A Milwaukee police officer has been accused of abusing his access to the department’s Flock camera network, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee district attorney’s office Tuesday. Josue Ayala is charged with one count of misdemeanor misconduct in public for allegedly using MPD’s Flock network to determine the locations of two people, one of whom was in a romantic relationship with Ayala. 

If convicted, Ayala could face up to nine months in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. The criminal complaint states that a negotiation is underway, “a condition of which requires Josue Ayala to resign his position as a police officer” for MPD. 

Flock cameras continuously photograph and identify vehicles with AI-powered Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology, and then store that data in a network which can be searched by law enforcement agencies across the country. Distributed by the multi-billion dollar company Flock Safety, the cameras have been criticized for facilitating mass surveillance of citizens using a system that can be easily abused or misused by law enforcement. 

According to the criminal complaint, one of the alleged victims used a website to determine that Ayala had conducted numerous searches of that person’s license plate. “VICTIM ONE believed that Officer Ayala ran VICTIM ONE’S license plate over 100 times,” the complaint states. Detectives reviewed audit data from MPD’s Flock network showing that one victim had been searched by Ayala 55 times while the other victim had been searched 124 times over the same time period. 

Detectives learned that both victims used to be in a relationship together but had since broken up. After the relationship ended, one of the victims began to date Ayala. The investigation revealed that Ayala had used Flock while dating the victim.

The complaint states that Ayala was on duty when he conducted the searches. When officers use Flock, they need to put in a reason for the search. Ayala used “investigation” in order to conduct the unlawful searches. Last year, an analysis by the Wisconsin Examiner found that “investigation” was the most common search term Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used to access Flock during the first five months of 2025. Other agencies used even more vague search terms, including  just a dot. Agencies disagreed about whether officers should be held accountable for using vague terms. 

In December 2023, MPD leadership issued a memorandum warning that staff who used Flock for reasons unrelated to law enforcement could face discipline. MPD’s policy on ALPR technology and Flock also states that the system should only be used for “bona fide law enforcement purposes.” 

Ayala had been assigned to the MPD’s District 2 station on Lincoln Avenue, but is now on full suspension. The resignation agreement is pending with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, a police department press release states. 

Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said in a statement, “I am extremely disappointed to learn about the incident and expect all members, sworn and civilian, to demonstrate the highest ethical standards in the performance of their duties.” 

“If a member violates the code of conduct, they will be held accountable,” Norman added.  “… I want to remind the public that everyone is afforded the right of due process under the law, and as such, are innocent until proven guilty.” Norman also directed his department to create additional auditing mechanisms, although the department’s press release does not explain what exactly those mechanisms are. 

Ayala’s alleged use of surveillance technology for personal reasons is not an anomaly. In Menasha, an officer is facing felony misconduct in public office charges for using Flock to track a person’s vehicle while he was off duty. In Kenosha County, a sheriff’s deputy is also accused of using Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to track one of his co-workers. The Examiner has filed records requests to obtain the internal investigation regarding the Kenosha sheriff’s deputy. 

The chief of the Greenfield Police Department is also facing felony misconduct in public office charges for installing a department-owned pole camera system on his property for personal reasons, and then deleting texts which may have been related to the investigation of the camera’s use. WTMJ reported that the chief captured himself deleting the messages using a body camera he’d worn to document a meeting where he was being offered the chance to retire. 

Residents in Milwaukee have been increasingly critical about the use of Flock cameras and facial recognition technology by both the police department and sheriff’s office. After a Fire and Police Commission meeting earlier this month related to facial recognition, where dozens of residents denounced the use of surveillance technologies, Norman announced that MPD would ban facial recognition for its staff. Locals have called for more oversight and transparency around police surveillance technology in the city.

The Milwaukee Police Association (MPD’s union) denounced Norman’s decision to restrict facial recognition. After the charges were announced against Ayala, the union posted on Facebook that he is innocent until proven guilty, that it respects “the integrity of that process,” and clarified that Ayala is not related to the union’s president Alex Ayala. 

Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that these latest accusations of Flock misuse “exemplify just how easily Flock cameras can be turned against the very people the technology purports to protect.”

McCray Jones criticized the use of vague terms to search Flock’s network, referencing reporting from the Examiner. “These meaningless, one-word descriptions make it impossible to know what the technology is being used for or whether it’s justified,” he said. McCray Jones called for greater public reporting and oversight of surveillance technologies in Milwaukee.

This story has been updated with comment from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.

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An effort to limit the Milwaukee Common Council’s ability to shape police and fire department policy passed an Assembly vote Thursday, in the form of an amendment to a completely unrelated bill. If the measure becomes law, the council would need a unanimous vote before suspending or modifying police or fire department policy. 

The amendment was offered by Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield) on Thursday, as lawmakers undertook a lengthy Assembly floor session voting on legislation. Although the amendment falls in line with past Republican moves to weaken the control local government has over law enforcement, it was attached to a bill completely unrelated to that issue. 

Donovan’s amendment was attached to a Republican bill framed as granting parents and guardians more access to medical records of minor children. The bill, among other things, would eliminate the ability for children who are at least 14 years old to contest release of their mental health records and the results of HIV testing to their parents or guardians. 

Nothing about the bill Donovan attached his amendment to involves common councils setting policy for police and fire departments. Yet this sort of maneuver was not unheard of in the lead up to the Assembly floor vote on Thursday. Republican lawmakers also amended a bill regarding hunting sandhill cranes to include provisions covering wake boat regulations. Another bill designed to provide additional court support statewide was amended to selectively remove additional public defenders from Milwaukee County. 

It’s also not the first time Republicans worked to disrupt the ability of officials in Milwaukee to oversee the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). In 2023, after failing to pass bills backed by the Milwaukee Police Association aimed at preventing the city from ever reducing its police force and removing, forcing Milwaukee Public Schools to re-adopt school resource officers, and eliminating the policy-setting power over MPD that the Fire and Police Commission (FPC) had enjoyed for decades, Republican leaders attached those same provisions to a shared revenue deal which Milwaukee County needed in order to avoid a fiscal catastrophe.

Since the passage of the deal, FPC members and local activists alike have decried the attack on the FPC’s ability to oversee the police department. In lieu of setting policy, the FPC is able to make policy recommendations to the common council, an alternative avenue Donovan’s amendment is tailored to close.

Although the amended bill passed the Assembly, it now needs to pass in the Senate, and then to the governor’s desk. It’s unclear if the bill will gain Senate support, where several organizations have lobbied against it.

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The backlog of unresolved felony-related matters in Milwaukee County has surpassed the pandemic-era peak, topping more than 10,000 as of Oct. 13, according to data obtained from the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office through an NNS open records request.

As cases linger, people throughout the criminal justice system feel the effects, including victims and their families, people accused of crimes and the broader community, said Kent Lovern, Milwaukee County district attorney.

“‘Justice delayed, justice denied’ applies to everybody,” Lovern said. 

One recent high-profile incident reaffirms how case backlogs could have tragic and life-altering consequences. 

On Feb. 5, a Milwaukee man, Mile Dukic, allegedly stabbed and killed 44-year-old Amanda Varisco on West National Avenue and S. 36th Street. At the time of the killing, Dukic had separate open felony cases in Milwaukee County Circuit Court – for bail jumping and stalking. He was charged with another felony, first-degree intentional homicide, on Feb. 9.

Dukic is currently in custody with bail set at $500,000.

Two backlogs

The district attorney’s office plays a pivotal role at both ends of the felony pipeline, said a spokesperson for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office: referrals from police awaiting a charging decision, plus charged felony cases working their way through the courts.

The Milwaukee Police Department made 5,650 summary felony arrests in 2025, according to an MPD spokesperson. The department continues to work with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to best address the felony backlog, the MPD spokesperson said.

District attorney records show 2,924 pending uncharged felony cases as of October 2025.

State office wants county to change approach, charge fewer felonies

The spokesperson for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office said the district attorney’s office can and should do more to address the growing backlog by adjusting its approach. 

“We believe prosecutors should be exercising more discretion in which referrals they are charging,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the office regularly sees clients charged with relatively minor offenses lose jobs or housing as a result – consequences that can outweigh the underlying charge.

When the prosecutor’s office officially presses felony charges, these cases can get bogged down and stay in the courts. Resolution to the cases depends not only on prosecutors but also on defense attorneys, judges, court staff and other resources that are strained as well, Lovern said. 

Based on the district attorney’s internal case-tracking system, more than 7,000 felony cases were charged but not yet resolved as of Oct. 13. 

“The influx of felony charges coming out of the DA’s office isn’t benefiting the court system or public safety,” said State Public Defender Jennifer Bias. “It’s a waste of our scarce attorney resources.”

Increase in serious criminal activity

Lovern pushes back on the idea that prosecutors are charging too many cases.

“I want to make it very clear: I don’t have goals for what we ought to be charging,” he said. “I don’t have a directive of what the percentage of our charging rate should be.”

Prosecutors decline to move forward on many referrals, said Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee’s chief deputy district attorney. 

On a basic public safety level, there are simply more serious felonies being committed, Lovern and Altenburg said.

“I think that that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” Altenburg said. “We’re seeing more referrals coming to this office that involve firearms, violence, sexual violence.” 

Milwaukee Police Department data show reports of the majority of the most serious offenses declined from 2024 to 2025, with the exception of homicides and human trafficking, which increased slightly.

Violent crime in Milwaukee has generally declined in the past few years – but from historic highs seen during the pandemic, according to data from the Council on Criminal Justice.

When to charge

Charging decisions begin with a decision about whether a case is provable beyond a reasonable doubt, Altenburg said.

“We adhere to that standard very scrupulously in this office,” he said.  

Once that is determined, the district attorney’s office moves to the question of whether prosecution is necessary or a different kind of intervention is more appropriate, Altenburg said.

Alternatives to traditional prosecution

In Milwaukee, there are two alternative interventions: diversion and deferred prosecution.

Diversion allows a person to complete requirements, such as treatment, restitution or community service, without a criminal charge. 

Deferred prosecution involves issuing charges with an agreement in which a conviction is withheld if the person meets various conditions.

Lovern said local prosecutors created an early-intervention approach designed to steer nonviolent cases driven by substance use or mental health challenges out of the criminal justice system when appropriate. 

In 2020, Milwaukee County intervened in roughly 600 cases, Altenburg said. Last year, the county intervened in roughly 1,600 cases.

Lovern said the nature of modern policing – and modern evidence – has fundamentally changed prosecutors’ workload.

The sheer volume of evidence that must be reviewed contributes to growing wait times before charging decisions can be made, Lovern said. 

More evidence is generated because of modern technologies and other tools used by police. A single incident can, for example, generate hours of body camera footage that prosecutors review before making charging decisions, Lovern said. 

In 2020, there were 84,000 pieces of evidence in Milwaukee’s database. In 2024, there were 1.7 million items. 

“I’m sure last year, it was even higher. That’s just where we’re headed,” Lovern said.

Staffing and system capacity

Something that adds to both backlogs – uncharged cases awaiting a decision and charged cases in the system – is insufficient staffing levels throughout the court system, a trend that has continued since the pandemic. 

The district attorney’s office has about 125 full-time prosecutors, Lovern said. 

“Now that is a lot. It’s the same number that we had when (Altenburg) and I started in this office 28 years ago, though.”

The State Public Defender’s Office also faces staffing challenges, according to its spokesperson. 

“Broadly speaking, our agency needs more staff statewide,” the spokesperson said. “This wouldn’t address delays caused by prosecutors, but it would help to decrease the time it takes to appoint attorneys to indigent defendants and reduce the turnover in staff that office experiences due to burnout.”

There is also a need for support staff who help with administrative tasks, freeing up attorneys.

Lovern said unstable funding adds to staffing pressures.

About a third of legal staff in the county had been funded with federal grant money, which has been a little less predictable in the last couple of years, Lovern said.  

“We can use more positions,” Lovern said. “There’s no question about that.”

Justice delayed: More than 10,000 felony matters unresolved in Milwaukee County is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A years-long debate over the use of facial recognition software by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) came to a head at a contentious Thursday meeting of the city’s Fire and Police Commission (FPC) attended by more than 60 local residents. Over the course of questioning, stretching late into the evening hours, commissioners learned from MPD leadership that the department had continued using facial recognition software, even as a draft policy to put guardrails on the technology was still being developed outside of the FPC’s control. 

By meeting’s end, FPC vice chairwoman Bree Spencer expressed a desire for the commission to consider finding some way to push for a pause to MPD’s use of facial recognition software, though the FPC itself did not take any immediate formal action. Less than 24 hours later, MPD Chief Jeffrey Norman announced that the department would ban the use of facial recognition technology, and discontinue its efforts to acquire permanent access to the technology. 

During the Thursday meeting, Norman and his staff were grilled by FPC commissioners after hours of impassioned public testimony. The sweltering meeting room was packed almost shoulder-to-shoulder, with every seat taken and people standing along the wall in spaces not already taken by the local news station’s bulky cameras. Many others waited in the hallway, as an overflow room had not been set up.

One by one, local residents expressed a variety of grievances about facial recognition. Some decried MPD’s prior use of software without disclosure to the public or FPC, while others expressed fears about how the technology could be used against Milwaukeeans by what many called an authoritarian federal government. 

Paul Smith, a member of the Oneida Nation who serves on Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission, was the first to speak. Smith described how his relatives had been among the first to come down from the Oneida reservation to Milwaukee seeking factory work. “We are also people who have to carry two IDs all the time,” said Smith. He suggested that facial recognition and other camera technologies are methods the government uses to track people it considers enemies. 

“I live in fear every day,” said Smith, describing how his heart rate accelerates when he drives out of Milwaukee County. Smith added that facial recognition technology is unreliable.  “My dad can use my phone because his face looks like mine,” he said.  “These cameras don’t work and they punish people, and there’s no presumption of innocence when you’re being watched all the time.”

Nadiyah Johnson, founder and CEO of the Milky Way Tech Hub, highlighted the notoriously high error rates facial recognition software has for people of color. Johnson said that federal tests have shown false positive rates as much as 10 to 100 times higher for Black people. “I’m sure that we all can understand why that would be a problem for the city of Milwaukee,” said Johnson. She added that “guardrails do not fix the core problem.” 

When surveillance infrastructure is created, Johnson said, the scope of who is targeted expands. She and other community members who spoke brought up Flock license plate reader cameras which, like facial recognition, are AI-powered and a top concern for many who attended Thursday night’s FPC meeting. Flock has attracted criticism for being used for vague or unlawful reasons by police, and for leaving some feeds exposed on the open internet. “This is not a future concern, this is already happening nationally,” said Johnson. “The public cannot meaningfully consent to systems we can not see, audit, or challenge.”

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, recounted her attempts to learn more about MPD’s use of facial recognition by filing open records requests. After waiting five months and threatening to sue, the ACLU was sent a response that the MPD does not track requests made for use of facial recognition in individual investigations. When the city’s IT department ran an email search, the term “facial recognition” appeared in 196,688 emails from 2020-2025. 

When the ACLU narrowed the request to 16 cases which MPD cited in presentations to city commissions, they found that “in a handful of those cases” which had been “hand picked” by MPD for those presentations, “the police reports did not mention [Facial Recognition Technology] at all,” Merkwae told the FPC. “In conversations with some defense attorneys, it appears that [Facial Recognition Technology] use was not turned over to the defense in discovery in some cases,” said Merkwae. “In cases where attorneys filed pre-trial motions to get insight into the notoriously racially biased [Facial Recognition Technology] algorithms, they hit a brick wall because that information is proprietary.” 

In its presentations to city officials, MPD had said that facial recognition helped identify suspects in cases including sexual assault and shooting investigations.

Much of the public testimony Thursday focused on the potential for surveillance technologies to harm democracy. Speakers focused on the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where thousands of people have been arrested and two people killed by federal agents. Videos posted online show immigration agents taking pictures of protesters, legal observers and vehicles, using facial recognition technology to identify detainees, and taunting members of the public by saying their pictures were going to be uploaded to a database of  domestic terrorists. An immigrants’ rights group recently discovered what it describes as a watchlist of immigration attorneys created by ICE.

Taleavia Cole and her husband Caliph Muab-El have experienced police surveillance after protesting the killing of Cole’s brother Alvin. Several of Cole’s family members, their lawyers and dozens of others were placed on a list created by the Wauwatosa Police Department. The list, which also included a Wisconsin Examiner reporter, was shared with numerous state, local, and federal agencies and was also referred to by police as a “target list”.

Muab-El said Black and brown communities have been used as test subjects for surveillance and militarized policing. This is how he views MPD’s deal with the data company Biometrica, which has offered to trade 2.5 million jail and booking photos from Milwaukee for MPD to have access to facial recognition software. 

“We’re talking about people,” said Muab-El. “And when we’re talking about people, we need to focus on the things that are most important for people to thrive in circumstances like this. Everything in our society and our community has been gutted from us almost. The resources are very scarce already…To institute something like this that will exacerbate the circumstances of our already falling and broken-in-pieces communities is definitely an attack on justice on our people.” 

He stressed that “anybody can be misidentified at any time,” and that the city will not be able to prevent federal agencies from accessing the data it collects using facial recognition software. “No one is safe,” said Muab-El. “Bystanders who believe in justice and the cause of people, these people are going to become more vulnerable. These attacks are going to become more prevalent…They’re going to become more intense.”

Cole recounted her own experiences of being placed on the target list, and her belief that even her family’s phone calls were being monitored. “So whose side are you on is the real question, because someday it could be your family member,” she said. “And next thing you know, they want to know what you know, what you’re saying, what you’re doing. Like you’re a criminal, like you’re nobody.” 

Testimony went on for several hours, pausing for a presentation on facial recognition technology from the New York University Law School Policing Project. The presenters said that while facial recognition can assist law enforcement investigations, the technology also carries serious constitutional and civil risks. Whether a city or town uses facial recognition software should be a decision made by the entire community, the presenters said, adding that having guardrails to prevent abuse of the technology is important. 

Late in the meeting, after many people had left, Chief Norman and MPD staff provided an update and took questions from the FPC. Norman said a draft policy his department’s use of facial recognition technology had not yet been finalized, and that he was “slow walking” the process to get as much input as possible. He stressed that facial recognition software is used to develop leads, and cannot be used as the sole basis for establishing probable cause for an arrest. The department had also begun logging uses of facial recognition, but those records only captured uses since 2024. 

Under sharp questioning from FPC Commissioner Krissie Fung the commission learned that MPD had continued using facial recognition technology even as the drafting of a policy was ongoing. Some sort of of a draft policy — described by Fung as a “draft of a draft of a draft” — appeared to have been viewed by at least some members of the city’s common council, but not the FPC. 

Although several commissioners expressed concerns about facial recognition technology and MPD’s deal with Biometrica, the FPC’s power to do anything about it is limited, since the Republican-controlled Legislature had worked to eliminate the FPC’s policy-making powers for the Milwaukee police. The debate over the use of facial recognition software in Milwaukee had gone on since last year, with members of the public speaking against its adoption consistently and in great numbers. Spencer, the FPC’s vice-chairwoman, said that the public shouldn’t have to attend more meetings to say the same things, and that her own trust in the department on the issue had eroded. 

In a statement issued Friday, Heather Hough, Norman’s chief of staff, said the police department understands “the public concern, particularly in light of national circumstances…Despite our belief that this is useful technology…we recognize that public trust is far more valuable.” Hough’s statement continued, “therefore, effective immediately, Chief (Jeffrey) Norman will issue a department directive banning the use of facial recognition for all members.” 

Hough said that MPD will continue work on creating a policy, but will not use facial recognition technology until that process is complete. While MPD appeared to be responding to the public outcry, the Milwaukee Police Association (the department’s union) said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned and disappointed” by the decision to restrict facial recognition technology. The police association was also irked by recent restrictions on vehicle pursuits saying that both policy shifts do not “eliminate crime or danger,” but instead “risks shifting that danger onto Milwaukee residents and the officers sworn to protect them.” 

The union’s statement described facial recognition as “an investigative tool that can assist detectives in generating leads in violent crime cases. It does not replace traditional police work or serve as a basis for arrest without further investigation. When used responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, this technology can help identify violent offenders, support victims, and improve case clearance rates.”

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The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Milwaukee Police Department says it doesn’t have a plan in place if federal immigration authorities mobilize into the city at a scale similar to operations in nearby Chicago and Minneapolis. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched one of the largest operations in its history last week, sending about 2,000 agents into the Twin Cities. That mobilization resulted in an ICE agent shooting and killing 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good Wednesday morning in Minneapolis. Minneapolis schools were closed Thursday because, in a separate incident, ICE agents deployed tear gas at a high school as students were being dismissed.

Late last year, ICE’s “Operation Midway Blitz” similarly sent a large number of federal agents into the Chicago area. While the operation was underway, ICE and other federal agents killed a 38-year-old Mexican man during a traffic stop and in another incident rammed into the car of a woman who was warning neighbors about ICE presence before shooting her five times. 

The Chicago operation included at least another dozen incidents in which federal agents pointed their guns or fired less-lethal weapons at residents, according to data compiled by The Trace. 

In both cities, the massive presence of immigration authorities has caused significant ripple effects through local communities, straining the ability of local law enforcement to control crowds of observers and protesters and respond to the disruptions in traffic caused by caravans of federal SUVs traveling over city streets. 

“Local police departments and many state governors have been very firm in their communication to federal law enforcement that federal law enforcement is not welcome in their cities conducting these sorts of major operations because of the fact that it is so disruptive,” says Ingrid Eagly, a law professor at UCLA who focuses on immigration enforcement. “Because people you know can be injured and harmed, and communities are living in fear. It’s causing a great amount of disruption in communities to have this kind of strong law enforcement presence.” 

In cities across the country where ICE agents have been deployed in large numbers, local officials have had to decide how local cops engage with the operations and what that engagement communicates to local residents. Eagly says that operating as “a backup service for unprepared ICE agents” would be using local resources to legitimize ICE’s presence. 

“To send in local law enforcement, as backup, as sort of part of the enforcement team, would be essentially being part of the of the federal police force conducting ICE operations,” she says.

The operations in Chicago and Minneapolis, two largely Democratic Midwestern cities  that are frequent targets of rhetorical attacks by Republicans, are prominent displays of force in communities similar to Milwaukee. Even though Wisconsin has so far avoided the brunt of the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement efforts, that could change. 

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the city had to be prepared for the “eventuality” that an ICE surge is coming.

“Given what happened [Wednesday] and the young woman who was killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis, we got to prepare on the ground,” Johnson said.

But when asked if the Milwaukee Police had a plan for managing a potential ICE operation in the city, a spokesperson for the department only pointed to the department’s existing immigration policy. 

The department’s immigration policy states that Milwaukee Police officers are not allowed to cooperate with ICE’s civil immigration enforcement actions. 

“Proactive immigration enforcement by local police can be detrimental to our mission and policing philosophy when doing so deters some individuals from participating in their civic obligation to assist the police,” the policy states. 

But the written policy does not include any provisions for how police personnel should respond in the event of massive ICE presence in the community. Having a noncooperation or “sanctuary” policy could make Milwaukee a target for Trump’s mass deportation program. Despite that, when pressed for clarification because the policy does not state now the department would manage the fallout of an ICE surge, the spokesperson refused to answer.

“It states what our policy [is] in regards to immigration enforcement,” a Milwaukee police spokesperson said in an unsigned email on Tuesday, before the Minneapolis incident. “We do not have an operation like Chicago therefore cannot provide information about a policy of something that we do not have in our city.” 

Pressed again for an answer to the specific question about managing the traffic and crowd control implications of a massive ICE operation in Milwaukee, the spokesperson again refused to answer. 

“We have an immigration enforcement policy just because you do not like the answer does not mean we are going to answer different to you,” the spokesperson wrote. 

After the shooting in Minneapolis, in answer to a follow-up question from the Examiner, the MPD spokesperson again cited the department’s existing policy preventing cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Update: After publication of this story, the Milwaukee Police Department provided further comment asserting its sanctuary policy serves as its plan to handle a large ICE presence in the city.

“We saw your article and assert that your title is misleading. Our policy reflects MPD’s course of action in working with immigration enforcement officials. To be clear, US Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has been present in Milwaukee for many years, even prior to the current presidential administration. You asked what our plan was if immigration authorities mobilize into the city at a scale similar to operations in other jurisdictions — our response is that we have a policy in place and we will continue to abide by our policy. That does not change regardless of the number of agents who are present in our City.”

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