A California Highway Patrol officer holds an evidence bag after taking a suspect into custody during a stop in Oakland, Calif. Many factors can influence a police agency’s clearance rate, including how quickly evidence is processed by crime labs. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Police departments’ “clearance rates” — the percentage of cases they declare closed — are one of the most widely cited benchmarks for how effectively they combat crime. Lawmakers reference clearance rates in hearings, mayors cite them during police budget debates, and community members often use them to judge how well their local department is functioning.

But the figures can be confusing — and in some cases misleading.

State lawmakers are pushing to better understand and improve clearance rates, as crime remains top of mind for many Americans and a defining issue in statehouses nationwide.

Efforts to help solve more crimes and support victims have become a rare area of bipartisan agreement. This year, lawmakers in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas have considered or enacted measures that would boost police investigative capacity or improve crime data and clearance rate reporting.

A new law in Illinois will require all law enforcement agencies to publish routine clearance data on nonfatal shootings and homicides starting in July 2026.

Missouri enacted a similar law, which will go into effect in 2026, that directs the state’s Department of Public Safety to publish clearance rates statewide and create a new grant program to help police departments solve violent crimes. And Texas lawmakers established a pilot program to set up rapid DNA testing facilities in two counties.

Lawmakers and police officials in some of these states say raising clearance rates is both a public safety priority and a matter of providing closure for victims and families. Research suggests that the likelihood of being caught is one of the strongest deterrents to committing a crime — making clearance rates a closely watched indicator of how well the justice system is working.

Clearing crimes is critical for public safety because it takes repeat offenders off the streets, helps resolve cases that never made it into official reports, delivers justice for victims, and strengthens the community trust that helps police solve future cases, said Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University. Johnson, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice, also served as a police officer in Memphis, Tennessee, for a decade.

“Clearance rate reflects police actions, but also the vibe and how the community feels –– the confidence and faith they have in the police,” Johnson said.

Across the country, clearance rates for violent crimes — including homicide, rape and aggravated assault — have declined for decades. The national homicide clearance rate, for example, has fallen from 72% in 1980 to 61% in 2024, the most recent year with FBI data available.

The decline is similar across other major crime categories. In 1980, police cleared 49% of rapes and 59% of aggravated assaults. By 2024, those figures had fallen to 27% and 49%, respectively. Robbery clearance rates also shifted over time, rising from 24% in 1980 to 30% in 2024.

But those figures reflect national averages. At the local level, clearance rates vary widely, with some departments solving a large share of cases while others struggle with consistently low numbers.

Police departments in Vermont, Delaware and Idaho had the highest violent crime clearance rates in 2024, while New Mexico, Georgia and Mississippi had the lowest, according to a 50-state crime data analysis by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Some experts say there are several reasons clearance rates can swing in either direction. Chronic staffing shortages, overwhelmed detective units, rising caseloads and strained community relationships can push rates down. Strong victim and witness cooperation, better investigative technology and clearance of older backlogged cases can push them up.

At the same time, clearance rates — like most crime statistics — have limitations and can be difficult to understand.

Clearance rates, explained

A clearance rate is meant to show how often police solve reported crimes in a given year. The formula is simple — cleared cases divided by reported cases — but the definition of “cleared” is broad.

Under federal rules, cases can be cleared either by arrest or by “exceptional means.” Arrest clearances are straightforward: Police make an arrest, file charges and hand the case to prosecutors.

Exceptional clearances apply when police say they have enough evidence to arrest someone but cannot do so for reasons outside their control — for example, when a suspect has died, fled the country, is being held in another jurisdiction that won’t extradite, or when prosecutors decline to bring charges or victims choose not to move forward.

Since agencies have wide discretion in using exceptional clearances, similar cases may be counted as “solved” in one community and remain open in another. High exceptional clearance rates can give the impression that more arrests have been made than actually have.

Timing also complicates the statistics. Clearances are counted in the year a case is closed, not the year the crime occurred. For crimes that routinely take months or years to investigate, such as homicides or sexual assaults, this is common.

As a result, departments that focus on long-term investigations or suddenly receive new evidence may clear a batch of older cases, making their current-year rate look higher even though more recent cases remain unresolved.

Most agencies do not publicly break down how many of their annual clearances involve older cases, but that doesn’t mean they are intentionally manipulating their statistics.

National reporting isn’t airtight either. The FBI’s crime reporting program is voluntary, and some police departments may submit crime data but skip clearance data altogether.

Other measures of effectiveness

A clearance does not guarantee that prosecutors filed charges or that a case resulted in a conviction — outcomes that often matter most to victims and their families. It also doesn’t capture whether the right person was apprehended.

“It’s an imperfect metric for the performance of our criminal justice system,” said Marc Krupanski, the criminal justice policy director at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic research organization.

Clearance rates also say little about investigative quality, how consistently police update families, how quickly officers respond or whether residents feel comfortable coming forward with information in the first place.

For these reasons, experts recommend looking at other measures, including prosecutorial outcomes, police response times, victim satisfaction and levels of community trust.

Some experts say clearance rates are most meaningful when analyzed over time — ideally 10 to 20 years — and adjusted per capita or per 100,000 residents. Breaking out clearances by arrest and exceptional means also adds important context, as does examining how many arrests lead to charges or convictions.

These outcomes, experts say, reflect both police work and community cooperation — from gathering witnesses to processing crime scenes and maintaining evidence — offering a clearer picture of investigative effectiveness.

Michigan’s proposal

Just last month, Michigan lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at boosting the state’s clearance rates. Last year, Michigan police solved 48% of violent crimes, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s analysis.

The House and Senate versions of the Violent Crime Clearance Act are sponsored by Republican state Rep. Sarah Lightner and Democratic state Sen. Stephanie Chang. The legislation would create a statewide grant program for police departments, allowing them to use the funds to hire and train investigators or crime lab personnel, upgrade evidence-collection equipment or record-management systems and support witnesses in violent crime investigations. It would also establish strict clearance rate reporting requirements.

“Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, I think there’s just a general belief that we want crimes to be solved,” Chang told Stateline.

Rural police departments, which often have fewer staff and limited investigative resources, sometimes face challenges in solving certain types of cases. To help address this, the bill would require that grants be distributed across the state, and that no single agency receive more than 20% of the total program funding in a given year.

Supporters, including Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, say the legislation would provide much-needed help for overburdened departments.

“These aren’t just statistics. These are people. … They were dragged into the criminal justice system as a victim, and so for us, each case — and trying to find and bring closure, whether it’s an armed robbery, a rape or a murder — is critically important,” Bouchard said.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense announced on social media Monday it’s looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one of several lawmakers who posted a video last week telling military members they are not required to follow orders that violate the law. 

The video spurred anger from President Donald Trump, who posted, also on social media, that he believed the statement from six Democratic lawmakers represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The claim led to safety concerns on Capitol Hill, especially after a year that included numerous acts of violence against lawmakers and key political figures. 

The Defense Department announcement didn’t detail exactly how Kelly may have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice but stated that “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

It was unclear how the military review and threat of court-martial proceedings would fit with the constitutional protections held by members of Congress for speech and debate.

Kelly wrote in a statement the Defense Department’s post was the first time he’d heard about the inquiry. 

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kelly and the other senators in the video were encouraging “disorder and chaos within the ranks.”

“Not a single one of them … can point to a single illegal order that this administration has given down because it does not exist,” Leavitt said. “They knew what they were doing in this video and Sen. Mark Kelly and all of them should be held accountable for that.”

Kelly military background

Kelly served as an aviator in the United States Navy from 1987 until 2012. He was deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. He received several awards throughout his military career, including the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

Kelly reached the rank of captain before his retirement from military service. 

Kelly, who was also a NASA astronaut, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2020. 

The Defense Department’s post announcing an investigation into Kelly said military officials wanted to remind people that “military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

The statement added that all service members “have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful.  A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

The statement appeared somewhat similar to the one Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander gave in the video they published Nov 18. 

The Democrats, all of whom served in the military or worked in intelligence agencies, said they wanted “to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe.”

They said that Americans in those institutions “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Broad constitutional protections for Congress

Members of Congress are broadly protected under the speech and debate clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that unless a lawmaker is involved in treason, felony and breach of the peace, they are “privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

The annotated explanation of the clause on Congress’ official website says the Supreme Court has “broadly” interpreted its applications over the years to ensure an independent legislative branch. 

“Despite uncertainty at the margins, it is well established that the Clause serves to secure the independence of the federal legislature by providing Members of Congress and their aides with immunity from criminal prosecutions or civil suits that stem from acts taken within the legislative sphere,” it states. “As succinctly described by the Court, the Clause’s immunity from liability applies ‘even though their conduct, if performed in other than legislative contexts, would in itself be unconstitutional or otherwise contrary to criminal or civil statutes.’ This general immunity principle forms the core of the protections afforded by the Clause.”

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service states the judiciary’s “immunity principle protects Members from ‘intimidation by the executive’ or a ‘hostile judiciary’ by prohibiting both the executive and judicial powers from being used to improperly influence or harass legislators.”

Reporters in a press pool ask questions of President Donald Trump and Frank Bisignano, left, administrator of the Social Security Administration, in the Oval Office on Aug. 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A three-judge federal appeals panel grilled lawyers for a former White House official and The Associated Press Monday in a case that could significantly overhaul press access to the Oval Office and Air Force One.

The two sides sparred over whether the president, in this case President Donald Trump, has sole discretion over which reporters can take part in the press pool in certain White House spaces, based on a journalist’s or their employer’s viewpoint.

The dispute between the Trump administration and the AP erupted earlier this year after the wire service refused to use the term Gulf of America, designated by Trump, for the body of water the AP continued to call the Gulf of Mexico. 

Judges Robert L. Wilkins, Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao, for the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit, poked holes in each side’s arguments on whether the First Amendment stops at the Oval Office doors or the tarmac outside Air Force One, and if the president can decide who’s included or excluded.

The press pool is a small, rotating group of reporters, specified in advance, who travel with or attend events hosted by the president. They then send dispatches to hundreds of other journalists, and often publish quickly about the president’s activities.

The Department of Justice’s Yaakov Roth argued that because of legal precedent, the administration cannot ban a larger group of “bona fide journalists” from using White House media passes to access the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other administration officials take questions from reporters.

However, he argued, the president is well within his bounds to exclude reporters from his “personal spaces,” including the Oval Office or Air Force One, which are strictly “by invitation only.”

Katsas, appointed during Trump’s first administration, asked, “Do you really want a room-by-room, space-by-space, jurisprudence? It’s really about access to the president. Is it really different if an event is moved from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden?”

“If the president did an event in the (Brady) briefing room, we wouldn’t be having the same argument,” replied Roth, principal deputy attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division.

Wilkins, appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama, pressed further and asked if the White House is permitted to “revoke” a journalist’s media pass.

Roth answered that “viewpoint discrimination is not permitted” when issuing passes and opening up access to the Brady room.

“The question here is does that carry over (to the Oval Office or Air Force One)? I think the answer to that is no,” Roth said.

The Oval Office door

In his opening statement, AP attorney Charles Tobin argued, “The First Amendment does not stop at the Oval Office door” and that a “system” has been established in which the president cannot ban a reporter from spaces where the press pool is permitted. 

For example, recent Cabinet meetings and Oval Office visits by foreign leaders have been open to the press pool.

“If it’s a pooled event, then the president cannot pick and choose,” said Tobin, of the firm Ballard Spahr.

Katsas pressed back, asking, “How does the president get to pick who will come to the Oval Office for (a private) event?”

Tobin replied with the hypothetical example of Trump inviting conservative media personality Tucker Carlson for a one-on-one interview. “It’s not a pooled event,” he said.

Tobin continued his argument that the pool system was established under President Dwight Eisenhower and has since become “a defined government program.”

Rao responded skeptically to Tobin, “you’re resting your whole argument” on the White House not having any say over the pool who follows the president.

“It’s not some fixed thing. It’s changed over time,” said Rao, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2019.

“It’s a government program. It must be administered in a viewpoint neutral (manner),” Tobin replied.

“Does the White House determine whether an event is a press pool event?” Katsas followed up.

“They do that all the time, your honor. It’s a defined government program,” Tobin replied.

Katsas pushed back: “If you win on that theory, then the next day the White House can stop designating events as pooled events.”

Wire service ban

The Associated Press sued the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich and other press staff for banning the wire service from events in the Oval Office and other spaces after Trump disagreed with an editorial decision by the wire service.

Shortly after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the AP issued style guidance instructing journalists to continue using the body of water’s established name, but to add a note that the president had changed it on U.S. maps and government documents.

The AP sets style standards for journalists across the industry.

The case has been winding through the federal courts since February.

Budowich left the administration in September.

The White House began denying the AP entry to the Oval Office, East Room and other places on Feb. 11.

Leavitt announced in late February that White House officials would take over pool rotation decisions from the White House Correspondents Association, a member organization that has self-governed journalist rotations and briefing seats placement since the Eisenhower administration.

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A senior federal judge dismissed charges Monday against two public officials with long-running public disputes with President Donald Trump, saying the controversial appointment of the president’s former personal attorney as a prosecutor doomed the cases.

Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, whom former President Bill Clinton appointed to the bench in South Carolina, wrote in a Monday order that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not have the authority to make Lindsey Halligan the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

The judge said the deadline for an interim appointee to that position had lapsed.

Because that process was invalid, the prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom had investigated or prosecuted Trump, must be dropped, Currie wrote.

Currie dismissed the indictments without prejudice, meaning they could be revived. But at least in Comey’s case, in which charges were brought on the eve of the statute of limitations expiring, that appeared unlikely.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday the administration would appeal the ruling.

“Lindsay Halligan was legally appointed, and that’s the administration’s position,” Leavitt said. “There was a judge who was clearly trying to shield Leticia James and James Comey from receiving accountability.”

120-day clock

U.S. attorneys are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but the attorney general can appoint someone on an interim basis for 120 days. After that, the judges in the district are responsible for appointing an interim prosecutor.

“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework,” Currie wrote.

Bondi appointed Erik Siebert as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in January, while his confirmation was pending in the Senate. After 120 days, the judges in the district allowed him to continue.

Siebert resigned in September, reportedly under pressure from Trump and Bondi to bring charges against Comey. Bondi then named Halligan, at the time a White House aide who had also worked for Trump in a private capacity, as the interim U.S. attorney. 

But Bondi could not do that because, after 120 days, the responsibility for naming an interim U.S. attorney fell to the district court judges, Currie wrote.

“The 120-day clock began running with Mr. Siebert’s appointment on Jan. 21, 2025,” she wrote. “When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General’s appointment authority. Consequently, I conclude that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role.”

Quick indictment

Halligan, after gaining office in September, quickly secured a two-count indictment against the former FBI chief from a grand jury in Alexandria. Comey was accused of lying to Congress about whether he had authorized a press leak of information related to an FBI investigation of Russian actors’ involvement in Trump’s first presidential campaign. 

However, U.S. District Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick wrote last week that issues with evidence, testimony and statements to the grand jury in the case outweighed the usual heavily guarded secrecy of proceedings. He said “profound investigative missteps” could result in the dismissal of Comey’s indictment.

Comey has pleaded not guilty.

James won a civil case against Trump related to business fraud, though a state appeals court later overturned the sentence as overly punitive.

Trump has publicly blasted James and Comey as using the mechanisms of legal proceedings to persecute him. 

In an extraordinary public message to Bondi just before Halligan replaced Siebert, Trump complained that the prosecutions against both were not developing faster.

The Justice Department did not respond to a message seeking comment Monday.

A farm employee works near Coachella, Calif., in 2024. A California union has sued to stop new, lower-wage guidelines for foreign worker visas. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A California union and a group of farm workers from around the country are suing to stop new, lower-wage federal guidelines that save money for farmers but cut pay for temporary foreign agriculture workers — hurting local laborers as a result, the suit alleges. 

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court, the United Farm Workers and 18 individual workers sued the U.S. Department of Labor over the October guidelines for laborers who are in the United States under temporary, H-2A visas. The new guidelines set lower wages — differentiating them by state — including pay cuts to account for the value of free housing provided by law to foreign workers. 

“Farm workers, and the rural communities across America they sustain, need and deserve fair wages and job security, not a race to the bottom with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor,” Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 

The new Trump administration rules are “drastically cutting the minimum wage that U.S. employers must pay foreign farmworkers, all while costs and wages in other sectors have sharply increased,” the lawsuit states, adding that the lower pay for foreign workers will also force cuts for American workers. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in California to halt implementation of the guidelines and recalculate wages. 

The lawsuit also objects to first-time pay differentials based on the value of employer-provided housing. It alleges violations of laws requiring that foreign visas not affect wages of U.S. workers with similar jobs. 

The cuts “will severely impact farmworkers — some of the most vulnerable members of our society and many of whom already live in poverty,” according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, not identified by name, works in Missouri with an H-2A foreign worker visa was formerly paid $17.83 an hour and will suffer a $4.08 pay cut, leaving him unable to afford food and essential protective clothing for his job helping with squash, eggplant and other vegetables, according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, Irene Mendoza, a U.S. citizen, said in the lawsuit that her wages could be cut by $3.22 an hour, to $13.78, because of the guidelines, even though she doesn’t need a foreign worker visa, forcing her to get a second job to pay for food, housing and transportation between jobs in some of the states where she works. Mendoza said in the lawsuit that she works picking and packing green beans and potatoes in Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin.

The lower wage guidelines vary by state and are subject to state minimum wage laws that could make them higher in some states. In North Carolina, for instance, the new hourly wage is $11.09 for less-skilled workers, compared with $16.16 last year, and $12.27 for local workers who don’t need housing, according to a Cornell University analysis.

The Department of Labor referred a Stateline request for comment to the Department of Justice, which declined comment. 

Some farmers and experts have hailed the new guidelines as lifesavers that will stave off bankruptcy as costs rise and some prices for their farm goods stay low. 

Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in a small group of states including Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000). The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule, on top of the nearly 420,000 a year issued in recent years. 

Public comments on the rule are open until Dec. 1.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

The Waukesha County Sheriff Department. An audit of the department's use of data from the Flock surveillance camera system shows inconsistent reporting the reasons on the reasons investigators access the information, a problem common among police agencies. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Like other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies, the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department (WCSD) uses Flock cameras for many reasons, though department personnel don’t always clearly document what those reasons are. Audit data reveals that staff most frequently entered “investigation” in order to access Flock’s network, while other documented uses are raising concerns among privacy advocates. 

Flock cameras perpetually photograph and, using AI-powered license plate reader technology, identify vehicles traversing roadways. Flock’s system can be used to view a vehicle’s journey, even weeks after capturing an image, or flag specific vehicles for law enforcement which have been placed on “Be On The Lookout” (BOLO) lists.

As of March 2025, the company Flock Safety was valued at $7.5 billion, with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies using its cameras nationwide. At least  221 of those agencies are in Wisconsin, including the city of Waukesha’s police department as well as  the county sheriff . The Wisconsin Examiner obtained Flock audit data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department through open records requests, covering Flock searches from January 2024 to July 2025, and used computer programming to analyze the data.

Over that period of time, more than 6,700 Flock searches were conducted by WCSD using only “investigation”, as well as abbreviations or misspellings of the word. The searches, as they appeared in the audit data, offered no other context to suggest why specifically Flock’s network had been searched. Lt. Nicholas Wenzel, a sheriff’s department spokesperson, wrote in an email statement that “investigation” has a broad usage when Flock is involved. 

“A deputy/detective using Flock for an investigation is using it for a wide range of public safety situations,” Wenzel explained. “Flock assists in locating missing persons during Amber or Silver Alert by identifying their vehicles and has proven effective in recovering stolen cars. Investigators use Flock to track suspect vehicles in serious crimes such as homicides, assaults, robberies, and shootings, as well as in property crimes like burglaries, catalytic converter thefts, and package thefts. The system also supports traffic-related investigations, including hit-and-run cases, and enables agencies to share information across jurisdictions to track offenders who travel between communities.”

Widespread use of vague search terms 

Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that terms like “investigation” are too vague to determine whether or not Flock was used appropriately.  At least some responsibility falls on Flock Safety itself, Maass argues. “They’re setting up a system where it’s impossible for somebody to audit it,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I think that’s the big problem, is that there’s no baseline requirement that you have to have a case related to this…They say you have to have a law enforcement purpose. But if you just put the word ‘investigation’ there, how do you know? Like, how do you know that this is not somebody stalking their ex-partner? How do you know whether this is somebody looking up information about celebrities? How do you know whether it’s racist or not? And you just don’t, because nobody is checking any of these things.”

The audit also stored other vague search terms used by WCSD such as “f”, “cooch”, “freddy”, “ts”, “nathan”, and “hunt” which Lt. Wenzel would not define.“The search terms are associated with investigations, some of which remain active,” he wrote in an email statement. “To preserve the integrity of these ongoing investigations, no further description or clarification of the terms can be provided at this time.” 

In August, Wisconsin Examiner published a similar Flock analysis that also found agencies statewide entering only the word “investigation,” with no other descriptor, in order to access Flock. At nearly 20,000 searches (not including misspellings and abbreviations), the term “investigation” was in fact the most often used term in that analysis, which relied on audit data obtained from the Wauwatosa Police Department. 

While data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared in that first Flock story, that analysis focused on broad trends which appeared among at least 221 unique agencies using Flock in Wisconsin. This more recent analysis focuses specifically on the Waukesha County Sheriff Department’s use of the camera network. 

The August report found that the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared among the top 10 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that used Flock the most. The report also found that some agencies also only entered “.” — a period — in the Flock system field to indicate the reason for using the system. The West Allis Police Department led Wisconsin in this particular search term, followed by the Waukesha Police Department and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office. 

In response to an inquiry from the Wisconsin Examiner, a Waukesha Police Department spokesperson  said that an officer who’d conducted nearly 400 Flock searches using only “.” as the reason had been provided extra training, and that the officer’s behavior had been corrected after the Wisconsin Examiner reached out. The West Allis Police Department,  on the other hand, did not suggest that its officers were using the Flock network improperly. 

Use of vague search terms is chronic across Flock’s network, Maass has found. He recalled  one nationwide audit that covered 11.4 million Flock searches over a six-month period. Of those some 22,743 “just dots” appeared as reasons for Flock searches. Searches using only the word “investigation” made up about 14.5% of all searches, he said. 

“So yeah, that’s a problem,” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. Reviewing a copy of Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department audit data, Maass saw the same vague search terms that have been reported by the Examiner. Although some terms can be reasonably guessed — such as “repo” perhaps meaning repossession, or ICAC, which usually stands for Internet Crimes Against Children — others aren’t so easy. 

“‘Hunt’ can mean anything,” said Maass, referring to a term which appeared 24 times within the Waukesha Sheriff’s data. Maass points to the search term “f”, which the Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found WCSD used to search Flock 806 times. 

Maass highlights that each search touches hundreds or even thousands of individual Flock networks nationwide. “If I’m one of these agencies that gets hit by this system, how am I to know if this is a legitimate search or not?” Maass said. “Now, maybe somebody at Waukesha is going through their own system, and like questioning every officer about every case. Maybe they’re doing that. Probably not.” 

Wenzel of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department said that although some searches appear vague,  deputies and detectives are required by department policy to document their use of Flock in reports. Although a case number category does appear in the audit data, this column was rendered blank, making it impossible for Wisconsin Examiner to determine how often Flock searches had case numbers, or whether those case numbers corresponded with specific investigations the sheriff’s department had on file. 

“The Sheriff’s Office understands the concerns surrounding emerging technology and takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the privacy and civil rights of the community,” Wenzel said in a statement. “The use of Flock license plate recognition technology is guided by clear safeguards to ensure it is only used for legitimate law enforcement purposes.” 

The department’s policy, Wenzel explained, “prohibits any use outside of legitimate criminal investigations.” He said that deputies undergo initial and ongoing training to use the camera network. “All system activity is logged and subject to review,” said Wenzel.

Maass says the department can’t back-check the searches conducted by other agencies using the Waukesha Flock network, however. “Because when we’re talking about millions of searches coming through their system, you know, every few months…like hundreds of thousands at least every month…how are they actually quality controlling any of these?” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. “They’re just not.”

Wenzel said that “the technology is not used for general surveillance, traffic enforcement, or monitoring individuals not connected to an investigation.” The Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis, however, detected 43 searches logged as “surveillance” and 30 searches logged as “traffic offense.” The audit data also contained at least 357 searches logged as “suspicious” or variations of the word, as well as another 14 logged as “suspicious driving behavior,” 52 searches for “road rage” and 36 logged as “identify driver”.

There were also 62 searches related to evictions, which privacy advocates contend  go beyond the public safety roles that the cameras were originally pitched to serve.

“Evictions can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations,” said Wenzel. “The removal of individuals from a residence often creates heightened emotions, uncertainty, and sometimes resistance. For this reason, safety is the top priority for both the residents being evicted and the deputies carrying out the court order. Flock is utilized to determine if the former tenants have left the area or could possibly be in the area when the court order is being carried out.” 

Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock has extended “far beyond the public safety justifications for which these tools were originally sold.” McCray Jones told the Wisconsin Examiner, “These systems were introduced to the public as a means to reduce violent crime and aid in solving serious investigations. However, when they are used for non-criminal purposes, such as evictions, they cross a dangerous line.”  

Waukesha’s uses for evictions were particularly concerning for McCray Jones. “What’s happening here is surveillance technology, operated by taxpayer-funded public servants, being weaponized at the behest of private landlords and corporations,” he said. “That is exactly the kind of mission creep communities are most worried about when it comes to police surveillance. If Flock cameras can be repurposed to target tenants today, what stops law enforcement tomorrow from using facial recognition to track people who fall behind on rent, or phone location data to monitor whether workers are ‘really sick’ when they call off? We’ve seen documented cases where law enforcement misused surveillance systems to track down romantic interests. Once the floodgate is opened, the slide into abuse is fast and quiet.” 

Wenzel said that access to the Flock network is limited to personnel who are properly trained and authorized to use the software, and the department’s policy is regularly reviewed by those personnel. 

“Searches are limited to legitimate law enforcement purposes per department policy,” he wrote in an email statement. The department has conducted its own Flock audits, Wenzel explained, and no sheriff department staff have ever been disciplined or re-trained due to Flock-related issues. Although the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department is part of the federal 287(g) program, in which local law enforcement agencies participate in federal immigration enforcement, Wenzel said that Flock is not used as part of the program, and the Wisconsin Examiner didn’t find any clear examples of immigration-related uses by the sheriff’s department. 

McCray Jones considers the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock to be an example of why “surveillance technology in the hands of law enforcement must be tightly limited, narrowly defined, and rigorously transparent.” He stressed that every use “must be clearly logged and justified — not with vague categories like ‘investigation’ or ‘repo’, but with meaningful explanations the public can actually understand and evaluate. Without strict guardrails, audits like this reveal how quickly tools justified in the name of ‘safety’ turn into instruments of convenience or even private gain.” 

With the growth of surveillance technologies and the civil liberties implications they raise, McCray Jones said that the public “deserves clear proof that it is being used only to reduce crime — particularly violent crime — and not to serve the interests of landlords or corporations. Accountability and transparency aren’t optional add-ons; they are the bare minimum to prevent abuse.”

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Health care providers march for abortion rights at a Madison rally in October 2022. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin State Senate passed SB 553 on Tuesday, Nov. 18, in their last floor session of the year. This bill, purportedly written to define abortion, is actually a covert attempt to exclude abortion from the broader scope of reproductive healthcare. 

Anti-abortion legislators pushing this bill are attempting to play to their religious base who voted them into office to promote an anti-abortion agenda. This is a failing strategy, however, when we’ve seen in countless elections around the country that abortion access is a winning issue, including in Wisconsin. 

The bigger problem, though, is how proponents of the bill are describing it as a way to allow physicians to safely provide care and clarify abortion restrictions, by excluding medical procedures intended to save a person’s life, such as C-sections, the removal of dead embryos, and treatment for ectopic pregnancy, to name a few, from the definition of “abortion.”

Lawmakers are misleading people into thinking that this bill will further define the nuances of care that physicians provide and actually allow, rather than restrict, the provision of care. 

This could not be farther from the truth. We have too many examples nationwide of physicians practicing in states hostile to reproductive rights who are unsure about what care is legal to provide, ultimately leading to unnecessary delays in caring for pregnant people. It is telling that physicians who provide miscarriage and abortion care were not called on to write the text of this legislation. 

Nationally, we have already seen pregnant people die preventable deaths while waiting for essential care for early pregnancy complications because lawmakers stirred confusion and meddled in healthcare decisions. This bill will amplify those dangers in our state, where 13.2 people out of 100,000 die in pregnancy, childbirth, or 42 days after termination of a pregnancy. A study by researchers at the University of Washington and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that these trends, across race, have been worsening in Wisconsin since 2010. 

Black birthing people in Wisconsin account for a disproportionate amount of the disparities in maternal mortality. Adding these racial and systemic inequities to a bill that will delay care for folks across the board, it’s nearly guaranteed that certain groups will have a greater share of these poor outcomes.

As a family medicine and obstetrics physician, I care for folks across the entire spectrum of pregnancy — including miscarriage and abortion. I want to emphasize the similarities in those two scenarios and how they significantly overlap. 

The procedure performed for abortion is identical to the procedure performed for a miscarriage. When a person has a miscarriage or an abortion in the first trimester, generally, a procedure called a “manual vacuum aspiration” or “MVA” can be performed to remove the pregnancy contents. For miscarriages or abortions that occur later in pregnancy, the procedure involves dilating the cervix and removing the pregnancy via a procedure called a dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and evacuation (D&E), based on gestational age. 

Additionally, when managing a miscarriage with medications, physicians use mifepristone and misoprostol — medications that lawmakers and anti-abortion activists are actively seeking to restrict because they’re used identically in first-trimester abortions. 

That is the underlying, root issue here: amplifying and reinforcing stigma and criminalization around abortion. 

Carving out the definition of abortion doesn’t actually create medical clarity for providers; instead, it creates a stigmatizing health care space where patients have to disclose and justify why they need certain essential health care. People deserve care and compassion, not judgment or punishment. 

Whether due to miscarriage, abortion, or self-managed abortion, pregnancy loss is not a crime. People should not fear jail time for getting the health care they need. SB 553 aims to differentiate abortion based on intent — a dystopian concept where politicians are in the private space of a doctor’s office. Wisconsinites currently have an opportunity to combat this stigma and call out politicians who are actively harming patients and the patient/provider relationship. 

In my practice already I have seen patients who are hesitant to disclose their pregnancy history for fear that sharing a history of needing abortion care could get them in trouble. Imagine how that influences future decisions to engage with health care providers around miscarriage, abortion and pregnancy complications. 

Wisconsin already heavily regulates how medications for miscarriage are prescribed, including a mandatory in-person dispensing requirement. Those of us who offer this care should not need to feel we must pit our medical expertise against legal jargon when it comes to providing normal, essential care. We need people to be able to trust their health care providers, and we need politicians to stop making laws that pigeonhole physicians into even narrower definitions of care. 

Now that this dangerous bill has been passed in the Senate, it will next head to the Assembly before ultimately landing on Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. In his seven years in office Evers has consistently vetoed anti-abortion legislation, and he has vowed to veto any bill that would limit access to abortion, including SB 553. 

As a physician, it’s devastating to rely on a single individual to preserve my ability to practice safe and necessary health care for countless people and families across the state without political interference. 

There is no other type of health care that is regulated in the unique, stigmatizing, harmful way that abortion care is. Our state politicians need to understand that health care decisions should remain between a patient and their trusted provider. SB 553 ignores that and should not become law. 

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(The Center Square) – There are questions to answer after one of Wisconsin’s most famous stabbing suspects fled her group home over the weekend.

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In the Wisconsin Senate’s last floor session of 2025, lawmakers debated and voted on bills that appear destined for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto pen. 

One of the bills, which passed the Republican-led Assembly in September and is on its way to Evers’ desk, would prohibit public funds from being used to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, the bill’s Senate author, argued it would protect Wisconsin taxpayers, citing Democratic states like Illinois where enrollment and costs of a health care program for noncitizens far exceeded initial estimates. 

But several Senate Democrats lambasted the proposal as a “heartless” attempt by GOP lawmakers to gain political points with their base with 2026 elections around the corner. Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, hinted at its likely future in the governor’s office. 

“It’s going to be vetoed,” Carpenter said. 

Plenty of bills in the nearly eight years of Wisconsin’s split government have passed through the Republican-controlled Assembly and Senate before receiving a veto from the governor. Evers vetoed a record 126 bills during the 2021-22 legislative session ahead of his reelection campaign and 72 bills during the 2023-24 session. The governor has vetoed 15 bills so far in 2025, not including partial vetoes in the state budget, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of veto messages. The number is certain to rise, though whether it will approach the record is far from clear.

A few Senate Democrats seeking higher office in 2026 said some recent legislation that is unlikely to make it past Evers, from a repeal of the creative veto that raises school revenue limits for the next 400 years to a bill exempting certain procedures from the definition of abortion, looks like political messaging opportunities to ding Democrats. They anticipate more of those proposals to come up next year. 

“For the last eight years we’ve had divided government, but we’ve had a heavily gerrymandered Legislature,” said Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who is among at least seven candidates running for governor in 2026 and voted against those bills on the floor. “For Republicans in the Legislature, there has been no cost and everything to gain from pursuing the most radical and extreme proposals in their party.” 

Evers is not seeking a third term as governor in 2026 and is entering the final year of his current term, which no longer makes him vulnerable to political fallout from vetoing bills. But legislative Democrats, particularly in the Senate where the party hopes to win the majority in 2026, can be forced into difficult decisions in their chambers where Republicans control which bills get votes on the Senate and Assembly floors. 

“It was all this political gamesmanship of trying to get points towards their own base and/or put me or others, not just me, into a position to have to make that tough vote,” said Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, of the bill banning public dollars spent on health care for undocumented immigrants. Smith, who is seeking reelection in his western Wisconsin district next year, holds the main Senate seat Republicans are targeting in 2026. He voted against the bill.

Smith said the immigration bill saw “a lot of discussion” in the Senate Democratic Caucus ahead of the floor session on Nov. 18, particularly on where Smith would vote given the attention on his seat. The bill passed the chamber on a vote of 21-12 with Democratic support from Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi; Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; and Sen. Jamie Wall, D-Green Bay, who are not up for reelection next year but represent more conservative parts of the state. 

“Many people thought the easy vote would be to just vote with the Republicans because it’s not going to be signed,” Smith said. “But I’ve still got to go back and explain it to my voters.” 

A spokesperson for Majority Leader Sen. Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Senate Republicans consider what bills advance to the Senate floor. Neither did a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

In a social media post after the Senate session, Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, listed “all the things WI Senate Democrats voted against,” which included “prohibiting illegal aliens from getting taxpayer-funded healthcare.” 

Scott Kelly, Wanggaard’s chief of staff, said a potential veto or putting Democrats on the record on certain issues largely doesn’t influence the legislation their office pursues.

“Our job is to pass bills that we think are good ideas that should be law,” Kelly said. “Whether other people support or veto them is not my issue. The fact that Democrats think this is a political ‘gotcha,’ well, that just shows they know it’s an idea that the public supports.”

Not all of the bills on the Senate floor on Nov. 18 seemed aimed at election messaging. The chamber unanimously approved a bill to extend tax credits for businesses that hire a third party to build workforce housing or establish a child care program. In October, senators voted 32-1 to pass a bipartisan bill requiring insurance companies to cover cancer screenings for women with dense breast tissue who are at an increased risk of breast cancer. The Republican-authored bill has yet to move in the Assembly despite bipartisan support from lawmakers there as well.

Assembly Democrats last week criticized Vos and Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, for blocking a vote on Senate Bill 23, a bipartisan bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to new Wisconsin moms. Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, in a press conference at the Capitol called the move “pathetic.”

But health care is a top issue for Democratic voters and less so for Republicans, according to the Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in October. Illegal immigration and border security are the top issue for Republican voters in Wisconsin. About 75% of GOP voters said they were “very concerned” about the issue heading into 2026, though only 16% of Democrats and 31% of immigrants said the same.  

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said political messaging votes can have impacts on elections, especially in what will be some of the close Senate races in 2026.

“It’s kind of a messaging opportunity, not really a policymaking opportunity. It’s also maybe a way for Republicans to let off some steam,” Burden said. “They have divisions within their own caucuses. They have disagreements between the Republicans in the Assembly, Republicans in the Senate. They can never seem to get on the same page with a lot of these things, and there are often a few members who are holding up bills. So, when they can find agreement and push something through in both chambers and get near unanimous support from their caucuses, that’s a victory in itself and maybe helps build some morale or solidarity within the party.”

Here’s why Wisconsin Republican lawmakers pass bills they know Gov. Tony Evers will veto is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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