Oconomowoc is preparing to pull the plug on its Flock Safety license plate cameras, with the Common Council planning a vote on cutting the program's $18,000 annual cost from the upcoming budget. If the funding cut passes, the city's six cameras — which have been running for three years — could come down as soon as next week.
According to TMJ4 News, Oconomowoc's mayor is calling for the council vote on the cameras' future in the city. Oconomowoc resident Matthew Vanderhoef was among those quoted in the report. Not everyone on the council agrees: fellow Oconomowoc resident Matthew Williams said he sees value in Flock as a crime-fighting tool and is somewhat comfortable with the cameras because they catch criminals and read plates.
The cameras photograph the back of every passing car, capturing license plates, vehicle makes, models, and identifiers like bumper stickers, with images stored for 30 days under the system's policy. Oconomowoc's police department policy limits camera use to legitimate law enforcement purposes, and Alderman Lou Kowieski said officers in the city have had no incidents of misuse. Kowieski also noted the contract's fine print: Oconomowoc technically owns the system, but Flock leases the same infrastructure back to other entities. Kowieski said residents in his district largely oppose the technology, and the report notes that neither the Oconomowoc Police Department nor Flock Safety had responded to interview requests at the time of publication.
Milwaukee Cases Fuel the Distrust
That case wasn't isolated. Former Milwaukee Police Officer Josue Ayala was sentenced in July to one year of probation and a $500 fine after pleading guilty to misdemeanor misconduct in public office for using MPD's Flock system to track an ex-girlfriend and her partner, according to NBC 26. The report does not describe how the misconduct came to light.
By July 9, Milwaukee Police Internal Affairs Detective Tehrangi Chapman — the very person tasked with investigating officer misconduct in the Flock system — faced criminal charges after allegedly using the database 20 times to surveil two victims and placing a GPS tracker on one victim's vehicle, as reported by The Washington Post. TMJ4 News reported that two former Milwaukee officers in total were criminally charged with allegedly using Flock's database to track former partners, and Chapman's charges triggered widespread scrutiny from civil rights advocates.
A Wrong Alert Led to Gunpoint Stops
Beyond officer misuse, Oconomowoc's neighbors have also seen the technology fail in dangerous ways. On August 6, City of Brookfield police officers conducted a high-risk traffic stop on Interstate 94 with weapons drawn, surrounding driver Amber Newell after a Flock camera flagged her vehicle for a Milwaukee homicide investigation she had no involvement in, per FOX6 News Milwaukee. Officers ordered passengers out of the car at gunpoint during the stop.
Newell said a similar stop had occurred earlier that week. The Milwaukee Police Department had already cleared her vehicle from the homicide investigation once before but failed to remove the outdated alert from the national law enforcement database, according to The Washington Times. MPD conceded the error was a personnel failure rather than a technological flaw.
A Statewide Retreat From Flock
Both Sheboygan and Fond du Lac County covered Flock cameras and began canceling their contracts, citing breaches of trust and fears that active investigation data could leak through out-of-state public records requests, per WISN. On September 8, the Menasha City Council voted 7-1 to terminate its own Flock contract after Police Chief Matthew Albrecht said he could no longer trust the vendor, following a similar unanimous termination vote by Stoughton in July, which paid $12,500 to break its contract early over resident privacy opposition.
Nearby Muskego offers a stark look at how far Flock data travels once it's collected. An audit published this month by a local advocacy group found the city's Flock database had been searched nearly 900,000 times in a single month, including requests from out-of-state agencies in Texas, California, and Florida, Hoodline reported. Muskego residents have since organized a group called No Cams Muskego to demand warrant requirements before the data can be accessed.
Milwaukee Tightens Access, Critics Say It's Not Enough
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson restricted MPD's Flock camera access strictly to supervisors in late August, but the ACLU of Wisconsin noted that ALPR surveillance should still require a probable-cause warrant, according to FOX6 News Milwaukee. Civil liberties groups argue that administrative policy tweaks don't eliminate the risks of mass surveillance.
Even Oconomowoc's own school district isn't untouched by the technology. Public records reported this month revealed that the Oconomowoc Area School District leases four Flock Safety cameras of its own, extending automated license plate recognition into local school zones — a detail that has drawn additional scrutiny from privacy auditors, per FOX6 News Milwaukee.
A Debate Years in the Making
The city's relationship with Flock has been contentious from the start. Oconomowoc initially installed the cameras, and the program now includes six cameras.
Should the council move ahead with defunding, Oconomowoc has no plans to switch to Axon or Motorola license plate reading products, per TMJ4 News. For now, the six cameras keep running, and privacy and data-sharing concerns continue to drive the push to cut them loose — concerns that mirror debates now playing out in Racine, Stevens Point, and elsewhere across the state.
