could be used to surveil protesters and for immigration enforcement. Reviews of Flock audit data have found immigration-related searches around the country, indicating that local and state law enforcement have conducted Flock searches on behalf of federal immigration enforcement. A deputy in Texas was also found to have used Flock to track down a woman in an abortion-related prosecution. Numerous communities across Wisconsin have canceled their Flock contracts, or worked to disable their cameras. 

Martinez also pointed to a case where Flock was used to track and intercept a man who was traveling to a neighboring state to purchase cannabis, and false alerts where people were flagged by Flock as being connected to crimes that they didn’t commit. 

In a PowerPoint presentation provided to Milwaukee board members, the sheriff’s office said that there has been a 20-25% reduction in crime in areas with the cameras. Another slide in the presentation states that there has been a 43% decrease in certain crimes from 2023 to 2026 since the cameras were installed in county parks. The PowerPoint presentation did not present evidence that the correlation was directly due to the installation of Flock cameras. 

One slide asserts that “crime WILL increase,” “deterrence costs less than investigation,” and that “slower investigations delayed justice for victims.” The PowerPoint also states that data collected by Flock cameras used by the sheriff’s office is only retained for seven days, and that a 48-hour retention limit is being considered. 

The PowerPoint claims that the sheriff’s office owns the data collected by Flock in its jurisdiction, that it is never shared or sold, that uses related to immigration enforcement or reproductive healthcare are prohibited, and that the sheriff’s office does not subscribe to statewide or national lookups. It also asserts that although Flock does create heat maps based on the vehicle data it collects, that this is not the same as tracking people. “They show density — how often data appears in an area,” the presentation states. The sheriff’s PowerPoint also asserts that automatic license plate reader technology does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Martinez expressed doubt about how the sheriff uses Flock, and whether federal agencies can access the data. Besides the Flock removal, the committee also took up a resolution to establish requirements for reporting law enforcement staging in county parks, which also passed the committee. This would build on other efforts the county board has made to prohibit immigration enforcement from staging in the parks. 

“They nabbed like five Latino people that were hanging out down by the lagoon out of nowhere,” Martinez told the Examiner. “And that’s why I have a very personal stake in it, because we had just passed that — that they’re not allowed to stage in the parks. And then I went down there, I went down there with ordinance in hand, saying you’re not allowed to be in the park, and they were gone by that time. You know, ICE moves very quickly,” Martinez said. He said he wonders whether police surveillance including Flock could be involved in the efficiency of immigration arrests in the city. 

“I don’t have any choice but to trust them,” he told the Examiner. “Of course we’re going to be suspicious, and of course we want to push against it every step of the way.”

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.