The federal government has extended its lease on a downtown Milwaukee property used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to federal lease records and the building’s owner.
The property at 310 E. Knapp St. is owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering but will remain in use by the federal government through at least April 2026, with options to extend through 2028, said JoEllen Burdue, the college’s senior communications director.
“We do not have immediate plans for the building and will reevaluate next year when we know whether or not the government wants to extend the lease,” Burdue said.
The lease was originally scheduled to expire in April 2025.
With a new ICE facility under construction on the city’s Northwest Side, the downtown lease extension raises the possibility that the federal government is expanding local immigration infrastructure or enforcement. This would be consistent with other forms of expansion in immigration enforcement, statewide and nationally.
“I’m upset and concerned about what this means for my immigrant constituency. For my constituents, period,” said Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, who represents the 8th District on the South Side.
Immigration infrastructure
The Knapp Street property is used by ICE as a field office for its Enforcement and Removal Operations, according to ICE.
This includes serving as a check‑in location for individuals under ICE supervision who aren’t in custody and a processing center for individuals with pending immigration cases or removal proceedings.
The Vera Institute is a national nonpartisan nonprofit that does research and advocates for policy concerning incarceration and public safety.
The most people held by ICE at a given time at that Knapp Street location during the Biden administration was six. On June 3, 22 people were held there – also exceeding the high of 17 during President Donald Trump’s first administration, according to data from Vera Institute.
The office generally does not detain people overnight but can facilitate transfer to detention centers that do.
The functions carried out at the Knapp Street office mirror those planned for the Northwest Side facility.
A new ICE field office is expected to open at 11925 W. Lake Park Drive in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
City records show the West Lake Park Drive property will be used to process non-detained people as well as detainees for transport to detention centers.
The records also state that the property will serve as the main southeastern Wisconsin office for immigration officers and staff.
The U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government’s real estate arm, initially projected the new site would open in October. However, a spokesperson said there was no update and did not confirm whether that timeline still stands.
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded to NNS’ requests for comment.
Rise in immigration enforcement
As local immigration enforcement grows, so does enforcement throughout the state and the rest of the country.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonprofit at Syracuse University that conducts nonpartisan research.
Not only are more people being detained, but they are being detained for longer, said Jennifer Chacón, the Bruce Tyson Mitchell professor of law at Stanford Law School.
A July 8 internal memo from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons instructs agents to detain immigrants for the duration of their removal proceedings, effectively eliminating access to bond hearings.
Eighty-four of 181 detention facilities exceeded their contractual capacity on at least one day from October 2024 to mid-April 2025, according to a July report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The Dodge County Jail, which ICE uses to detain people apprehended in Milwaukee, is one of the facilities that exceeded its contractual capacity. On its busiest day, it held 139 individuals – four more than its 135-bed limit.
In addition to Dodge County, Brown and Sauk county jails have also entered into agreements with ICE to house detained immigrants, according to records obtained by the ACLU of Wisconsin.
ICE’s unprecedented budget
Noelle Smart, a principal research associate at the Vera Institute, notes that it remains unclear whether increased immigration enforcement drives the need for more detention infrastructure or expands to catch up with more infrastructure.
But, Smart said, with ICE’s unprecedented new budget, the question of which one drives the other becomes less relevant.
Trump’s proposed ICE budget in 2025 was $9.7 billion – a billion more than ICE’s 2024 budget. An additional $29.85 billion was made available through 2029 for enforcement and removal as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“We know this administration intends to vastly increase the number of people subject to arrests and detention, and we expect to see increases in both given this budget,” Smart said.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Wearing his Milwaukee police uniform, Gregory Carson Jr. stepped into the witness stand, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth.
Two years earlier, a man had been shot in an alley. His girlfriend said police pressured her to allow a search of the duplex as she held her infant. That search had turned up five guns, and now her boyfriend faced a federal charge.
On the stand that afternoon, a public defender asked Carson if he recalled making inappropriate statements to the girlfriend. Commenting on seeing her underwear on the floor? Reaching out to her hours later? Texting her?
Carson’s answer under oath to each question was the same.
No.
A few witnesses later, the girlfriend swore to tell the truth and read screenshots of text messages she had received.
Hey, it’s me. Honestly it was seeing your thong on the floor that had me like damn lol.
The woman replied to ask who was contacting her. She read the response in court: Hey it’s Carson from yesterday and I understand.
The officer had been caught in a lie.
Gregory Carson Jr. (Provided photo)
At the time, Carson already was on the Milwaukee County district attorney’s list of officers with a history of credibility, integrity or bias concerns, commonly referred to as a “Brady/Giglio” list.
He also was under internal investigation for those same text messages. None of that was known to the defense attorney who questioned him.
After that court hearing, Carson remained on the Milwaukee Police Department payroll for more than two years. In that period, he came under internal investigation three more times.
His nine-year career illustrates the risk of keeping such officers on the force and interacting with the public after their credibility and integrity have come under question. At least a dozen officers, including Carson, kept their jobs after landing on the Brady list, then ended up on the list again for another incident, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.
Reached in April, Carson declined an interview request.
Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said Carson faced several allegations that overlapped in time and that the officer had due process and collective bargaining rights. Internal investigations can take months or even years to complete, the chief added.
“But we still have to remember, just as a court case, you are innocent until proven guilty,” Norman said in an interview in January.
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman speaks with reporters at the Milwaukee Police Administration Building in July 2025. (Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Officers’ rights are important, but so is protecting public trust, said Justin Nix, associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
“Officers can arrest us, they can use force on us, and along with that comes a lot of responsibility to uphold certain values and to be honest,” Nix said in June.
“When officers fail to meet those standards, in my mind, it’s unacceptable.”
Officer lands on Brady list after domestic violence arrest but keeps his job
Carson wanted a long career with the Milwaukee Police Department.
He started as a police aide.
He had relatives who were cops and he wanted to make a difference in his community, “busting down drug houses, getting guns off the streets,” he wrote to a supervisor in 2015.
“I am striving for success, and 25 years plus on the job,” he added.
He became a sworn officer in 2018. Two years later, his own department arrested him on a domestic violence allegation.
A woman had called for help, saying she wanted Carson to leave their shared residence. She had confronted him over infidelity suspicions, and then he held her against the couch and bit her cheek, she said.
Police separated the two. Officer Roy Caul asked the woman about domestic violence incidents that had occurred at any time, not just that night in 2020.
“Just because he’s a cop doesn’t mean that he’s free to do this to you,” Caul said, according to transcripts from body camera footage.
The woman said she just wanted Carson out of the house.
The officer asked if anything occurred that night or within the last 28 days to cause her pain or make her fear for her safety. The woman replied no.
Officers arrested Carson, already in uniform for his next shift, and took him to the training academy for further questioning. He denied hurting the woman.
The department referred the case to the district attorney’s office. Assistant District Attorney Nicolas Heitman declined to charge Carson. In a recent email to the Journal Sentinel, Heitman said the office did not feel it could meet the burden of proof with the available evidence.
Three months later, the woman told Internal Affairs she had not feared for her safety. Carson told Internal Affairs nothing physical happened.
“I feel that I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, according to department records.
Norman, the chief, disagreed and gave Carson a three-day suspension.
The arrest resulted in the district attorney’s office placing Carson on its list of officers with credibility or integrity issues, often called a “Brady/Giglio” list, named after two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
These lists are maintained to help prosecutors fulfill their legal obligations to share information favorable to the defense. Often, criminal cases come down to the word of an officer against a defendant. Judges and juries must weigh the credibility of both.
With Carson’s name added to the list, prosecutors would need to disclose his criminal referral and integrity violation to defense attorneys if he appeared on their witness list.
Then it would be up to a defense attorney, and later a judge, to determine if it was relevant to bring up in court.
Carson kept his job, his badge and his ability to testify.
Wisconsin does not have statewide standards for Brady lists, leaving it to each county to track material
Until recently, the county’s full Brady list was kept secret.
As a result of reporters’ questions, District Attorney Kent Lovern removed officers and added others. His office released a corrected and updated list of nearly 200 officers in February, which was published by the Journal Sentinel and media partners.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern speaks at a news conference on April 8, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Who gets on a list – and whether counties even have a list – varies widely in Wisconsin, where there are no statewide standards. Officers can testify in multiple counties or in federal court, depending on the case and where an investigation leads.
Federal prosecutors, however, have standardized U.S. Department of Justice guidelines. Prosecutors are supposed to ask law enforcement witnesses directly about potential Brady material and check with officers’ home agencies.
“This process is designed to identify information that is even broader in scope than what is legally required and what might trigger being on a list in another jurisdiction,” said Kenneth Gales, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Milwaukee, in an email.
Gales maintained the office followed all proper procedures prior to Carson’s testimony in the federal hearing.
Even if a formal list is not shared by prosecutors, state and federal public defenders in eastern Wisconsin often exchange information between their offices about the credibility of law enforcement witnesses.
Criminal defense attorneys in Wisconsin say inconsistencies in disclosing Brady material can lead to injustice and wrongful convictions.
Such information is crucial for an effective defense, said Bridget Krause, trial division director for the State Public Defender’s Office.
“Our clients have liberty at stake,” she said.
In shooting case, a witness says officer made inappropriate comments in person and through texts
In late 2021, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division received a letter from a prisoner at Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution.
In it, a man accused officers of illegally searching his house during a shooting investigation.
It was the call involving Carson.
Internal Affairs opened an investigation and notified Carson, saying he was accused of taking part in an illegal search and failing to activate his body camera.
A third allegation read that “while on scene, you made inappropriate comments to a female citizen as well as sending her an inappropriate text message,” according to paperwork served on Carson on March 1, 2022.
Seven days later at the court hearing, Carson denied knowing anything about the texts.
A transcript shows Milwaukee police officer Gregory Carson Jr. answering questions about texting a witness during a 2022 federal court hearing. The witness’ name was redacted. (Milwaukee Police Department)
He also defended his decision to turn off his body camera, saying he had switched off the device to speak with other officers, who did the same. No one recorded the conversation detectives had with the woman about searching the home.
“My role in the investigation was over once the detectives were on scene inside the residence,” Carson said, according to a court transcript.
When the man’s girlfriend testified, she said she felt pressured to allow the search after an officer mentioned child welfare. She feared her baby would be taken away. She also said that Carson had flirted with her in the house.
When the prosecutor asked her to elaborate, she quoted Carson as saying: “Oh, you might as well kiss your man goodbye, because you ain’t never going to see him again.”
She also remembered this comment: “I’m going to come back and see you later, okay? You going to let me in? It’s just going to be me and you.”
As the hearing closed, Joshua Uller, a federal public defender, sharpened his argument that officers had acted improperly and their search was not lawful.
Carson and others violated department policy when they didn’t record their interaction with the woman as she signed the consent form. They treated a shooting victim as a suspect without evidence to do so, and Carson had acted completely inappropriately, he said.
“Turning a woman with a newborn child whose boyfriend was just taken away in an ambulance into a romantic objective is really beyond the pale,” Uller said, according to a transcript.
Later that month, Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Dries issued his report and recommendation. Though he chided officers for failing to record the woman signing the form, he concluded they had properly gotten her consent and the search was legal.
Carson’s testimony on the text messages, he said, was not credible.
Officer, already on the Brady list, tries to dissuade a woman from filing a complaint against another officer
Two days after the hearing, an internal investigator questioned Carson about the text messages.
He admitted to sending them, contradicting his testimony.
He said he had a “weakness” and had contacted the woman in “romantic pursuit,” department records say.
“In no way shape or form did I ever intend to be inappropriate or disrespect her in that manner,” he said, according to the records. “It was honestly me trying to shoot my shot and that was it.”
He denied making inappropriate comments to her in person and denied using his position as a police officer as an advantage. He said he regretted it and had learned a lesson.
He never mentioned his false testimony. At this point, federal prosecutors had not notified the police department of any concerns.
A portion of Milwaukee Police Department records detailing the internal investigation into Gregory Carson Jr., who was found to have sent inappropriate text messages to a woman he met at a shooting scene. (Milwaukee Police Department)
About three months after that interview, Carson had another troubling interaction with a woman he met on duty when she and her ex-boyfriend walked into District 7 on the city’s north side.
The former couple had a heated property dispute. The woman also said the man had intentionally hit her head while closing a car door. The man said it was an accident.
Carson was one of four officers dealing with the situation.
The woman grew frustrated with an officer who implied she was lying about the car door injury and refused to write a report about the incident. Police cited the man for battery.
Hours later, the woman received a call from a blocked number.
It was Carson.
He explained who he was and said he was off-duty. He pleaded with her not to file a complaint against his co-worker who had implied she was lying, according to police records. All of the officers involved were “good guys” who could only do so much, she remembered him saying.
She also recalled Carson saying that he hoped she would leave her ex-boyfriend alone because he did not want the ex “popping up at her house” while Carson was there, which she believed to be a flirtatious comment.
The next day, she filed two complaints at District 7: one against the officer who implied she lied and one against Carson.
In a recent interview with the Journal Sentinel, the woman called the actions of the officers that day “extremely disheartening.”
“When you’re going through one of the toughest times of your life, the last thing you should have to deal with is them approaching you in a sexual manner or accusing you of lying when you’re literally crying out for help,” said the woman, who asked not to be named publicly for privacy and safety reasons.
Internal Affairs classified her complaint against Carson as potential misconduct in office and assigned a detective to investigate.
A federal prosecutor tells the Milwaukee Police Department an officer gave false testimony in court
That summer, the federal case involving the shooting victim and Carson’s texts continued.
The defense attorney asked another judge to weigh in on the legality of the search.
As prosecutors prepared for another hearing in July 2022, Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Paulson reached out to Carson about his prior testimony.
She then wrote a memo summarizing their conversation, in which she said Carson admitted to sending the texts and not being truthful in his testimony, adding: “I’m human and I’m attracted to women.”
The Milwaukee Federal Building and Courthouse is shown in Milwaukee on Aug. 5, 2016. (Angela Peterson / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
On July 6, 2022, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Funnell emailed Internal Affairs with concerns about Carson’s credibility. He followed up the next day with a transcript from the March hearing, the earlier judge’s report and the defense motion for a second evidentiary hearing.
Asked about the case and the length of time it took the U.S. Attorney’s Office to contact Milwaukee police, a spokesman for the office said prosecutors acted appropriately.
“The United States also timely satisfied all legal disclosure obligations to the Court and to the defense in the matter you have referenced,” Gales said in an email.
Carson was on the county’s Brady list of officers with credibility issues — he had been since 2021 — but Uller, the federal public defender, said he had never seen the county’s Brady list until the Journal Sentinel and other media partners published it in February.
“While I cannot comment on this particular case, I am not aware of any instance in which, prior to the publication of this list, a lawyer in our office was notified of an officer’s inclusion in this list,” he said.
The Journal Sentinel tried to contact the woman who received the texts but was not successful. Her then-boyfriend charged in the case died in a shooting two years ago.
After hearing from the federal prosecutor in July 2022, Internal Affairs opened an investigation into Carson’s false testimony.
Carson was now the subject of three pending internal investigations, had previously received a three-day suspension and was on the county’s Brady list.
Still, he remained on patrol.
“At the time, it’s an allegation,” Norman, the police chief, said in an interview.
“We have, again, due process,” he added. “And so we need to make sure that there is, you know, the fairness of ensuring that there is credibility to everything, even from a prosecutor.”
A domestic violence victim calls for help, and an officer under internal investigation responds
Bobbie Lou Schoeffling called 911 for help on July 11, 2022.
Over the previous months, Schoeffling or her sister had repeatedly called police to report violence from Schoeffling’s ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Howell. Howell had not been arrested despite the multiple reports, having an open warrant for fleeing and being under the supervision of correctional agents for a past robbery conviction.
Bobbie Lou Schoeffling is seen in an undated family photo. (Courtesy of Tia Schoeffling)
That night, Schoeffling called police twice to report threats from Howell. On the second call, she said he had threatened to burn down her house on Hampton Avenue. She had left the area, fearing for her safety, she added.
Carson and his partner were dispatched to the second call. They did not drive to her house. Instead, Carson spoke to her over the phone and failed to activate his body camera to record their conversation.
Carson and his partner — and the two officers who responded earlier that night — did not file any reports or make any arrests.
Schoeffling was found shot to death two weeks later, on July 26.
On Sept. 4, 2022, police leaders finally pulled Carson from patrol, stripped him of his police powers and assigned him to the stolen vehicle desk in the forensics division.
He did not routinely interact with the public in the role, and the job limited him from having to testify, a department spokesperson said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.
As internal investigations conclude, officer faces a suspension, then termination
As Carson sat at his desk job, his discipline piled up.
In February 2023, Norman suspended him for six days for the inappropriate texts and for failing to activate his body camera at the shooting scene.
Milwaukee police officer Gregory Carson Jr. was one of four officers disciplined for their response to 911 calls from Bobbie Lou Schoeffling reporting domestic violence. Carson and his partner were dispatched to her home in the 9000 block of West Hampton Avenue but called her instead of going to the residence. (Ebony Cox / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
That same month, Internal Affairs interviewed Carson about the complaint filed by the woman at District 7. That investigation had slowed, in part, because it was difficult to reach the woman for follow-up interviews, records show.
The woman told the Journal Sentinel that she recalled speaking to an investigator once after filing her complaint and said she received several letters from the department.
Carson told the investigator, Sgt. Adam Riley, that when he called the woman, he did not say anything suggestive, only that she was worth more than her ex-boyfriend, according to department records. He acknowledged urging her not to make a complaint.
Riley pointed out the officer appeared to have a “pattern.”
Riley asked about Carson’s court testimony in the earlier case, pointing out he knew about the allegation related to the texts before his testimony. Carson said he thought he was truthful on the stand because he did not remember the text at the time.
Carson also said the federal prosecutor who wrote the memo had “misinterpreted” their conversation. Riley asked if Carson would have done anything differently.
No, he said.
Federal and state prosecutors declined to file criminal charges of perjury or misconduct against Carson.
But the district attorney’s office did add him to the Brady list for a second time — and the false testimony cost him his job.
Norman fired him for lying under oath and for discouraging the woman at District 7 from making a complaint.
Carson’s discharge date was Aug. 28, 2024, three years after he was first placed on the Brady list in the aftermath of his domestic violence arrest.
The woman who filed the complaint against Carson and the other officer at District 7 knew Carson had been fired. Still, she has concerns about how the department investigates misconduct allegations.
“I think it’s not handled appropriately or quickly enough,” she said.
Tia Schoeffling, Bobbie Lou Schoeffling’s sister, called it “ridiculous” that an officer arrested in such a case could then respond to domestic violence victims.
She thought of Carson on desk duty for two years, collecting nearly $80,000 in annual wages while he was the subject of several ongoing internal investigations.
She questioned if it would have taken that long to investigate a regular citizen for similar allegations.
“It’s mind-blowing that he was even allowed to respond to her call,” she said.
This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.
A Wisconsin court commissioner has resigned from his job after he asked to see an immigration arrest warrant, the latest conflict between judges and President Donald Trump’s administration over the Republican’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Peter Navis, who worked as a Walworth County court commissioner for four years, resigned from his position last month, county clerk Michelle Jacobs said Thursday. She declined to comment further because it is a personnel matter.
The incident that cost Navis his job happened on July 15. It was first reported on Thursday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The blowup in Navis’ courtroom comes after Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged in May with obstructing federal officers and attempting to hide a person to avoid arrest. Authorities said Dugan tried to help a man who is in the country illegally evade U.S. immigration agents who wanted to arrest him in her courthouse.
Dugan is seeking to have the charges against her dropped, arguing that she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore is immune to prosecution. A ruling on that motion by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman is pending.
Navis was presiding in his courtroom that day in the case of Enrrique Onan Zamora Castro, of Milwaukee, who faced a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle without a valid driver’s license for the second time in three years.
Navis said in an interview Thursday that about 15 minutes before Castro’s case was to be called, a deputy told him that Castro was going to be arrested on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on an immigration warrant.
A court transcript shows that Navis objected to sheriff’s deputies attempting to detain Castro without a valid federal warrant.
“In my courtroom, a person cannot be detained without lawful authority,” Navis said in the transcript.
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Andrew Herrmann, said Navis had no right to see the warrant, according to the transcript. Herrmann did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
Navis said he spoke with Walworth County Judge Kristine Drettwan for guidance, and she told him he had the authority to run his courtroom as he saw fit. Drettwan did not return an email seeking comment.
Sometime after Castro was detained, ICE officers appeared with deputies to make a second arrest of someone in the courtroom. Navis said he didn’t know who that person was.
According to the transcript, Navis said, “I’ve been instructed by the judges of this county to require warrants before individuals are detained in my courtroom.”
Navis said he met with three of the court’s judges six days after the incident and they told him that because he misstated their position he could either resign or be fired. None of the judges in that meeting returned emails seeking comment Thursday.
Navis said on Thursday that he misspoke in the courtroom.
“I misstated it, I did,” Navis said. “It’s not something I had intended to misstate. It’s not like I was trying to mislead anyone. What I was trying to express was I had been given the authority to act in my courtroom. That’s what I meant to say, but it didn’t come out that way.”
Navis said he is currently looking for work.
Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber did not respond to an email seeking comment. ICE officials had no immediate comment.
Walworth County, home to about 100,000 people, is in south-central Wisconsin along the Illinois border. Trump won the county with about 60% of the vote in November.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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A special prosecutor was appointed in March 2024 to look into Judge Mark McGinnis’ decision to jail a concrete contractor in December 2021 over a money dispute during a probation hearing for an unrelated crime. The money dispute was with a courthouse employee.
The special prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, said he plans to make a decision on the case around Labor Day.
Criminal charges against a judge for a decision made from the bench are possible, but unlikely and without recent precedent. Judicial misconduct cases have been reviewed by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission since 1978, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court has the final say on any penalty.
A special prosecutor expects to decide in early September whether to take the extraordinary step of filing criminal charges against an Appleton-area judge over his actions from the bench.
The special prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, declined further comment to Wisconsin Watch on his investigation of Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis.
Wisconsin Watch reported in January 2024 that McGinnis’ actions were the focus of a Wisconsin Department of Justice criminal investigation that had been ongoing for more than a year. The March 2024 appointment of the special prosecutor has not previously been reported.
Read the Wisconsin Watch report detailing allegations of misconduct by Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis.
McGinnis had jailed cement contractor Tyler Barth in December 2021 over a private dispute that was not a matter before the court.
When Barth appeared before McGinnis for a probation review hearing, on a felony conviction for fleeing an officer, McGinnis accused him of stealing several thousand dollars from a cement contracting customer.
The customer worked in the same courthouse for another Outagamie County judge.
Even though Barth had not been arrested or charged with theft, McGinnis ordered him jailed for 90 days, saying he would release Barth as soon as he repaid the customer.
“I think it’s definitely crazy, just lock a guy up with no charge, no pending charge, no nothing and then get away with it,” Barth told Wisconsin Watch in a recent interview.
The 32-year-old Fremont resident said he spent three days in jail before Fond du Lac attorney Kirk Evenson intervened and persuaded McGinnis to release him.
“I just don’t think the guy should be able to do this to anyone else,” Barth said.
Barth later settled the money dispute with his customer. An attorney advised him it would be difficult to win civil damages against McGinnis because of judicial immunity, but Barth is waiting to see what happens with the criminal case before deciding whether to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Tyler Barth, a Hortonville cement contractor, says Outagamie County Judge Mark McGinnis jailed him over a financial dispute with a disgruntled client who worked in the courthouse. He is seen on Sept. 8, 2023, at a job site in Appleton, Wis. (Jacob Resneck / Wisconsin Watch)
McGinnis did not reply to requests seeking comment.
McGinnis was first elected in 2005, at age 34, and has been re-elected each time, without opposition. Most recently he was re-elected in April 2023 for a term that runs through July 2029.
Wisconsin judgeships are nonpartisan.
Gruenke, a Democrat, is a 30-year prosecutor, including the past 18 years as the La Crosse County district attorney.
Gruenke was appointed as special prosecutor by the Outagamie County Circuit Court in March 2024 after Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis determined it would be a conflict of interest for her office to handle the case.
Legal experts agree judges have unparalleled latitude for taking away someone’s liberty, especially if the person is on probation. But invoking criminal penalties to compel action in an unrelated dispute arguably goes beyond a judge’s lawful authority.
Judicial historian Joseph Ranney, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School, said he is not aware of any instance in which a sitting Wisconsin judge was charged with a crime for actions taken as a judge.
Jeremiah Van Hecke, executive director of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, also said he was not aware of such a case.
Since 1978, the Judicial Commission has been the body responsible for investigating complaints against judges, which are then referred to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has published 31 decisions that carried some form of punishment, often a reprimand, including several for actions taken from the bench.
In 1980, Milwaukee County Judge Christ Seraphim was suspended for three years without pay for a number of violations, including “retaliatory use of bail.” In 1985, retaliatory use of bail was one of the charges brought against Rusk County Judge Donald Sterlinske, who was ordered removed from office even though he had resigned.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman has agreed to a three-year suspension of his law license, but is awaiting formal action in that case. It centers on his work as a special counsel investigating the 2020 presidential election, not his work as a judge.
Marquette University law professor Chad Oldfather said, though it’s unlikely, McGinnis could be charged with misconduct in public office. That state law prohibits, among other things, officials from knowingly exceeding their lawful authority.
But a referral to the Judicial Commission seems much more likely than a criminal charge, Oldfather said.
The commission could also initiate an investigation on its own.
A special prosecutor, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett, decided not to file criminal charges following a 2011 incident in which state Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused Justice David Prosser of choking her during an argument in a justice’s office.
The Judicial Commission recommended that the Supreme Court discipline Prosser for misconduct, but the court took no action for lack of a quorum of four of the seven justices. Three justices recused themselves because they were witnesses to the incident.
Any matters before the Judicial Commission are generally confidential. They become public only if the commission files a complaint against a judge or if the judge being investigated waives confidentiality.
There have been criminal charges filed in connection with a judge’s role as a judge, though they were not in response to official actions taken by a judge.
In April, federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan with two crimes for allegedly obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting a criminal defendant in her courtroom. Her case is pending.
In 2019, a Winnebago County jury found Leonard Kachinsky, a municipal court judge, guilty of misdemeanor violation of a harassment restraining order involving his court manager.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
NEWBURY, Mass. – Beacon Mobility, a national leader in student transportation services, is pleased to congratulate Julie Greene of Salter Transportation on being named Lytx’s Driver of the Year in the Transit / Motor Coach (Drivers) category.
A school bus driver in the New England area for 26 years, Greene has earned a reputation as one of the safest and most respected drivers in the Salter family. She has maintained a flawless safety record with zero preventable accidents, logged countless miles on the road, and missed only three days of work in more than two decades of service.
“Julie’s dedication to her students and her craft is truly extraordinary,” said Maryann Kocur, Vice President of Operations, Salter Transportation. “For more than 26 years, she has shown up—day in and day out—with an unwavering commitment to safety, reliability, and care. Her perfect safety record speaks volumes, but so does the way her students light up when they see her.”
Greene’s commitment extends far beyond the driver’s seat. Students often bring her handmade cards and drawings, small gestures that reflect the trust and warmth she’s built over the years. “In my 26 years as a school bus driver, it’s always been more than just a job—it moves my soul,” said Julie Greene, First-Place Winner, Transit / Motor Coach (Drivers). “The connection I share with my community and with the kids I transport has been both a privilege and an honor. We carry the most precious cargo, we are needed, and we make a difference in a child’s life every day. I know the importance of my role, and I take it to heart every single day.”
The Lytx Driver of the Year Award honors drivers who demonstrate exceptional safety, skill, and service. Greene’s recognition was based on her exemplary 2024 driving performance, including detailed telematics and video data that showed consistently safe maneuvering, zero speed violations, and an absence of risky driving behaviors. Judges also considered her impressive mileage record, absence of law enforcement citations, and positive contributions to the community.
“At Beacon Mobility, our mission is to ensure every passenger reaches their destination safely and with dignity and Julie embodies that mission in every way,” said Judith Crawford, CEO of Beacon Mobility. “Her professionalism, compassion, and remarkable record set the standard for excellence across our entire organization. We are proud to have her on our team and thrilled to see her recognized with such a prestigious honor.”
About Beacon Mobility: Beacon Mobility, a people-focused, values-driven organization, continues to grow its national footprint while staying true to its core purpose: providing mobility without limits. With 29 local brands operating in 25 states, Beacon is united in its commitment to transporting people to live, learn, and achieve.
Their goal is their north star: to provide the best people transportation experience, because every ride matters. Guided by their values We Care, We Collaborate, We Do The Right Thing, and We Have Fun Beacon’s experienced and compassionate team delivers customized transportation solutions that empower communities and elevate lives.
Kara Sands, transportation lead trainer and driver at Hanover Community Schools Corporation in Indiana, was selected to receive the inaugural Dick Fischer School Bus Safety Scholarship for STN EXPO West this year. She discusses ways to promote safe school bus operations and her takeaways from STN EXPO.
CINCINNATI, Ohio – First Student, the company setting the standard for innovation in school transportation, has been selected by Seneca Valley School District (SVSD) in Pennsylvania to provide student transportation services, beginning in the 2025-2026 school year. Backed by a brand-new fleet and advanced technology designed to elevate the ride experience for students and families, First Student will bring nearly 150 new buses to SVSD. All buses will be equipped with First Student’s award-winning HALO technology platform. HALO delivers real-time visibility, data-driven safety features, and streamlined communication tools that modernize school transportation to provide the best student transportation experience.
First Student is the industry leader in safety, utilizing on-vehicle technology that includes driver tablets, AI cameras, video systems, and a child check system. Guardians and caregivers of SVSD children will have access to First Student’s comprehensive transportation technology suite, which includes real-time tracking via the FirstView app. This feature provides families and district staff with live GPS updates, offering greater peace of mind and improved planning. Additionally, through performance monitoring and feedback channels, families will have an easy way to submit comments or concerns if needed.
“At First Student, we take great pride in delivering the best possible transportation experience for every student we serve,” said John Kenning, President and CEO of First Student. “For Seneca Valley families, that means combining a brand-new fleet with technology that keeps parents connected and informed. With the FirstView app, families can track their child’s bus in real time, creating greater transparency and peace of mind while ensuring every ride is safe, reliable, and welcoming.”
HALO’s technology also empowers school districts with an advanced driver navigation system for route optimization and timely arrivals, as well as student behavior monitoring tools that support communication between drivers and district staff.
“Seneca Valley is committed to providing the safest and most reliable transportation possible for our students,” said Dr. Tracy Vitale, Superintendent of Schools. “We welcome this new partnership with First Student and appreciate the expertise and resources they bring to support our transportation program.”
“Our partnership with Seneca Valley School District reflects a growing shift toward modern, connected, and student-centered transportation,” said Brian Fitzgerald, Senior Vice President, Mid-Atlantic Region at First Student. “Safety, service, and community are at the core of everything we do. We’re proud to bring our technology and expertise to support this outstanding school community.”
First Student is actively recruiting qualified drivers and offering competitive pay, paid instruction, and industry-leading training. This includes the First Serves program, which equips drivers with clinically backed communication tools and training to support students with disabilities, ensuring an inclusive and welcoming ride for every learner.
About First Student:
First Student is reimagining the school bus experience for 5.5+ million students across North America every single day. As the undisputed leader in K-12 transportation, the company is on pace to complete 1 billion student rides during the 2025-26 school year, delivering not just students, but confidence, reliability, and peace of mind to families and school districts alike. Backed by a workforce of highly trained drivers and an industry-leading fleet of 46,000+ vehicles, including electric buses, First Student is a mission-driven partner in education. Recently named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing privately held companies, First Student offers cutting-edge services including special needs transportation, AI route optimization, fleet electrification, vehicle maintenance services, and charter services. First Student’s impact extends beyond logistics: every ride is designed to be a safe and supportive space where students can start their day with a great experience. With innovation at our core, First Student is driving the future of student transportation one ride at a time.
Tyler Bryan attended his first National Congress on School Transportation in May 2015. The experience prepared him to take on an industry first 10 years later.
Bryan, Delaware’s de facto state director as the education associate for school transportation at the department of education, chaired the new alternative transportation writing committee that was included at the 17th NCST in Des Moines, Iowa. It was the first time state delegates took up a non-school bus issue since the first congress held in 1939. It was blasphemous to previously even think of proposing recommendations for other vehicles that transport students to and from school, not to mention other related events.
Seeing how NCST worked in 2015, at the behest of then-state director Ron Love, allowed Bryan to prepare not only in his role leading this historic proposal process but his responsibilities in providing guidance to school districts in his own state.
“The committees and delegation helped me gain an excellent working knowledge that better prepared me for taking on this role in Delaware. I am very appreciative of Ron’s guidance and inclusiveness in my previous role, and it was due to that involvement that eventually led me to this position,” Bryan said. “Being a 2015 delegate allowed me to see the process Ron followed to prepare, the execution during congress, and then the follow-up, including our state’s specification update process.
Getting to be involved and see that made it much easier to understand expectations and made me comfortable enough to take on a writing chair position.”
Despite admittedly being awestruck by NCST in 2015, the deliberations were made easier, he added, by knowing that all delegates as well as interested parties no matter the varying opinions were there for the same reason: Student safety.
“In my opinion, the 2025 on-site congress proceedings went very smoothly, and I was impressed by how well they stayed on schedule to accomplish 10 years of work within the provided timeframe,” he noted. Bryan provides more insights into the proposal process for alternative transportation, specifically, and the need for the industry to come together and create recommendations that benefit school districts of all states, in this month’s Q&A.
STN: Why is the topic of alternative transportation so important? In Delaware? Nationwide?
Bryan: Alternative transportation is important. As we know it is here and ever expanding. As this expansion continues, states and local districts are at the point where they must evaluate their needs and determine what policies, procedures and processes are required to ensure that they are doing their due diligence, to ensure that students are receiving safe transportation in the vehicle selected for school transportation.
In Delaware, it is continuing to grow for the transportation of our homeless and foster youth. Our regulations currently require the local education authority to establish its own policies and procedures for this type of transportation. After much conversation with our local transportation supervisors, they have requested that the state develop regulations around this type of transportation to create a standard framework for consistency across the state. The goal was to use NCST to propel us forward with creating the regulation.
STN: How and why did you get involved as the writing committee chair?
Bryan: I had been tasked with chairing the NASDPTS position paper for alternative transportation, so when they were looking for members of this committee, I had expressed interest since I had already been doing some work within this subject. When I found out they were in need of a chair for this section, I agreed to step up and take the lead, as I knew we would also be looking to do similar work in Delaware.
STN: How did the committee operate? What work went into formalizing/creating the proposals for delegate voting? What was the process for creating a writing committee that never existed before?
Bryan: With the NCST process, there was a first period, during which state delegations and interested parties could submit language, proposals or requests for changes. In the first round of proposals, our committee received only one proposal, which aimed to clarify the NHSTA guidance on the use of 15-passenger vans. This meant the committee needed to start drafting a proposal from scratch. The committee decided to examine multiple states that had already adopted regulations for alternative transportation, which we then used to identify similarities between them, providing us with a starting point.
The committee then determined what areas we wanted to focus on within this proposal, which were driver credentials, driver training, vehicle design and equipment, special education policy considerations, and other policy considerations. We then split into subgroups, splitting up within each of these subjects. The small groups then formed their recommendations, which included non-voting advisory members from various alternative transportation providers who also contributed input on these subject areas.
Once the subgroups completed their work, we brought it back to the main group and reviewed each area, voting on what we wanted to include in our proposal. Our proposal then went out for comment, and this time we received 15 comments for recommended language changes or additions. Our committee then reconvened to vote to either accept or reject those recommendations and then provided the committee’s decision back to those who submitted change requests. That was the process we followed for developing the final proposal that came to the Congress floor. It is definitely a more extensive process to start a new section from scratch versus just changing existing language. I was very fortunate to have great committee members who offered valuable input and time to allow us to put forth a solid proposal to congress.
STN: What were the proposals and what did the states pass? Was there anything surprising to you?
Bryan: The committee knew going into this that this section was new historical and many had varying opinions on it. We were expecting a lot of discussion around it. The final wording will be forthcoming incorporating the changes that occurred on the floor. (Editor’s note: The national specifications and procedures were under review by the editing and technical committees at this report.)
The one surprising thing for me as the writing chair was that I had preconceived ideas about which areas would be more controversial than others, so I was surprised to see that the driver training section was the one that received the most change. We had really intended that section to be a framework for those states or localities looking to implement training requirements. Overall, all the sections remained with modifications that were proposed and accepted by the congress, and this allowed the committee to achieve our initial goal of adopting a minimum framework to ensure safe transportation for students.
STN: What stood out most to you about your entire NCST experience?
Bryan: Due to COVID-19, our normal five-year process was extended to 10 years, resulting in a significant number of veterans familiar with this process retiring. There were many new delegates and delegate chairs who were attending the NCST for the first time at the 2025 congress. Even with many new individuals and a more extended hiatus, we were still able to achieve a highly successful congress that was completed ahead of schedule. This wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of all the individuals involved in this process. Another impressive aspect of NCST was viewing the table decorations featured by various states. It was great seeing the state pride across the Congress floor.
STN: Thank you.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted for the July 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
The first day of the new school year near Austin, Texas, started in a way no transportation professional or school official would ever want. Thankfully, everyone involved in the rollover crash on their way home have since been released from the hospital.
Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services confirmed a school bus rollover involving Leander Independent School District occurred Aug. 13 at 3:15 p.m. The school bus, which primarily transports students to and from Bagdad Elementary School, was transporting 42 children, leaving 12 needing transport to the hospital, including the school bus driver.
At the time of the crash, most students had not yet been dropped off.
The National Transportation Safety Board announced the day following the crash it is coordinating with the Texas Department of Public Safety on a safety investigation.
Sgt. Billy Ray, the public information officer for Texas DPS, noted the preliminary crash investigation indicates the school bus was traveling south on Nameless Road, which includes a slight curve. For an unknown reason as of this report, the school bus left the right side of the roadway and rolled over.
The 2024 Blue Bird school bus was equipped with lap/shoulder seatbelts, per state law. The state requires model-year 2018 or newer school buses to be equipped with the three-point seatbelts. School districts can opt out if the board determines that the cost exceeds the district’s budget and votes on it during a public meeting.
Information on whether students were wearing their lap/shoulder seatbelts was unknown at this time. But state law says students are required to wear the occupant restraints if the school bus is equipped with them.
Leander ISD Superintendent Bruce Gearing noted that information on the school bus driver was limited, but they are a “seasoned veteran bus driver.”
Gearing added that in addition to the deadly Central Texas floods last month, the Leander ISD family has been through a lot. “This tragedy is breaking our hearts,” he said. “We want each of the students and their families to know that our prayers are with them. Our thoughts are with them. And we will do everything in our power to support them.”
The National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) announced Minakshi Chilagani, a student at River Trail Middle School in Johns Creek, Georgia, is the overall national winner of the 2024–2025 National School Bus Safety Poster Contest.
The poster contest, organized annually by NAPT, is a long-standing tradition that encourages students to engage creatively with school bus safety messaging. It not only promotes awareness but empowers students to become ambassadors for safe school transportation in their communities.
Chilagani’s detailed artwork was chosen from student entries across the country in five different grade groups. Her poster will be featured nationwide during National School Bus Safety Week, happening Oct. 20–24, 2025. This year’s theme, “Safety First – Safety Always,” really comes through in her creative take on how to stay safe both on the bus and around it.
The winning poster was praised for illustrating core safety messages such as the importance of situational awareness, listening to the school bus driver, lining up properly while awaiting to board, staying seated during the ride, and avoiding the “most dangerous danger zone” around the bus.
In addition to NAPT, the panel of judges included the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, and the National School Transportation Association. Each entry was evaluated based on safety impact, originality, artistic quality, and visual effectiveness.
Other students from across the country were also recognized as divisional winners in their respective grade categories. Among the younger divisions, Skylar Roque from Smyrna Elementary in Georgia took first place for grades K–2. Harshini Lingam Muhilan from Unity Charter School in Morristown, New Jersey, won first place in grades 3–5. Chilagani also placed first in her own category, grades 6–8. In the Special Education division, first place went to Jace Reeves from Feagin Mill Middle School in Warner Robins, Georgia. Emma Machiski from Shenendehowa Central School District in Clifton Park, New York, won first place in the Computer-Aided Drawing division.
Looking ahead, the theme for the 2025–2026 contest will be “Safe Rides, Everyday Heroes.” Students may begin submitting entries between Nov. 2, 2025, and April 3, 2026. Full contest rules and submission information are available here.
The Milwaukee Police Department is still undecided about whether to expand its use of facial recognition technology, an MPD spokesperson said.
“We are in continued conversations with the public related to FRT (facial recognition technology) and have not made any decisions,” the spokesperson said.
MPD has been in discussions with the company Biometrica, which partners with police agencies and others to provide the technology.
Meanwhile, opposition to the technology continues to grow.
In July, the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission unanimously passed a resolution opposing MPD’s use of facial recognition. The Equal Rights Commission is a city body working to promote equality in the city’s institutions and the broader community.
Tony Snell, chair of the commission, sent a letter to Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman urging him to reject the technology. Copies were also sent to the Milwaukee Common Council, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.
The Equal Rights Commission’s overall goal is to help the city limit the risk of discrimination against people, Snell said.
The resolution also noted a lack of publicly available data on positive outcomes in other cities that have adopted the technology.
In May, 11 of the 15 members of the Milwaukee Common Council sent a letter to Norman opposing facial recognition, citing the risk of misidentification – particularly for people of color and women – and the potential for harm to the community’s trust in law enforcement.
Additional concerns raised in public testimony to the commission – by community members and civil groups – included the potential sharing of immigration-related data with federal agencies and the targeting of individuals and groups exercising their First Amendment rights.
What MPD says
The Milwaukee Police Department considers facial recognition technology a strong investigative tool. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
MPD has consistently stated that a carefully developed policy could help reduce risks associated with facial recognition.
“Should MPD move forward with acquiring FRT, a policy will be drafted based upon best practices and public input,” a department spokesperson said.
Facial recognition technology is a potent investigation tool to quickly and effectively generate leads, said Heather Hough, MPD’s chief of staff, during the Equal Rights Commission public meeting about the technology.
But Hough emphasized facial recognition’s role as one tool among many used by MPD.
“The real work is in the human analysis and additional investigation by our detectives, by our officers,” Hough said.
She also presented case studies, including a March 2024 homicide, in which facial recognition from a neighboring jurisdiction helped identify suspects.
Biometrica, the company MPD is considering partnering with, stressed how facial recognition’s potential errors can be reduced.
Kadambari Wade, Biometrica’s chief privacy officer, said the company is constantly evaluating and re-evaluating how it does its work, looking for ways to ensure it is more accurate.
She said she and her husband, Biometrica CEO Wyly Wade, are aware of concerns about racial bias and work to address them.
“Wyly is a white man from Texas. I’m a brown-skinned immigrant,” she said.
Kadambari Wade said they want to make sure their services would work as well on her as they do on him.
Wade also denied any current or future plans to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We do not work with ICE. We do not work in immigration,” she said.
What’s next?
Since the passage of Wisconsin Act 12, the only official way to amend or reject MPD policy is by a vote of at least two-thirds of the Common Council, or 10 members.
However, council members cannot make any decision about it until MPD actually drafts its policy, often referred to as a “standard operating procedure.”
Ald. Peter Burgelis – one of four council members who did not sign onto the Common Council letter to Norman – said he is waiting to make a decision until he sees potential policy from MPD or an official piece of legislation considered by the city’s Public Safety and Health Committee.
Snell’s main concern is for MPD’s decision to be fair and just.
“Regardless … you want to be part of the process in order to eliminate, or to the extent possible, reduce risk of discrimination to people,” Snell said.
As students in Fruitland, Missouri gear up for the new school year, safety took center stage at the community’s annual Back to School Bash, where children received hands-on lessons in both school bus safety and fire emergency preparedness.
The event was hosted by the Fruitland Area Fire Protection District, which partnered with certified instructors to teach the students how to stay safe during their daily rides to and from school.
“Today we are doing a back-to-school bash. Our main focus is going to be on school bus safety for the kids,” said firefighter and paramedic Adam Hilse via a Facebook video highlighting the event,. “We want to make sure the kids stay safe while they’re on the bus.”
Hilse emphasized the importance of children knowing what to do in the event of an emergency, saying it could make a critical difference.
“It’s really important that they know this information because if an incident does happen, we want the kids to stay calm and know that there’s a plan in place,” he said to a local news reporter.
In addition to school bus safety, students also participated in a fire safety simulation, crawling through a fog-filled smokehouse to practice how to react during a house fire. The hands-on experience taught them how to stay low and navigate their way out safely.
“They can get an idea of what they need to do if that happens, how to stay low and crawl out of a building,” Hilse added to local news reporters.
The fun-filled and educational day also included a visit from Marshall, the department’s beloved fire dog, which brought plenty of smiles to the crowd. From practicing real-world safety scenarios to meeting local heroes, Fruitland students left the bash better prepared and more excited to head back to school.
Tesla is hiring full-time vehicle operator positions based in New York City.
Employees will spend five to eight hours daily behind the wheel.
Drivers will collect data, provide feedback, and perform analysis tasks.
New York City is probably the worst place to drive a car in all of America. The area is so densely packed with people, cyclists, mopeds, and other cars that getting around can be genuinely panic-inducing for some. That’s the environment that Tesla wants to tackle with its autonomous driving tech. It seems that step one is openly hiring testers so that it can sort out how to handle the city.
The job listing on Tesla’s site for a ‘Vehicle Operator, Autopilot,’ includes the option of three shifts, day, afternoon, or night, with pay ranging from $25.25 to $30.60 an hour depending on position level. It comes with full benefits and is a full-time gig out of Flushing, New York.
A hands-on approach
Those hired on will drive what Tesla calls an engineering vehicle “for extended periods, conducting dynamic audio and camera data collection for testing and training purposes.”
The automaker expects the eventual hire to start and stop recording devices, perform minor equipment and software debugging, analyze data, provide feedback, write detailed daily drive reports, and most importantly, ensure the vehicle’s safety and operational status before every shift.
In other words, it appears as though the employee will have to be very focused throughout the day of driving, regardless of how much autonomy the car itself gets.
CNBC reports that Tesla hasn’t applied for a permit to test autonomous vehicles in the state. Notably, NYC officials confirmed that any company that does get a permit still needs a safety driver behind the wheel at all times. That could explain what Tesla is ultimately aiming for here.
Following a familiar playbook
After all, it’s already doing something similar in San Francisco, where it doesn’t have a permit to run an autonomous fleet. Instead, it has a safety driver in the driver’s seat and calls the service a ride-hailing operation.
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Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation. Family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism.
At Camp Reunite, children spend a week at a traditional summer camp, with access to outdoors activities and trauma-informed programming. Two days out of the week, campers spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents.
The program is accessible only to children of those incarcerated at Taycheedah and Kettle Moraine prisons, but the camp is discussing an expansion to Racine Correctional Institution.
Stigma surrounding incarceration and transportation barriers have limited growth of the camp.
Listen to Addie Costello’s story from WPR.
The thunk of a plastic bat followed each pitch and question Tasha H. lobbed toward her 14-year-old son. She cheered after each hit as she tracked down the whiffle ball and prepared her next throw.
“Maybe baseball next year?”
No, he responded before hitting the ball over his mom’s head. He plans to try out for varsity football instead.
“You’re getting a lot better than you give yourself credit for,” Tasha told him.
Tasha H. plays baseball with her son during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, June 24, 2025. The camp offers children a week of traditional summer camp activities, along with trauma-informed programming like art therapy. Two days out of the week, campers get to spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Standing in a patch of green grass in late June, working to extract more than one-word answers from her son, Tasha looked like a typical mom of a soon-to-be high schooler. But as the ball landed on the wrong side of a chain rope fence, it was clear they were not standing in a backyard or baseball field.
“I can’t go get that,” she said.
The fence stood only about 2 feet high. But Tasha could not cross it or the much taller, barbed fence bordering Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac — not for at least another year.
The brief batting practice was part of Camp Reunite, a program for children with incarcerated parents. Before camp, Tasha had not seen her son in the year since she was arrested for crimes she committed related to a drug relapse.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch are withholding the last names of parents or kids included in the story at the request of Camp Reunite to protect the campers’ privacy.
Tasha H. is shown with her son during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. Before camp, Tasha had not seen her son in the year since she was arrested. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
One of the first things Tasha noticed about her son was that he’s taller than her now.
“Then he spoke and it was like a man, and I was appalled,” Tasha said. “I know that sounds crazy, but I just want to be there as much as I can, even though I’m in here.”
They both needed the visit, she said.
Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation, experts say. Family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism.
Camp Reunite allows children to spend a week at a traditional summer camp where they can hike, canoe and participate in trauma-informed programming like art therapy. Two days out of the week, campers get to spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents in a more relaxed setting than typical visits.
Despite the camp’s success for parents and their kids, it remains unique to Wisconsin and has operated in just two prisons this summer: the women’s prison at Taycheedah and Kettle Moraine, a nearby men’s facility.
Public opinion is the camp’s biggest obstacle, said Chloe Blish, the camp’s mental wellness director. Prison and camp staff described hearing and reading concerns over the perception that the program is a safety risk — and that it rewards incarcerated parents.
Past media coverage of the camp has prompted online backlash against named parents — personal attacks that older campers can read and absorb, Blish said.
She wishes skeptics could experience a day at Camp Reunite, she said. “It’s electric.”
Chloe Blish, the mental wellness director for Camp Reunite, hugs a woman incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution during Camp Reunite. She wishes skeptics could experience a day at the camp. “It’s electric,” she says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Tasha and her son started their reunion playing the board game Sorry!
“I miss you,” she said before moving her pawn 10 spaces and asking if he signed up to attend the winter camp.
He nodded before knocking her piece back to the start, softly telling his mom “sorry.”
Between turns and debates about the rules, she asked about school, football, friends, food at camp and where he got his shoes. He reminded her that she bought them for him. She told him he needed to clean them with an old toothbrush, which led to a short lecture about how often he should replace his toothbrush.
He asked her why she didn’t spend extra money to get Nikes with her prison uniform, a gray T-shirt and teal scrub pants. They joked about her all-white Reebok sneakers.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It’s been a long time, huh?”
Not like other camps
When Taycheedah social worker Rachel Fryda-Gehde heard officials were trying to host a camp at the prison, her first reaction was: “Nobody’s ever going to entertain such a crazy idea.”
This summer, she helped run the prison’s eighth season.
She and other camp leaders plan to present on the program’s success at national conferences this fall, she said. They want to see the camp grow, but there are barriers, including public perception.
Children and their mothers face off in a water balloon fight during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, June 24, 2025, in Fond du Lac, Wis. Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation, experts say, and family visits are shown to decrease recidivism. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The nonprofit Hometown Heroes runs the camp in coordination with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Camp Hometown Heroes started as a summer camp for children whose parents died after serving in the military. The camp paid to fly Blish and her sister from California to Wisconsin during summers when they were teenagers.
She still loves Hometown Heroes, but Camp Reunite has more impact, she said.
“There’s a lot of camps for gold star kids, that’s easy support,” Blish said. Things are different at Camp Reunite.
She and other camp leaders often work in the kitchen, filling in to wash dishes during Camp Reunite. During Hometown Heroes, that’s never necessary, because so many community members volunteer to help, she said.
Hometown Heroes, an exponentially larger operation, also receives more individual donations because of people who have a passion for helping veterans and military families, wrote Liz Braatz, the camp’s director of development.
She has heard the stigma around supporting people in prison, she wrote in an email. But discussing the camp as a way to help children affected by trauma “has made all the difference” in reshaping perceptions, she said.
Outside of camp, the organization provides campers with new clothing, school supplies and hygiene products.
“It does not matter who your God is or who you vote for, if your passion is helping these kids,” Braatz wrote.
The camp is in conversation with Racine Correctional Institution and now has plans to expand its program next summer.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections would welcome Camp Reunite in additional facilities, spokesperson Beth Hardtke said.
Deloise L., who is incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, sprays water on the hands of her children Dariaz and Da’Netta to make temporary tattoos during Camp Reunite. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Deloise L. sticks a fake mustache on her son, Dariaz, as her daughter, Da’Netta, fixes her hair during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Barriers stifle attendance
The camp faces additional obstacles in expanding its service.
This summer’s camp at Taycheedah was far from capacity. There were enough camp staff for more than 100 kids, Blish said. But just over a dozen families showed up.
“We started out with a lot more,” Fryda-Gehde said.
Alba P. stands with her children for a family portrait during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, a maximum- and medium-security women’s prison, June 24, 2025, in Fond du Lac, Wis. From left are: Cataleya, Amir, Nyzaiah and Avery. Camp Reunite is a weeklong, trauma-informed summer camp for youth who have an incarcerated parent. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
There are two major requirements for moms to join the camp: no sex crime convictions and no major conduct issues in the six months leading up to camp. This year’s attendance shrank after women were placed into segregation cells after breaking prison rules.
Prison social workers spend months with the moms to prepare for camp. Moms create posters to decorate their campers’ bunk beds, while prison staff set up activity stations like a beauty parlor and photo booth in the visiting room.
But the biggest reason for lower attendance: getting some caregivers on board.
A girl gets off the bus during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, June 24, 2025, in Fond du Lac, Wis. The camp faces obstacles in expanding its service. Some caretakers lack cars and may struggle to transport children there. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Some kids might not be ready to visit with their incarcerated parents, Blish said. Other times, caretakers are hesitant to allow them in a prison or struggle to get them there.
Women are more likely than men to be the primary caretakers for their children at the time of arrest. That often leads to major life disruptions for campers visiting the women’s prison who are more likely to live with foster placements or more distant relatives.
Even caretakers comfortable with the camp might struggle to get there. Many families lack cars, Blish said. The camp tries to arrange rides for as many kids as possible, but it can’t always pick up kids who live farther away.
‘You’re here to have fun’
Nyzaiah and his three younger siblings live with their grandparents in Milwaukee. Camp was the first time they’ve made the more than hourlong drive to visit their mom since she was incarcerated.
“I was trying not to cry because I don’t like really showing my emotions to people, but I did drop a tear,” he said. “Me and my mom are really close.”
Nyzaiah hugs his mother Alba P. goodbye during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, June 24, 2025, in Fond du Lac, Wis. “Me and my mom are really close,” he says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
They talk on the phone around four times a week, but seeing her in person felt different, he said.
Most of his classmates get picked up by their parents. Only his close friends know why his grandparents pick him up each day.
“At home, I’m big brother. I gotta do everything and make sure it’s good. I don’t like to bring a lot of stress on my grandma,” the 13-year-old said.
But at camp, his brothers and sister are in separate cabins.
“The counselors told me, ‘You’re here to have fun. Don’t worry about your siblings. We’ve got them,’” he said.
Alba P. paints with her daughter, Cataleya, during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, a maximum- and medium-security women’s prison, June 24, 2025. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Glitter, braids and tearful goodbyes
Moms aren’t the only ones asking questions at camp.
“You’ve got a TV?” asked Deloise L.’s 11-year-old son.
“Of course,” she answered. The morning before camp she woke up early from excitement and watched the morning news while she waited.
Deloise’s children are staying with her sister who brings them for somewhat regular visits throughout the year. But camp is different.
“I love this,” she said.
Deloise L. braids the hair of her daughter Da’Netta during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Deloise L. and her children Dariaz and Da’Netta stand outside for a family portrait during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. Deloise’s sister brings the children for somewhat regular visits throughout the year. But camp is different, she says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
During a normal visit, her family is under the supervision of correctional officers, and her movement is more limited. At camp, most of the prison staff present are social workers. Moms walk from activity to activity without asking permission, including to the camp’s crowded “salon.”
Deloise clipped hot pink braids into her teenage daughter’s hair and applied glittery makeup over her eyes. Her son picked out a fake mustache.
As counselors warned that there were 10 minutes left until they would bus back to camp, kids scrambled to get close to their moms. Even the knowledge that they would be back later that week failed to stop the tears.
“When you got to separate from them, that’s when it gets bad,” Deloise said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “It just gets bad when you want to be around your kids.”
This is her family’s second camp. They plan to attend one more summer camp before her release in 2026.
“I’m learning from my mistakes,” she said. “They won’t have to worry about this again.”
Deloise L. wipes away tears after saying goodbye to her children during Camp Reunite at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, June 24, 2025, in Fond du Lac, Wis. This is her family’s second camp. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Deloise L. and her daughter Da’Netta look at their printed family photo during Camp Reunite. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
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On paper, the calculation seems simple enough: If well-trained drivers operate school buses equipped with safety devices that reduce traffic collisions, then insurance claims and premiums should likewise decrease.
In reality, insurance brokers say no single piece of technology or training technique is enough to warrant lower premiums on its own. But combined, these tools can help protect a fleet from liability in court.
“The biggest takeaway is it hopefully leads to less claims, which would ultimately drive down your cost,” said Kyle McClellan, a practice leader at NSM Insurance Brokers. “There’s not a direct correlation, like when you bundle your insurance together and you’re going to save 10 percent. But fewer claims leads to fewer dollars spent on insurance.”
While carrier insurance rates vary depending on fleet size, vehicle type, routes and loss history, rates have consistently trended upward nationwide.
Over the past year, the Consumer Price Index calculated motor vehicle insurance rising an average 6.4 percent. In one extreme case, the David School District in Oklahoma saw a 328-percent increase in insurance rates from 2020 to 2022, rising to $261,000 from $61,000 annually, per Education Week.
Rising rates often result in shopping around for better policies. When it comes to negotiating rates, McClellan said two pieces of school bus technology are particularly
attractive to providers: Cameras and telematics.
“Those allows us on the broker side to meet with school bus contractors, identify what they’re doing, how they’re doing certain things, and then go to the insurance market and tell them, here’s the reasons why you’d training fall by the wayside.
“Now they got the big screen in front of them and every time someone burps it records it, and they have to look at it instead of paying attention to what they’re doing on the road,” quipped school bus training expert Richard Fischer, who has owned Trans-Consult since 1977, after serving as a transportation and safety director in California.
Having been called as an expert witness too many times to count, Fischer said three questions often come up in court that can be addressed with training, studying driver manuals and simple record keeping: Did the driver have a duty? Did the driver previously breach this duty? What was done to correct the breach of duty?
State CDL driver manuals and the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures manual updated by the National Congress on School Transportation don’t just lay out best practices, Fischer said. It is a driver’s job to know the manuals forward and backward.
“A driver-carrier has one duty to perform, and that’s to do everything possible to make sure that the drivers are safe to drive the bus and the kids are protected,” Fischer said.
In addition to training, he advised documenting hours and topics covered, with each driver documenting their own record in their own handwriting. A trainer writing records might implicate questions of falsified records. Most importantly though, Fischer said
don’t make excuses.
“Quit arguing the point we don’t have any money to do safety meetings or we’re short drivers, so we have to excel our training program,” Fischer said. “Everyone says we transport the most precious cargo in the world—then do it.”
Besides providing benefits on the road, many insurers favor having vehicles equipped with telematics and cameras for their benefits in court, particularly as an upward trend of high judgments increases financial risk.
Along with an increase in court-ordered “nuclear verdicts” that brokers say have resulted in increased insurance costs across the board, recent years have seen a trend of higher judgments in urban areas and lower judgments in rural areas impacting localized policy prices.
Regardless of who is at fault, Lisa Paul of Paul Consulting said juries are often poised to believe the little guy over a large company, a trend she has seen play out time and time again over a 32-year career in commercial insurance.
“Courts tend to rule against the big power unit, where people perceive there’s big dollars, whether that’s a school district or a large public company,” Paul said. “But the utilization of external facing cameras has been extremely helpful in improving the exoneration rates of accidents.”
A 2023 survey by the American Transportation Research Institute found driver-facing camera footage exonerated drivers in more cases than it provided evidence of negligence. Per legal experts surveyed, the presence of cameras seemed to drive settlements in nearly 75 percent of cases reviewed. Besides being useful in court, many commend telematics for catching both positive and negative behavior, providing opportunities for coaching and praise.
“It gives an opportunity to enhance and improve driver coaching of how the driver, the school bus operator themselves can improve their driving behavior based on how the vehicle is monitoring that during the course of transit,” Paul said.
Jeffrey Cassell, president of the School Bus Safety Company and a former director of safety for Laidlaw, credits certain camera systems, like National Express’ G-force activated DriveCam, with driving quick settlements.
“What happens is, if you’re liable, you admit to liability immediately and get to negotiating the amount and there’s no discovery. And if you’re not liable, you just get the video and send it to the plaintiff attorney,” Cassell said. “Attorneys don’t chase rainbows.”
While investing in technology and maintaining training helps avoid crashes, thus reducing insurance claims, the staunch safety advocate said keeping students safe should be motivation enough to follow best practices.
“Otherwise, it’s doing it for the wrong reason,” Cassell said. More than school bus technology and training, Cassell said loss records are ultimately the most important factor in obtaining a favorable insurance rate.
“Now if you then say to them, hang on a minute, we’ve just fitted extended stop arms, which should reduce the accidents, can we have a reduction in the premium? They’ll
say, of course you can, as soon as it shows up in your losses,” Cassell said. “If your losses go down, your premium will go down.”
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the July 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
Just in time for the back-to-school season, Connecticut-based school bus company, DATTCO, launched a bilingual children’s book designed to help young students overcome the fear of riding the school bus for the first time.
The company, which transports over 130,000 students daily across Connecticut and Rhode Island, created “The Big Yellow Adventure” in response to a concern staff hear regularly from families. Many parents have shared that their children are nervous or afraid of taking the school bus, especially for the very first time.
“As a school transportation provider, we understand that our role goes beyond simply getting students from point A to point B,” Reya Samuel, the marketing specialist at DATTCO, told STN. “We’re a part of the daily lives of thousands of families, and we want to help make that first day and every day after feel safe and welcoming.”
To help ease that anxiety, DATTCO partnered with local behavioral health provider Optimus Healthcare to create a storybook that serves as a comforting and educational resource. The book is designed to be read aloud by parents or caregivers and encourages conversations about what children can expect during their first ride. By helping kids prepare emotionally, the book supports smoother transitions into the school year.
The free resource will be distributed to every elementary school DATTCO serves, and families will also have access to PDF copies and coloring book versions on the company’s website. The book is available in both English and Spanish.
Paul Mayer, vice president of marketing and communications at DATTCO as well author of “The Big Yellow Adventure” emphasized the motivation behind the project.
“When we started hearing the same concerns from parents year after year, we realized we had an opportunity to do more than just transport students safely, we could help them feel confident and excited about their journey to school,” he said.“ This book represents our belief that a transportation company’s responsibility extends far beyond the bus ride itself. We’re part of each child’s educational story, and we want that story to start with confidence, not anxiety.”
Emotional wellness was at the forefront of the project. Brianna Whitlock, licensed clinical social worker from Optimus Healthcare, who helped develop the book, shared her perspective on the broader impact.
“When transportation companies take this kind of proactive approach to child welfare, it demonstrates a commitment that goes far beyond their core service,” she said. “This book fills a genuine gap in preparing children for school transportation.”
From DATTCO’s leadership, the initiative is viewed as a natural extension of the company’s mission. “We know that a child’s first school bus ride is an important step not just in their education, but in their emotional growth,” said Kyle DeVivo, chief operating officer. “This book is our way of saying, We’re here to help. Partnering with Optimus Healthcare has been invaluable in making sure this resource truly serves the children and families we care so deeply about.”
Company President and CEO Don DeVivo echoed this sentiment, framing the book as part of a broader philosophy.
“At DATTCO, we’ve always believed that our responsibility extends beyond transportation, we’re part of each child’s educational journey,” he said, adding that book represents the company’s commitment to innovation and dedication to making every aspect of that journey as positive as possible for the students and families served.
As schools prepare to reopen, DATTCO is organizing events including book reading demonstrations and school bus tours to give families a chance to meet drivers and ask questions ahead of the first day.
Nevada became the 26th state to authorize school districts to install and use school bus stop-arm cameras.
Assembly Bill 527, which passed June 6 and went into effect on July 1, allows school districts to install the cameras and for law enforcement to use evidence of illegal passing to issue citations to the vehicle’s registered owner. Fines collected are used to fund the installation, maintenance and operation of the camera systems as well as pay the vendor to install, operate or maintain the systems.
School districts that choose to vieo cameras must conduct a public awareness campaign regarding the use of cameras and notify the public on when enforcement starts.
While school district leaders applaud the law, local police departments are questioning if they have adequate staffing to handle review video and issue citations, as noted in a local news article.
The law also addresses privacy concerns by requiring school districts and police departments to delete images of vehicles after 90 days.
A Flock camera on the Lac Courte Orielles Reservation in Saywer County. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Across Wisconsin, a vast camera network is tirelessly photographing and identifying vehicles and license plates, storing that information on a central platform that can be searched at will by law enforcement. With just a few keystrokes, including a reason for the search, officers in local departments across the state can uncover where a vehicle has been and who it belongs to. The network, known as Flock, logs these searches, a feature Flock Safety’s CEO says “underscores accountability” and allows for increased oversight. Still, residents and advocates have raised questions about who is using Flock and why.
Analyzing Flock audit data, Wisconsin Examiner found that no less than 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used Flock from Jan. 1 to May 31. Although officers logged reasons like drugs, shootings, or traffic violations, many also entered vague reasons such as “investigation” or no clear reason at all.
Wisconsin Examiner obtained the audit data through open records requests to the Wauwatosa Police Department (WPD). The data was then analyzed using computer coding programs.
The public deserves to know who is deploying these technologies, under what policies, and with what accountability.
– John McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin
While favored by many law enforcement agencies nationwide, Flock cameras have also attracted controversy. CEO and Flock co-founder Garrett Langley stressed the importance of audits in an extensive June 2025 statement. “As the Founder and CEO of Flock Safety, I take nothing more seriously than the values we built this company upon — to give cities tools to uphold public safety, while enabling accountability and transparency,” Langley wrote. “I spend time with my team thinking about these issues every single day: how to build our search interface, audit records, compliance tools, and data policies to allow individual agencies to police in the best way for their community — not as prescribed by us, a private technology company, but by the elected officials and individuals the tools actually serve. Public safety does not need to come at the expense of community values.”
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The statement was released as Flock faced controversy over the platform’s alleged use for immigration and abortion-related surveillance. According to investigative reports by 404 Media, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have used local law enforcement to access the nationwide AI-enabled camera network to track immigrants, and a Texas sheriff’s office conducted a Flock search with the reason for the search recorded as “had an abortion, search for female”. Langley denounced the abortion report as “misinformation” and “unequivocally false,” citing law enforcement statements and internal checks by Flock.
Although Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found that 11 of Wisconsin’s 13 county sheriffs which partner with ICE through the federal 287(g) program appeared in the Flock audit data, it’s unclear thus far whether any of those agencies used Flock for immigration-related reasons.
“Once this level of surveillance is normalized, it becomes incredibly hard to roll back,” Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin said in a statement to Wisconsin Examiner. “Today it’s license plates — tomorrow it could be forced search and seizure or checkpoints on the road. We need to draw the line somewhere. Flock cameras track the movement of millions of cars, often without a warrant or your knowledge. That’s a profound erosion of your right to move freely and privately in your own community. Flock cameras aren’t targeted at individuals but mass surveils the movement of all residents.”
Flock use in the Badger State
A breadcrumb trail is left behind whenever Flock is used. “Everytime a search is run on the Flock System, that search and search reason is preserved permanently in the audit trail of every agency whose camera was included in the search,” Langley wrote. “Those searches are viewable in an agency’s ‘network audit’ and available for regular oversight: to command staff, to elected officials, to communities. This is part of our commitment to transparency and accountability from the beginning of the design process.”
According to an Examiner analysis, the top Wisconsin-based law enforcement agency was the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). When the agency first established a contract with Flock, a spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner, it was attached to MPD’s intelligence-focused fusion center known as the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC). Fusion centers were formed to bridge intelligence gaps between agencies after the 9/11 attacks, and consolidate resources across local, state, military and private sector entities. STAC partners with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and shares information between local police departments across eight counties in southeastern Wisconsin. Although the Flock contract was later modified to cover the entire police department the name “milwaukee wi pd – STAC” remained in the dashboard.
A graph depicting the top 20 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies to use Flock between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Nearly 40,000 searches originating from MPD alone appeared in network audit data from the Wauwatosa Police Department.
After MPD, the second most frequent user of Flock in Wisconsin was the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, with just over 13,000 searches between Jan. 1 and May 28. West Allis PD and the Fond Du Lac County Sheriff’s Office each conducted nearly 12,000 searches. Wauwatosa PD, was the fifth highest user of Flock with10,372 searches.
A Milwaukee PD spokesperson said it makes sense that the department, including STAC, are Wisconsin’s biggest user of Flock. “Milwaukee is the largest city in the state, and the eight county area of operations also falls under STAC.”
McCray Jones feels there needs to be more oversight. “That’s not happening now,” he said. Local elected officials and the public deserve to know how this data is being used, stored and shared — especially with their data being shared with an oppositional federal government who will weaponize this information against our community members.”
A Milwaukee police squad car in front of the Municipal Court downtown. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Fears about federal law enforcement rose dramatically this year after high-profile immigration-related arrests in Milwaukee, including of a man who was falsely accused of writing a letter threatening President Donald Trump and Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested for not cooperating with immigration officers who came to her court room to arrest a man who was appearing before her.
In May, Wisconsin Examiner reported that STAC used Flock for a “classified” investigation, which MPD said was not immigration-related. Residents have called for independent oversight of police surveillance. In late July, Michigan Advance reported that the Grand Rapids PD used Flock to monitor protesters who participated in pro-Palestine, LGBTQ+ and anti-Trump protests, although the department denied using Flock to surveil protesters.
McCray Jones called the spread of Flock cameras in Wisconsin “concerning, especially with the sprawling violation of civil liberties, rights and privacy by the federal government.” He specifically cited “ICE obtaining side-door access to the Flock network through local law enforcement for immigration enforcement.”
“We have not seen a complete list of Wisconsin police agencies with access to Flock,” he added, “and that is concerning considering the long history of surveillance being disproportionately targeted at the most marginalized of communities, especially when layered on top of existing disparities in traffic stops and interactions with law enforcement suffered by Black and brown communities in the state.”
The term “wanted” was MPD’s top reason for using Flock in the data the Examiner reviewed. An MPD spokesperson explained that the term “wanted” “does not mean that a warrant has been issued for a person. ‘Wanted’ refers to people, vehicles, investigative leads related to an investigation. This also includes investigative purposes that are not criminal in nature to include missing critical persons and Amber alerts.”
A graph depicting the top 20 reasons for which the Milwaukee PD and STAC used Flock between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“Robbery” and “Shooting” were MPD’s second and third most frequent reasons for using Flock. Other categories included “res,” which could be an abbreviation for Reckless Endangering Safety and drug dealing. “Homicide” ranked as MPD’s ninth most frequent reason. Among all 221 Wisconsin agencies using Flock, violent crimes do not appear among the top 10 reasons for searches. MPD’s spokesperson said this aspect of the Examiner’s audit data review was misleading. “I would say that the vast amount of usage would be related to violent crime,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “This would include homicides, shootings, armed robberies, carjackings, batteries, and sexual assaults.” Although the reason column is intended to document the purpose of a Flock search, information in that column was often not detailed enough to determine whether violence was involved.
In our time using Flock, we have found it extremely beneficial in helping solve crimes and increasing public safety in our communities.
– Capt. John Rouseau, Brown County Sheriff’s Office
The discrepancy between the reasons for using Flock cited in the audit data and law enforcement claims about using Flock to fight violent crime raise doubts, says McCray Jones. “This directly contradicts how agencies like MPD have sold this technology to the public,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “They say it’s about violent crime — but in practice, that doesn’t appear to be the case. It also begs the question of what is the technology and data being used for? If this tool is mostly being used for minor offenses or vague investigations, then we’re creating a mass surveillance infrastructure to enforce petty infractions — usually disproportionately against Black, brown, and poor residents. Is it being used to track protesters and dissidents?”
A graph depicting the top 20 reasons Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used Flock between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (The last column is a period or dot). (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
MPD’s fifth most frequent Flock search term, with over 1,000 searches, was simply “investigation” with no other context. MPD’s spokesperson said that this “denotes that the search was related to a legitimate investigative purpose.”
“Investigation” was also the most frequent reason Flock was used by Wisconsin law enforcement agencies. Unlike entries including “stolen,” “drugs,” “warrant” or “homicide,” it’s unclear what the “investigation” entries meant. The audit data included categories for case numbers and licence plates, but these were redacted upon release to protect ongoing investigations and citizen privacy.
Wauwatosa PD led all 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies in using only “investigation” to denote the reason for Flock searches. More than 1,900 searches by WPD used that term. WPD’s next most frequent reason was “stolen” with 871 searches. Spokesperson Det. Lt. Joseph Roy, Ph.D, said WPD Flock use is guided by a formal written policy.
The Wauwatosa Police Department (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“The system is a critical investigative and public safety tool that supports a wide range of legitimate law enforcement functions, from stolen vehicle recovery to identifying suspects in violent crime investigations,” said Roy. “While officers are expected to document their searches clearly, the department continues to refine training and oversight to ensure transparency, consistency, and proper use of the system.”
MPD’s spokesperson said that “the system requires a generic input to conduct a search and will include a case number. We require monthly audits to ensure that the system is utilized for legitimate investigative purposes.”
Vague reasons for tapping into a powerful network
Not every agency in Wisconsin uses Flock under a specific policy. Capt. John Rousseau, spokesperson for the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, told Wisconsin Examiner that the office does not have a Flock-specific policy. “We have policies and audits that dictate our use of law enforcement databases and tools generally, but not platform specific,” Capt. John Rousseau said in a statement.
Brown County’s Sheriff’s Office, Wisconsin’s second most frequent Flock searcher, added, “We conduct regular training on all law enforcement tools, Flock included.” Wisconsin Examiner’s audit analysis found that “1410” was Brown County’s top reason for using Flock. This was a badge number, the captain explained.
The Examiner’s analysis “is not capturing Flock usage completely,” he said. “It is aggregating the reason code, but we primarily use specific case numbers in our search. That would be the largest category of our usage, but it will not be captured in your analysis.”
Flock’s system always records a search reason, and provides a dropdown menu of search terms, as well as a case number category. “Agencies should prescribe, in their [License Plate Reader] policies, how users should populate that search field,” the company’s CEO wrote in a statement.
This level of opacity is unacceptable.
– John McCray Jones, policy analyst for the ACLU of Wisconsin
Clear reasons for using Flock were sometimes lacking in the audit analysis. West Allis PD led all of Wisconsin in using only a dot in the reason field when recording Flock use. Just over 1,200 searches were conducted using the dot. Only six other agencies used a dot to indicate the reason for Flock use, including the police departments of Waukesha, Ripon, Elm Grove, MPD, and the sheriffs of Columbia and Portage counties. MPD – STAC and Portage County’s uses of this reason code was so infrequent that they barely appeared when graphed.
A graph depicting the top Wisconsin law enforcement agencies using Flock for “.” between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The dot was also West Allis’s top overall reason for using Flock. Others included “sus,” “investigation,” “stolen” and “theft,” as well as “mvth,” “pd”, “dea,”, “s,” and others which the police department did not define when asked, nor did it explain why the dot was so often favored by its officers.
West Allis PD Deputy Chief Robert Fletcher said in a statement that the department’s officers “receive training on the proper use of law enforcement databases.”
“This training includes training that the use of law enforcement databases, whether FLOCK, department records or information received through NCIC database can only be queried and used for law enforcement purposes,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher added, “Any allegation that a department member is obtaining information for a non-law enforcement purpose would be investigated by a member of the WAPD Command Staff and corrective action would be taken by the WAPD if warranted.”
A graph depicting the top 20 reasons West Allis PD used Flock between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
WAPD’s policy states that personnel “must have an articulable law enforcement reason to access and/or perform any query in the Flock system,” and that regular audits may be performed to ensure the system is being used correctly.
Waukesha PD, the state’s second biggest user of the dot — also the department’s top reason for using Flock — suggested that this use was improper. Capt. Dan Baumann told Wisconsin Examiner that, when it came to this vague use for Flock, “we isolated this to a specific officer and have readdressed the [Standard Operating Procedure] and have provided that officer with extra training…This is being addressed through training with the officer. The Flock administrator ran an audit specific to your request and isolated this to only one officer. This has been corrected.”
Waukesha PD’s Flock policy states that officers should “enter the primary reason” for conducting a plate search “i.e. burglary suspect, robbery suspect, vehicle pursuit,” when an incident report number is unavailable. The Columbia County Sheriffs Office, Wisconsin’s third biggest user of the dot as a reason for its Flock use, didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
Debating the merits
McCray Jones found the Flock audit searches using only “investigation” or “.” to be “incredibly concerning.”
“Vague entries like ‘investigation’ or a period provide no meaningful oversight and violate the spirit of transparency and democracy. This kind of documentation undermines any public trust or accountability,” he said.
But police departments using Flock stressed its versatility and usefulness in netting investigative leads. “Flock has proven instrumental in criminal investigations and does help increase public safety,” MPD’s spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner, adding that the platform has aided investigations of car theft, homicides and kidnappings.
A graph depicting the top 20 law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin that used Flock for “investigation” between Jan. 1 and May 28 of 2025. (Generated by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Capt. Rousseau of the Brown County Sheriffs Office said, “We use Flock during a host of public safety activities that can range from locating missing/endangered people to wanted persons,” as well as looking for criminal suspects. “In one example, we investigated a fatal hit and run car crash where a pedestrian was killed and the vehicle fled the area,” said Rousseau. “Analysis of Flock data identified the suspect vehicle and allowed investigators to follow up on the information. That’s a significant example, but we also use Flock daily to identify and locate persons that have outstanding warrants for their arrest, known drug trafficking suspects, and many other uses.”
Capt. Bauman of the Waukesha PD said, “Our agency’s deployment of FLOCK reflects a commitment to public safety that is deliberate and respectful of civil liberties. We believe that transparency, policy integrity, and community engagement are essential in maintaining trust while responsibly leveraging technology to protect the community.”
Regarding the Examiner’s analysis of Flock audit data, McCray Jones said, “What stands out is how many agencies are using this tool with little to no transparency around the justification for its use. That kind of vagueness makes it difficult to know whether Flock is being used in ways that respect people’s rights or whether it’s enabling a dragnet approach to surveillance. We need guardrails, third-party audits, and standardized reporting across jurisdictions. It’s not enough to trust that agencies will use Flock responsibly — we need mechanisms to ensure they are.”
Surveillance cameras monitor traffic on a clear day | Getty Images Creative
The ACLU and local activist groups have pushed for Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, which can be passed at the local level and would require public hearings and annual reports on surveillance technology. “Given the lack of safeguards and history of abuse, we believe there should be a moratorium on expanding Flock use until real oversight structures are in place — if ever,” said McCray Jones.
With concerns around surveillance, however, Capt. Rousseau cautioned that “there may be a fundamental misunderstanding about what Flock is and isn’t.” He explained in a statement that, “Flock is not facial recognition. It does not track any personally identifiable information. It is not used for traffic enforcement. Flock cameras perform the same actions that an officer could do if we were to assign a police officer to sit at an intersection recording license plates. We don’t have the resources for that kind of a deployment, so we supplement it with technology. Cameras are used everywhere.”
Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found that “traffic enforcement” was the top reason entered by the Fond Du Lac County Sheriff’s Office for its Flock use. Fond Du Lac didn’t respond to a request for comment. Fond Du Lac County also led the state in using Flock for school-related reasons, followed by sheriffs of Kenosha counties, Milwaukee PD, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office, and others. Most of those uses involved school bus violations or complaints, such as cars passing in front of a school bus. Several searches were also for school-related threats.
Rousseau said that Flock must be considered in a societal context where cameras are everywhere. “A police officer wears a body camera inside of a patrol car that’s equipped with a camera driving down a highway that’s covered in cameras conducting traffic stops on cars that also may have dash cameras. Flock is but one of a handful of law enforcement tools that we use on a daily basis to improve public safety through the proactive and efficient delivery of law enforcement services. Proper data safeguards are in place to protect against abuse.”
McCray Jones agrees there are cameras everywhere, but says no surveillance network should be underestimated. “Surveillance creep is real — and Flock is just one piece,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “Communities need to decide if this technology has any place in public safety, and if so, under what strict and democratically accountable conditions. The public should demand hearings, insist on transparency and support local ordinances that put the community — not private corporations or law enforcement — in the driver’s seat.”
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) warns blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the nation “continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity.” The forecast is a driving factor for school transportation departments seeking to incorporate cleaner alternatives for fueling buses.
The DOE report “Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security” released July 7, fulfills Section 3(b) of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Strengthening The Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid,” designed to deliver a uniform methodology to identify at-risk regions and guide federal reliability interventions.
The report finds the current path—retiring more generations without dependable replacements—threatens both grid reliability and the ability to meet growing AI-driven energy demand. Without intervention, the bulk power system cannot support AI growth, maintain reliability, or keep energy affordable.
Projected load growth is too large and fast for existing grid management and capacity planning methods to handle. A transformative shift is urgently needed.
The retirement of 104 giga-watts (GW) of firm capacity by 2030, without one-to-one replacement, worsens the resource adequacy challenge. Loss of this generation could cause major outages during unfavorable weather for wind and solar.
While 209 GW of new generation is projected by 2030, only 22 GW would be firm baseload power. Even without retirements, the model found increased risk of outages in 2030 by a factor of 34.
Current methods for assessing resource adequacy are outdated. Modern evaluations must consider not just peak demand, but also the frequency, magnitude and duration of outages, and model increasing interdependence with neighboring grids.
“Though demands on the electric grid are increasing, we do not foresee a meaningful logistics problem for school transportation directors,” noted Michelle Levinson, the World Resources Institute’s senior manager of eMobility Finance and Policy. “The report headline averages numbers across the whole of the U.S. The risk of additional outages is low and is brought up by high assumed data center demand in Electric Reliability Council of Texas and in PJM South (Virginia and Maryland).”
Levinson commented that the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates electricity customers on average experienced approximately 5.5 hours of electricity interruptions in 2022.
“Even if all these outages occur on school days, which is unlikely, outages would account for only 0.19 percent of the hours when a bus is in the yard and potentially charging,” she added. “Luckily, transportation directors are already accustomed to navigating the impacts of electric outages on their fueling capabilities through their experience with liquid fossil fuel pumps, which also needs electricity to function.”
Levinson acknowledged change can be “scary” and the transition to electric school buses requires a shift in logistics but should not be a problem in and of itself and as with all logistics comes down to planning.
Overnight and midday down times of most school buses offer substantial opportunities for directors to charge batteries in advance of any conditions that might indicate higher grid risks, such as extreme weather events, she added.
However, others warn that even a short outage will greatly disrupt transportation operations. The DOE’s predicted blackout rate “introduces serious questions about how to keep buses moving in the face of growing grid instability,” noted Joel Stutheit, senior manager of autogas business development at the Propane Education & Research Council (PERC).
“The school day is built around a routine,” he continued. “Imagine what happens to that routine if the grid goes down as often as this DOE report suggests. If a transportation director is relying on an electric school bus fleet, blackouts could leave them unable to charge buses and reliably transport students. Even a short-term outage could introduce last-minute scheduling changes, rerouting [of] buses, and adding extra pressure on drivers and operations teams.”
Transportation directors need to shift from thinking about the electric grid as a guarantee to thinking about it as a variable for which they must plan, Stutheit said.
Ewan Pritchard, the chief subject matter expert on school bus electrification for consultant Energetics, said he believes the intent of the report was to make electric vehicles look bad.
“The DOE’s report is politically charged,” he shared. “My company is the evaluator for the electric vehicle infrastructure program for the state of California. My team is collecting data from all the vehicle charging stations across the state of California that are put in by the electric utilities. We track the time of usage of all of those stations, and we issue a report annually on the progress.”
The team’s work, he said, demonstrates electric school buses can benefit the utility grid — a shoring-up effect in the sense that it depends on when a school bus is plugged in.
For example, it can be a problem if school districts charge electric vehicles between 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., actively drawing power from the utility grid during peak demand times when usage and prices are highest, he noted.
Instead, Pritchard recommended school transportation departments would do well to use charge management systems, which essentially keep track of the strain on the utility grid, the cost of electricity and carbon production.
Doing so saves districts money, he added.
“We’re seeing tremendous change in the way people are charging vehicles, especially when it comes to school buses, because school buses have a very predictable schedule,” Pritchard said. “There’s plenty of time between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. to recharge their vehicles.”
A Back Up Plan?
The challenge of student safety is “likely not as extreme as the report makes it seem,” Levinson agreed.
“If operators have not charged their vehicles ahead of a significant outage event, battery capacities may be low or zero, meaning this particular type of transport would not be able to run its typical route,” she pointed out. “School may not be in session in the event of such a significant outage.”
Alternatively, schools districts may find that electric buses can provide an additional level of safety and resiliency for students and communities during extreme events when the larger grid is out, Levinson said.
“Localized microgrid capabilities that connect bi-directional buses and essential school or community facilities are especially relevant in situations where extreme weather conditions isolate people and businesses,” she added.
PERC’s Stutheit, who previously was the director of transportation for Bethel School District in Washington, noted students are immediately impacted if buses can’t operate due to a power outage as “many students rely on transportation to and from school not only for their education, but to access meals and other essential services.”
If the grid goes down due to severe weather, the stakes are even higher for transportation directors to provide evacuations or emergency transportation, Stutheit said, adding student transporters need reliably-powered school buses that can respond quickly to keep students safe.
“Propane autogas buses provide that layer of resiliency,” he argued. “These buses can operate and refuel even when the grid is down. In the event of an emergency evacuation or shelter-in-place situation, propane autogas buses allow districts to respond without waiting on fuel deliveries or power restoration. That kind of reliability supports student safety.”
Pritchard noted most schools have backup generators if power goes out. He said the real student safety issue is when the tailpipe of a combustion vehicle is putting out emissions at that student’s height, adding studies show the concentration of pollutants inside of a vehicle are worse than the concentration outside of a vehicle when it comes to school buses.
“I think it’s more of a student safety issue to not electrify your fleet,” he added.
And then there is the possibility of using electric school buses to power microgrids available to provide surplus power to school buildings.
Getting Smart
To mitigate challenges, school districts should implement smart charging strategies and familiarize themselves with charge management tools and capabilities, Levinson said, adding it is best to charge when the grid is least constrained, such as overnight or midday when there is the most solar production.
“School districts can also create standard operating procedures and emergency management procedures. They can also conduct emergency preparedness drills to practice for such scenarios and identify places for procedural improvements,” she added.
Other steps include identifying additional charging locations beyond the primary charging yard and installing site-level resilience via batteries, solar and/or generators.
Stutheit shared that propane also complements EVs as part of a multi-fuel strategy, as it can be go-to energy in emergency situations when the grid is down. It can also provide transportation directors with an affordable option that won’t need infrastructure updates to keep up with grid instability.
There are ways to lessen the risk from outages that apply to both diesel and electric school buses, involving alternative power from outside the grid, Levinson said, adding grid outages affect all functions, not just charging buses.
“In cases in which electric school buses are vehicle-to-load or vehicle-to-building capable, they can be a potential asset to provide site power to run phones, computers, and HVAC systems during an outage. Increasingly electric vehicles, such as electric school buses, can be part of the grid support solution.”
ADROIT Advanced Technologies, a leading alternative student transportation company, today celebrated a new partnership with Motive, the AI-powered Integrated Operations Platform. ADROIT partners with school districts to provide accessible transportation for special needs students who require accommodations or live outside standard bus routes. Now, through this partnership, ADROIT will equip its vehicles with Motive’s industry-leading AI-powered fleet safety cameras, strengthening visibility, accountability, and protection for special needs students, drivers, and school districts.
The partnership follows a successful three-month pilot program of Motive and other leading competitors’ AI dashcams in Massachusetts and Arizona to ensure ADROIT was selecting the most accurate and effective safety solution. ADROIT selected Motive for its real-time safety alerts, on-demand trip footage, and 24/7 support, all key capabilities and services for providing more visibility into vehicle activity and meeting school district requirements.
ADROIT is now expanding the availability of Motive’s Vehicle Gateways and AI Dashcams to support all customers nationwide. Motive will help ADROIT meet operational and compliance standards while improving communication, reducing accidents, and giving parents and schools greater peace of mind.
“Safety is at the heart of our commitment to the education communities we serve,” said Ryan King, Vice President of Operations for ADROIT. “We’re proud to announce our new partnership with Motive to offer AI-powered fleet safety cameras and vehicle reporting to provide more transparency to families, drivers, and school districts. The platform is designed not only to support our drivers and passengers today, but well into the future.”
“Creating safer roads for students and drivers with accurate AI is one of the most meaningful ways we can make an impact with Motive,” said Abhishek Gupta, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Motive. “We’re proud to support ADROIT’s goal of modernizing student transportation with smarter technology that reduces risk and enhances the safety, productivity, and impact of their operations.”
ADROIT supplements schools’ existing fleets by conducting comprehensive background checks and requiring certified, wheelchair-accessible vehicles. To date, ADROIT has safely transported students more than 3 million miles.
Learn more about ADROIT’s services here and Motive’s Driver Safety Solution here.
About ADROIT Advanced Technologies: ADROIT Advanced Technologies, part of the Beacon Mobility family, was founded in 2017 on the premise that school transportation needs to be as varied and unique as the students and districts it serves. For five years, ADROIT has successfully complemented school transportation in communities in California, and Arizona with recent expansion into Wisconsin, Missouri, and Texas. Their unique model of ensuring their carefully vetted drivers are partnered with children based on their unique needs and IEPs ensures a transportation solution that perfectly serves parents, children, school districts, and communities. To learn more, visit: https://www.goadroit.com. To learn more about Beacon Mobility, visit: https://gobeacon.com/
About Motive: Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. For the first time, safety, operations, and finance teams can manage their workers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet-related spend in a single system. Motive serves more than 100,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises such as KONE, Komatsu, NBC Universal, and Maersk across a wide range of industries including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, waste services, and the public sector. Visit gomotive.com to learn more.
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