The Milwaukee County Board voted to remove Flock cameras from its parks Thursday night. Passed unanimously, the resolution also permits the county to replace the controversial cameras with more conventional security cameras. It’s not clear  how the new cameras would be paid for.

Supv. Justin Bielinski, who authored the resolution, said he’s excited to remove Flock cameras from Milwaukee County parks. The cameras must be removed by the end of the year. 

Flock cameras are equipped with AI-powered automatic license plate reader technology. When a car passes in view, the camera takes a picture of the car and its license plate. The images are then stored in a database which can be searched at will by law enforcement agencies with their own Flock contracts. The searches can be done without a warrant, and allow officers to enter a license plate or vehicle description to determine where a vehicle has been.

Law enforcement agencies say the cameras are invaluable tools for detecting and stopping crime. Numerous law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County use Flock including the Milwaukee Police Department and the sheriff’s office. In a presentation to a county board committee earlier this week, the sheriff’s office credited the cameras with contributing to a 43% decline in certain crimes around county parks between 2023 and 2026. 

Privacy advocates, concerned citizens and elected officials have increasingly soured on the cameras. Cases of officers using the cameras to surveil protesters, pursue women suspected of seeking out-of-state  abortions and keeping tabs on current or estranged romantic partners have made national news. In Wisconsin, three police officers and one sheriff’s deputy in Milwaukee, Menasha and Kenosha counties have faced charges of misconduct in public office due to their use of Flock to unlawfully monitor people.

Milwaukee County Executive and Democratic candidate for governor David Crowley proposed removing funding for Flock in the 2027 budget.

The sheriff’s office said that without a replacement technology, crime would increase in the 11 parks where the cameras have been installed. It’s estimated that replacing the cameras could cost as much as $140,000. In 2025, the Examiner found that at least 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used Flock during that year. Several communities around the state have removed their Flock cameras since then. 

A federal immigration judge ruled Wednesday that Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be deported. Judge Jayme Salinardi rejected accusations made by the Department of Homeland Security that Sarsour lied on his green card application over 30 years ago, and that he registered to vote despite not being a citizen. Salindari did, however, give what Sarsour’s attorneys called “extreme deference” to a 2025 memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating that Sarsour — a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights  — is deportable “because his actions undermine” U.S. foreign policy.

The same morning Salindari ruled on Sarsour’s case, he announced his retirement. A different immigration judge will preside over further proceedings in Sarsour’s case. During a press conference Wednesday, attorneys representing Sarsour called the decision “unjust,” and said the timing of  Salindari’s retirement announcement was “odd.” 

Immigration attorney Patrick Taurel said that Sarsour — who is not taking interviews at this time — was “disappointed but not shocked” by the judge’s ruling, and that he understands that immigration judges are under pressure from the Trump administration. Last year, nearly 100 immigration judges were fired by the Trump administration, shrinking the number of judges by about a quarter, NPR reported. 

“It does feel odd,” said attorney Luna Droubi, who is representing Sarsour in a separate federal case arguing First Amendment retaliation by the government. 

Taurel said he plans to appeal Salindari’s ruling down the road. Now that Sarsour has been found deportable, the next question is whether he is eligible for any kind of relief, such as asylum. Taurel said that Sarsour will eventually be able to appeal his case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which he described as more neutral than the immigration courts. Proceedings are expected to continue into next year and under a different judge, Taurel said. 

Sarsour was in Milwaukee when immigration agents arrested him in late March. They then transported him out of Wisconsin and to a detention center in Indiana. DHS accused Sarsour of lying on his green card application in the 1990s, and claimed that he had been convicted as a teenager in Israeli military courts of throwing Molotov cocktails in 1988, during the First Intifada uprising. Sarsour grew up in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. DHS also said that Sarsour had been charged in Israel with illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995. Prosecutors also accused Sarsour of registering to vote in 2004 despite not having full citizenship.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, reached for comment on the ruling, reiterated the department’s assertion that Sarsour “is a terrorist who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” The spokesperson wrote in an email to the Examiner that “due to a previous court order, this public safety threat was loose on our streets,” and said that the judge in Sarsour’s case sustained the government’s case that there were grounds to deport Sarsour. “All illegal aliens receive due process,” the spokesperson wrote. “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

Sarsour is a legal permanent resident and has lived in the United States for over 30 years, during which time he has not been arrested or convicted of any crime prior to his immigration arrest. 

Sarsour’s attorneys dispute the accusations, saying that their client was  convicted of throwing stones, not explosives. They also introduced evidence that Israeli authorities tortured Sarsour to get his confessions which were signed in Hebrew, a language Sarsour can neither speak nor read. Experts and witnesses called to the stand by Taruel testified to the use of torture by Israeli authorities, a lack of due process rights afforded to Palestinians like Sarsour, and that Sarsour continues to suffer from PTSD due to his time in Israeli detention. Another expert said that Sarsour passed a polygraph test in which he denied having registered to vote. Prosecutors did not call any witnesses or experts for their side during the proceedings. 

Although Salindari rejected the accusations that Sarsour lied on his green card application and that he registered to vote, Taurel said that the judge did give “extreme deference” to Israeli documents concerning Sarsour’s convictions. Despite the testimony involving the nature of the Israeli military court system, Salindari found the convictions against Sarsour to be valid. 

Droubi said that Sarsour’s immigration case has no bearing on his federal First Amendment retaliation case, which she and Taurel believe is the reason the Trump administration targeted Sarsour for deportation and is supported by Salinardi’s ruling that he could be deported on foreign policy grounds. After Rubio said Sarsour’s “actions undermine U.S. foreign policy,” the Justice Department announced it would begin targeting the group American Muslims for Palestine, for which Sarsour is a board member.

Sarsour’s First Amendment claims, his lack of any criminal record in the U.S. and  his deteriorating health, contributed to a federal judge’s ruling that he should be released due to having a “substantial” claim of First Amendment retaliation.

“You have to ask yourself,” Droubi told  the Examiner, “if you are an immigrant, ‘Do I have the right to speak out about issues that matter to me? What if I draw a political cartoon? Am I going to be arrested and detained because of that? Is the government going to bring charges against me and potentially remove me from this country?’” Droubi added, “That is significant, and I think it does chill the speech of immigrants and non-citizens in this country, and it should really terrify all of us.”

Taurel said that the cases of Sarsour, Mahmoud Khalil, and other Palestinian activists targeted for deportation underscore “the need for Congress to repeal the foreign policy ground of deportability.” Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont); Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) introduced a bill titled  the Land of the Free Act to repeal the rarely-used Cold War provision of immigration law last year, saying the Trump administration had “weaponized” it to punish political speech.

Like many Palestinians born before or around the Six Day War between Israel and a group of Arab nations, Sarsour has travel documentation issued by Jordan but is not a citizen of that country. If he were deported, he would likely ultimately end up back in Israeli territory.

“We feared this outcome,” Taurel said of the judge’s decision. “But Salah is determined to keep speaking out.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wauwatosa Common Council approved a $95,000 settlement on Tuesday night for Joseph Mensah, the former Wauwatosa police officer who killed three people while on duty during his five years on the force. The settlement stemmed from a workers compensation claim for PTSD. 

The city said that Mensah filed the claim a few years ago, Fox6 reported. The money will come through the city’s workers compensation fund. Mayor Dennis McBride said that the settlement was reasonable “to put the matter behind us.” 

Attorney Kimberley Motley, who has represented the families of two people killed by Mensah, said that she wasn’t surprised, given Mensah’s history, that he has mental health issues. Motley emphasized that the families of people killed by Mensah had to fight  for justice and compensation through the courts, whereas Mensah has received multiple payouts from the city. McBride said that “whatever happened in 2020 or earlier, that’s actually a different matter. So, although I understand the feelings of the Cole family, it’s really an unrelated matter at this point.”

The details of Mensah’s PTSD diagnosis and the work-related trauma that triggered it are not public.

The $95,000 settlement comes on top of $125,000 awarded to Mensah as part of a severance agreement when he left the Wauwatosa Police Department in 2020. As protests mounted against him earlier that year, Mensah also accumulated more than $78,000 in GoFundMe donations. Meanwhile, Mensah remained on paid leave from the police department while the investigation into Cole’s shooting continued. He is also pursuing a separate duty disability claim.

Mensah’s severance agreement included a waiver stating that the city was “irrevocably and unconditionally” released and discharged “from any and all grievances, claims, demands, rights, damages, costs, losses, suits, actions, causes of action, attorney’s fees and expenses of any nature whatsoever …” A city of Wauwatosa spokesperson said in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner that under state law workers compensation is a separate matter and that an employee’s right to pursue workers compensation for a work-related injury cannot be waived or bargained away in a separation agreement.

Mensah’s departure from Wauwatosa amid protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In February of that year, Mensah shot 17-year-old Alvin Cole, his third fatal shooting. Mensah shot Cole during a foot chase as the teen fled Mayfair Mall with his friends after an altercation involving a gun. Mensah said that Cole pointed a gun at him. Witnesses offered conflicting accounts. 

Four years earlier in 2016, Mensah killed 25-year-old Jay Anderson Jr. Mensah said that Anderson was sleeping in his car alone in a park late at night, when he awoke and reached for a gun beside him on the passenger seat. Less than a year before killing Anderson, Mensah shot and killed 29-year-old Antonio Gonzales, who was intoxicated and brandishing a sword when officers arrived at his home.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office declined to charge Mensah after any of the shootings. In 2021, after a John Doe hearing a circuit court judge found that probable cause existed to charge Mensah with homicide by negligent use of a dangerous weapon. Special prosecutors later declined to pursue the charges. In 2025, Mensah testified  before the state Legislature in support of a bill prohibiting John Doe hearings for police officers who kill citizens on duty. 

Mensah was the target of two federal civil trials brought by the Cole family. Both trials ended in hung juries, and Mensah reached a confidential settlement with the family. Another civil lawsuit involving the Anderson shooting is currently on appeal. 

After leaving Wauwatosa, Mensah was hired at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department. He resigned as a detective in 2025, between the two Cole trials, and said he was leaving law enforcement altogether. His file from the sheriff’s department states that at times Mensah was congratulated for being professional and compassionate on calls. Other times, supervisors needed to follow up with Mensah for not showing up to court trials, being difficult to reach by phone, missing appointments and not properly analyzing and cataloging evidence. He attempted unsuccessfully to become a drug task force officer. In his employee biography for the sheriffs department, dated January 2021, Mensah said that “the events surrounding my resignation with Wauwatosa PD were unfair, unfortunate, and unjust,” but that he put that chapter behind him.

Two leaders of a fraternity which the University of Wisconsin suspended back in 2015 were taken to the Dane County jail after 30 young men were found filthy, partially clothed and visibly injured in the fraternity’s hot, humid basement. The pledges, most of whom were 18 years old, were apparently being subjected to a hazing ritual.

Brayden Klein and Samuel Vane, both 20, were taken to the Dane County jail and charged with hazing and disorderly conduct. Both of them posted $400 bail Thursday morning. The incident is still under investigation. 

Madison police say the pledges were found in the basement on Wednesday night. They were covered in food, condiments, and “other liquids,” police said. The basement’s temperature had been turned up to 81 degrees, making it uncomfortable and humid. A photo of the pledges shows them all confined in an area of the basement shirtless, all wearing black pants and surrounded by trash. 

The fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi,  still has a national chapter. Despite its suspension by the UW-Madison over a decade ago, the frat still maintained its campus house where the 30 pledges were found.

Alpha Epsilon Pi was started in 1913 as a Jewish fraternity. It has over 150 chapters open across the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. The fraternity has included seven billionaires among its ranks including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the founders of other prominent businesses and politicians.

In a statement, the fraternity condemned the incident and said those responsible will be expelled from the frat. “Hazing is a betrayal of everything our fraternity stands for,” it said in a statement, ABC News reported. There have been nearly 130 deaths due to hazing incidents since the year 2000.

A Texas man hired to canvas neighborhoods for Republican candidate for governor Tom Tiffany has been charged with hitting a bicyclist with his car while intoxicated in a hit and run incident in Washington County, before fleeing police. 

Duane Maiden, 32, was hired by Echo Canyon Consulting, a Phoenix-based political campaign and public affairs firm. The firm confirmed Maiden’s employment, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

The firm had received $2.5 million from the Florida-based Restoration of America PAC to support canvassing operations for Tiffany, according to campaign finance records, according to the Journal Sentinel. The PAC is heavily funded by the billionaire Richard Uihlein, cofounder and CEO of the shipping company Uline, based in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. 

On Sept. 3, a Washington County sheriff deputy responded to a crash involving a car and a bicycle in the town of Jackson. The victim sustained injuries including fractures to his leg, pelvis, and spine. Witnesses said they saw a car “flying eastbound on Western Avenue,” blowing through a stop sign before striking the bicyclist and continuing on without stopping. A coworker of Maiden’s called 911 to say that he was with the driver and identified Maiden.

Deputies went to the Town of Cedarburg where the coworker had been dropped off, the Journal Sentinel reported. The coworker said that he and Maiden had come to Wisconsin to canvas for political campaigns. They planned to be in Wisconsin for the next two months before traveling to New York and Florida. They were working the morning of the crash. The coworker said that Maiden bought and drank from a bottle of Vodka before stopping for pizza and gas. 

After the hit and run, the coworker said, he asked to be let out of the car and then called both 911 and his supervisor

Deputies spotted Maiden’s car while talking to the coworker and chased him into Ozaukee County where they arrested him and took him to jail. Maiden said he started drinking and driving  because he had to wait too long between assignments. Maiden denied knowing that he hit the bicyclist.  

Although Echo Canyon Consulting claimed Maiden was not working for the firm during the hit and run, court records contradict those claims, according to the Journal Sentinel. 

Tiffany’s campaign denied any connection to Maiden. 

Maiden was charged on Sept. 4 in Ozaukee County Circuit Court for felony fleeing an officer and misdemeanor resisting. Then on Sept. 11, he was charged in Washington County Circuit Court for felony hit and run  involving great bodily harm and felony intoxicated use of a vehicle. He faces more than 27 years in prison and up to $95,000 in fines.

The fate of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, is now in the hands of a federal immigration judge in Kansas City who, by Sept. 30, will decide whether Sarsour can be deported from the place where he has lived as a legal permanent resident for over 30 years.

Monday concluded court testimony from experts and witnesses in Sarsour’s deportation case. Sarsour was arrested in late March by armed federal immigration agents in Milwaukee. He had never been arrested in the United States before. 

“What’s at stake here is not just whether this good man can stay here, but whether people can speak freely in this country without fear of unlawful retribution,” Sarsour’s lawyer Patrick Taurel said after the Monday hearing.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Sarsour lied on his green card application when he came to the United States in the late 1990s. DHS also claims that Sarsour, a Palestinian man, had been convicted in Israeli military courts of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli soldiers in 1988, and separately accused of illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995.

Taurel, representing Sarsour, disputed those accusations Monday saying DHS had broadcast them in “libelous press releases.” Taurel said Sarsour had been detained as a Palestinian teenager by Israel’s occupying army and convicted in military court for throwing stones and disorderly conduct, not for throwing Molotov cocktails. This occurred during the First Intifada, a mass Palestinian uprising against the Israeli army which lasted from 1987 to 1993.

Amahl Bishara, a professor at Tufts University, testified during one of Sarsour’s hearings in late July that stone throwing was an act of political expression against the occupation carried out by Palestinian youth. Taruel described it as “a kind of screaming into the void that they don’t approve of the occupation,” during a Monday press conference. 

Jawad Boulos, who represented Sarsour as an attorney in the West Bank, addressed the military court record from the 1990s. 

He recommended that Sarsour take a plea in the 1995 case because the Israelis were offering what Boulos felt was an unusually good deal by reducing four charges to just one of procuring weapons, and having Sarsour agree to time served. The plea deal also allowed Sarsour to avoid waiting up to two more years in detention for a trial. The lenient deal was evidence to Boulos that even the Israelis did not take their own accusations against Sarsour seriously. 

Responding to DHS arguments that if Sarsour were tortured the record of his imprisonment would have shown that he suffered harm, Boulos said that the Israeli authorities sometimes did not allow him to see his client. He noted a no-contact order among the Israeli documents barring Boulos from seeing Sarsour during the first several weeks of Sarsour’s confinement. During hearings in July, Sari Bashi, an Israeli lawyer and human rights investigator, described the West Bank, where Sarsour grew up, as a place under “belligerent occupation” where confessions are coerced through torture, and the local Israeli commander acts as the executive, lawmaker, judge, and executor of law.  

Dr. Jackie Bashkoff, a forensic psychologist, testified in July that after evaluating Sarsour, she determined that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from his experiences of being tortured.

Prosecutors said Monday that Sarsour’s defense team “completely glossed over” that Sarsour never “complained about mistreatment” by the Israelis. “That silence says everything,” said attorney Scott Jebson, representing the Department of Homeland Security. He added that Sarsour never mentioned having gone to the hospital due to torture, and that Israeli court records don’t mention that he claimed he was abused by the Israeli interrogators. 

In earlier hearings, prosecutors also attempted to cast doubt on Sarsour’s PTSD diagnosis. Jebson said that Dr. Bashkoff used “buzz words” to describe Sarsour as having a “startle response.” Prosecutors also suggested in earlier hearings that symptoms of his type 2 diabetes could be confused for PTSD. “I can go through every witness they called” and discredit or undermine their testimony, Jebson told the judge on Monday.

Besides Sarsour’s detention by Israeli authorities, DHS is also accusing him of attempting to register to vote despite not being a U.S. citizen in the lead-up to the 2004 elections. Prosecutors have pointed to a voter registration card with Sarsour’s name on it. 

Sarsour never attempted to cast a ballot, and his defense team suggested that the registration card could be linked to documented problems with a voter registration drive involving about 3,000 special registration deputies in Milwaukee. The Legislative Audit Bureau issued a letter in 2005 highlighting problems with the deputies. “Some special registration deputies are municipal officials, but many work for interest groups or political parties,” the report read. “Problems have been identified with registrations completed by some special registration deputies, including inaccurate, illegible, and falsified registration forms.”

Taurel said Sarsour had no recollection of signing the card and that when he learned about it in 2009, he took steps to remove it. Taurel also said that even if Sarsour signed the card it wouldn’t matter because he never actually voted, and thus would not have received a benefit by claiming to be a U.S. citizen under the law. 

Mark Robel, an FBI polygraph examiner, testified in July that he examined Sarsour asking him whether he ever knowingly voted as a non-citizen during the 2004 election and whether he ever registered to vote. Robel said Sarsour passed the polygraph with no deception detected. “If he had tried to register to vote in any election, he would not have passed that test,” Robel told prosecutors when they questioned the polygraph’s accuracy.

A check of MyVote Wisconsin shows that Sarsour is not currently registered to vote.

Taurel said the Trump administration has targeted Sarsour because of his outspoken advocacy for Palestinian rights. “We are here because of Salah’s speech,” he said. “I’m not speculating about this,” Taurel said, citing the government’s reasoning in the case, which claims Sarsour is a national security threat. “The reason they arrested him, the reason we’re here, is his speech.”

In June, Sarsour was released from an Indiana immigration detention center, where he was held for more than 80 days. He was ordered released by a Trump-appointed federal judge, who ruled that Sarsour had a “substantial” claim that his arrest was First Amendment retaliation. 

Sarsour is both the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque and a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, which has been labeled by the conservative Heritage Foundation as part of a support network for Hamas. 

In June 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memorandum stating that Sarsour was eligible for deportation because “his actions undermine U.S. foreign policy.”  In February of this year, the Justice Department announced that it would target groups like American Muslims for Palestine. The following month in March, Sarsour’s profile on a pro-Israel doxxing website called the Canary Mission was updated. Four days later he was arrested by federal immigration agents. 

Taurel said that while he believes that Sarsour has a strong case against being deported, immigration judges are under extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration and  the neutrality of the immigration court system “has been severely undermined.” 

The judge in Sarsour’s immigration case, Jayme Salinardi, is expected to make a ruling on whether he can be deported by the end of the month. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Salinardi has a record of denying asylum claims 90% of the time — far above the national average of 59%. A Democratic appointee, he previously worked as an attorney for ICE.

On Sept. 30, the court will hold a status conference on the case. If the judge decides that Sarsour can be deported, then his attorneys will push for relief. Taurel said that “we fear the worst,” if he is sent back to Israel-occupied territory. 

Taurel said that Sarsour is not backing down, adding that Sarsour will appear with Taruel on a podcast in the coming weeks, and is expected to travel to Washington D.C. to speak with elected officials. “Salah refuses to be cowed by this,” he said on Monday. “He is a brave, courageous advocate for Palestine. He won’t be silenced. He is not required to be muzzled in any way.” 

Update: This story was updated with a response from DHS on Thursday, Sept. 10 at 10:30 a.m.

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, on Wednesday to visit an immigration detention facility where two Milwaukee women are being held, interview them and check on their welfare. Reyna Elizabeth Garcia and Estenderly Marte Polanco were both arrested during a surge of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early July. 

Their arrests were described as excessive and violent by advocates from Voces de la Frontera, who monitored the surge and who joined Moore on the Kansas visit. Moore said that the Leavenworth ICE facility currently holds 450 people but  is designed to hold more than 1,000. She said she saw signs of rapid expansion. Moore fears that the facility will quickly fill up with more people. “They are building so they can fill this thing up with twice as many detainees,” she said. 

Garcia and Polanco told Moore that they are being treated as human beings, Moore said. Detainees are allowed to leave their cells and be in a common area during the day, and the facility has plans for an area where detainees will be able to exercise and get access to sunlight. Moore observed various meals being prepared including kosher and vegetarian options, indicating that the facility is making an attempt to meet dietary needs, although  the food appeared to be  of  low quality. 

Most of the people held at Leavenworth are not criminals, Moore said. Still, she said, “it is a very depressive setting, it is definitely a prison, and they are aggressively building.”

Officials at the facility denied any medical neglect, Moore said, and the detention center has  doctors on call, but no full-time medical staff within the facility itself. 

“We had some hard questions for the ICE officials,” Moore said. “We were very curious to see where the murders and rapists were, and they were unable to show us that.” 

Garcia was arrested in late May along with her brother and fiance after ICE agents in unmarked vehicles followed them as they were leaving  a local grocery store in Milwaukee. Her fiance, Galo Suárez, was later released and told by ICE agents to walk away and to not look back or else he’d face consequences, he said during a Voces press conference after the arrest. Polanco was arrested the same weekend while driving with her 11-year-old son, who was in the back seat when ICE agents pulled her out of her car. During the arrest, agents split Polanco’s lip, threw her to the ground, and at one point placed her in a position where she couldn’t breathe, she said. In both arrests, agents were described by witnesses as mocking and insulting the people they were arresting. 

After her visit, Moore described Garcia as extremely depressed. Polanco checks on her, Moore said, adding that Polanco has a strong faith in the power of prayer and uses this to help lift Garcia’s spirits.

While Garcia’s fiance was released the same day he was arrested, Moore said that the family later learned that her brother had been deported. Polanco said that she told the agents that she was scared about what  would happen to her child, who was born prematurely. He remains  traumatized after witnessing her arrest, Moore said, and blames himself for his mother’s detention. 

Garcia told Moore that she left Nicaragua because “the politics put me in danger,” only to find herself in a similar situation in the U.S. 

Moore criticized the historic level of funding for ICE in recent budgets — more than $120 billion — and said her Democratic colleagues worked together to stop further allocations in the most recent budget reconciliation bill.  At Leavenworth, she said, she wondered where all the money was going. “I was looking for the sauna,” she joked. The privately run facility is operated by CoreCivic, which sold the facility to the federal government for $238.4 million — about $300,000 per bed. Moore said it is comparable to other prisons that don’t bring in  nearly as much money. 

In response to questions from the Examiner about Moore’s visit, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called Moore’s criticisms of the facility “baseless and false.” 

“If she doesn’t like our country’s immigration laws, she should focus on changing them–not political theater,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“Individuals in ICE detention continue to have access to on-site medical care, community emergency transport services, emergency room care, hospital admissions, and off-site specialty care,” the spokesperson added. 

“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct,” the spokesperson wrote. “They are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers. Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”

Stevens Point, Winnebago County, Fond du Lac County and Sheboygan are among the Wisconsin communities that have recently moved away from Flock license plate reader cameras. On Tuesday, city staff in Stevens Point began covering the cameras while local elected leaders determine whether they can cancel their Flock contract altogether. 

Meanwhile Sheboygan broke ties with Flock after the company reportedly attempted to sell the city back traffic data it was unaware the multi-billion dollar surveillance company was even collecting. Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and their license plates on the roadways. Law enforcement officers can search the data to see where a vehicle has traveled. 

Investigative reporting has shown that the cameras can also recognize human features. Over 5,000 agencies had Flock contracts in late 2025, creating a network of tens of thousands of cameras that can be queried simultaneously. Police often say that the technology has been invaluable in solving crimes including carjackings, kidnappings, homicide, drug trafficking and gun violence. The cameras are also used for less serious reasons such as for traffic enforcement and in policing evictions. 

“Reports are surfacing all over the country about the system being misused by municipal and state employees who have access to the data,” said Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza in a press release late last week. 

A few of those cases have played out in Wisconsin courts, police departments and sheriff’s offices. Four officers across Wisconsin have been charged with misconduct in public office and other offenses for misusing Flock cameras. 

Josue Ayala of the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) was given a year of probation and avoided jail time earlier this year after misusing Flock. Cristian Morales of the Menasha Police Department was sentenced to six months in jail and three years probation for a similar infraction. In Kenosha County, former sheriff’s deputy Frank McGrath was charged with misconduct in public office last month for misuse of the surveillance technology. In July, Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman — who worked the internal affairs investigation into Ayala’s Flock misuse — was charged with misusing the system to track someone he had been monitoring since 2019, years before Flock came to Milwaukee. Chapman and McGrath are still going through court proceedings. 

Ayala, Morales and McGrath all used Flock to monitor their current or former romantic partners. The exact relationship Chapman has to the people he allegedly monitored is not mentioned in available court records. McGrath used Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his girlfriend, who was also a Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputy. Chapman allegedly employed both Flock cameras and car-mounted GPS trackers. McGrath was caught after a supervisor noticed some suspicious Flock searches in an audit, while Ayala and Chapman were both reported to police by the victims themselves. 

Numerous other officers have been investigated or charged with misusing Flock around the country. In Racine County, the district attorney admitted that a few unnamed officers have been investigated for their use of Flock cameras. 

The rash of misuse is not the only thing motivating local communities to drop Flock. When the city of Verona decided to cover its cameras in February, Mayor Diaz said that while the community trusted its police department, it no longer trusted Flock Safety. At that time the first cases of misconduct were beginning to emerge in Wisconsin, and many people had expressed fears about how the federal government — especially immigration enforcement — could leverage local Flock networks for its own priorities. Trust was also broken in Oshkosh months later, after the police chief learned that the cameras could create heatmaps of vehicle movements, contrary to what a company representative had said. 

The sheriffs and police departments in Fond du Lac County recently announced they will cancel their contracts because out of state agencies had used open records requests to obtain audit data the sheriff said was confidential and in some cases linked with ongoing investigations. Journalists and other citizens nationwide had begun requesting Flock audit data from local police departments to learn how the cameras were being used. 

In 2025, a Wisconsin Examiner analysis showed that at least 221 law enforcement agencies were using Flock in Wisconsin. Many of the searches used vague search terms such as “investigation,” “suspicious,” or non-law-enforcement terms such as “cooch,” or single characters such as “.” or “s”. Some of these vague search terms have appeared in confirmed misconduct cases. Officers in other parts of the country have also  used Flock for controversial reasons, such as tracking women suspected of traveling out of state to get an abortion. 

Flock Safety has struggled to adapt to canceled contracts and misconduct investigations. Although the company has released new features including requiring case numbers when searching the database, fixed options for search terms, and the ability to flag suspicious searches, it has also worked to hide information in the audit data such as officers’ names. Flock Safety has claimed that people have used the audit data to identify undercover officers. However, the information which Flock is making harder to view is also the very information that allowed citizens and journalists to detect instances of misconduct.

Winnebago County, Neenah, Menasha, and Chetek have each canceled a Flock contract, are considering it or have covered up their cameras. In Chetek, the police chief responded to public criticism of Flock cameras by threatening to run background checks on citizens who disagreed with his use of the cameras. Other Wisconsin communities including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Dane County, Stoughton and Manitowoc which have also canceled their Flock contracts. 

Other communities have chosen to heighten oversight of their Flock cameras In Milwaukee, County Executive David Crowley asked that all Flock operations on county property be paused until new transparency and oversight measures could be developed.

Milwaukee County Sup. Justin Bielinski, who is also chairman of the Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services, has also called on the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to disable its Flock network. “Residents should not have to wait for another disclosure before we act,” said Bielinksi. “Even if you have confidence in the Sheriff’s Department’s use of Flock, the question remains: do we trust Flock itself with this information?”

The Milwaukee Police Department has restricted its Flock network from other local agencies, limited access to the system to supervisors only, and launched a new Flock transparency portal. The portal notes that data captured by Flock cameras in Milwaukee is only retained for seven days, and that there were 983 “search sessions” over the last 30 days. It also keeps track of the number of “hot list hits” over the last 30 days. Hot lists are lists of vehicles which law enforcement have flagged in the system. When a camera sees the flagged vehicle, a notification goes out to police in the area. The Milwaukee police transparency portal  does not track the number of vehicles detected, unlike a transparency portal released by the Green Bay Police Department.

“This effort underscores the commitments MPD has made in partnership with the Mayor to establish appropriate guardrails for the use of this technology while providing greater public understanding of how Flock [Automatic License Plate Reader] technology is used to support public safety,” the Milwaukee department said in a press release. “MPD remains committed to transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of technology. Through this new resource, MPD is continuing its efforts to provide the public with meaningful information about the tools we use to support the safety of the Milwaukee community.”

People in the community continue to push back against the cameras. Last Thursday, dozens of residents filled a Fire and Police Commission meeting to capacity in Milwaukee. An overflow room was opened to accommodate all the people who showed up to testify, unanimously rejecting Flock and calling for the city to cancel its contract. Speakers argued that Flock is a form of indiscriminate mass surveillance which can and has been used in abusive ways by police. Many of the speakers expressed deep frustration with the commission, city government and police, saying that they’d called for an end to Flock for months only to see some of their fears realized. 

Napoleon Jones, 32, was one of those people. Although Jones is from Sussex, he came to the Milwaukee FPC meeting to describe his  experience of Flock surveillance. Jones, a Navy veteran, was stopped by a Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputy after filming a traffic stop. Jones was arrested and taken to jail, only to be released without charges. When he filed a complaint about the deputy’s conduct, according to a federal lawsuit, Jones became the target of a  Flock search by that deputy, who was  directed by his supervisor to conduct the searches. 

“When I first found out I was just super surprised,” Jones told the Examiner. “I never thought it would happen to me. And when I found out and I got the records and seen how many different searches there were, I was at a loss of words because it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of searches and the network is so big on these Flock cameras.” Jones added that “I drive all around. If this guy really wanted to put together a timeline of where I’m at, or who I know, or whose house I’m at, he could have done it.”

He added, “I drive past these things all the time. Everyone does.”

Months after Ramón Morales Reyes was falsely accused by the Department of Homeland Security of penning letters threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump, his children Ana and Antonio say that their family continues to live in fear while awaiting the outcome of their father’s deportation case. 

“My dad was framed for something that he did not do, and DHS knew exactly what they posted beforehand,” Ana Morales, 25, said at a press conference Friday at the Milwaukee office of Voces de la Frontera. “As a daughter, seeing my dad being framed for something he did not do was very heartbreaking,” she added.

Attorney Mark Thomsen said the family is seeking $5 million in damages caused by the federal government’s accusations against Morales Reyes, which the agency has yet to retract. Thomsen was joined by immigration attorney Cain Oulahan, Morales Reyes’ children, Voces de la Frontera Executive Director Christine Neumann-Oritz, and Milwaukee Turners Executive Director Emilio de Torre. 

Accused of something he didn’t do

In May 2025, Morales Reyes, then 54, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving his unoccupied vehicle on the roadside. Voces de la Frontera received a hotline call reporting the arrest. 

Born in Mexico, Morales Reyes has lived in the United States since 1986. His family described him as a hard worker and proud family man, who worked as a dishwasher.

His arrest came as the Trump administration ramped up arrests and deportations in 2025, the deadliest year in two decades for people being detained by ICE. Trump pledged to go after “the worst of the worst.” 

Morales Reyes had two encounters with law enforcement, both dating back to 1996, according to NPR. One was a hit-and-run incident in which he was arrested but not charged. The other was a disorderly conduct and property damage ticket relating to a dispute with his wife.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted a statement on her agency’s website calling Morales Reyes an “illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump.” 

DHS also released images of a letter, handwritten in English, that said: “we are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans” and stating “I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 to shoot your precious president in is head — I will see him at one of his big ralleys .” The reference to “30 yard 6”appears to be an incorrectly written reference to the high caliber rifle round .30-06.

Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letter, however, his family, attorneys, and advocates said, since he could not speak English and did not read or write proficiently even in Spanish. 

Morales Reyes had applied for a U-visa, granted to victims of crimes, after he was  assaulted during an armed robbery in September 2023. Detectives from the Milwaukee Police Department were actively investigating whether someone was trying to frame him when ICE agents arrested him and publicized the  accusation that he was a would-be assassin. It was later determined that a man who had been arrested for assaulting Morales Reyes had written the letter in an effort to get him deported before he could testify in court.

Lasting harm

In June 2025, Morales-Reyes was released from ICE custody on bond. Yet he continues to face deportation proceedings, with a hearing expected in December in which a judge may make a decision on whether Morales Reyes can remain in the country. The family has received online harassment and threats since Morales Reyes was accused of writing the letter, Ana Morales said.

“He’s been going through depression, anxiety,” she said during the Friday press conference. “He doesn’t like going out anymore because he feels like everyone knows him due to what he was framed as. And ever since, it has taken a lot from us.” 

Ana’s brother Antonio Morales took over the mic when  his sister began to cry. “They really wanted to make this hurt us as much as possible, inflict as much pain, and they knew what they were doing intentionally,” he said of the Homeland Security arrest and accusations against his father.

“It was hard seeing your dad all over social media posted as some sort of, you know, some sort of assassin almost,” he added. “And that’s just not who my father is. Anyone who knows my father knows that isn’t him. It was just really scary seeing all those comments online, the fear that it caused my family seeing how everybody just…threatening us online over something that was just a false accusation. And I really think DHS knew that. I really think that they knew what they were doing. They wanted to do this to us. They want to do this to more immigrants, and they really want to keep terrorizing the community going forward.”

Thomsen asked members of the public to “imagine learning on social media that your father, or your grandfather, or your uncle, or your brother, or your sister was being accused of attempting to kill the president of the United States.” He added, “Imagine what that means, and then imagine that the person that is saying it is the strongest government in the world. … This was a lie, and they knew it was a lie. The lie is still up.”

Gesturing to Ana and Antonio Morales, he said, “Check it out folks, these are two young people with the courage to stand up to the biggest government on the planet, the most powerful government on the planet, and say, ‘Do the right thing America.’ If these two young folks can do it, everybody sitting at home safely can do it.”

Looking ahead

Although DHS has said in subsequent statements that Morales Reyes is no longer under investigation for threatening the president, the agency has continued to call for his deportation. Noem’s original press release accusing him of the assassination threat is still up on the government website. The Wisconsin Examiner reached out to DHS asking specifically whether the agency plans to remove the post and correct the record. The agency has not responded. 

Oulahan said that although Morales Reyes has a hearing in December, if a judge decides to deport him, he could remain in the country while his case is appealed. Thomsen said that the federal government has six months to respond to the family’s claim for compensation under the federal Tort Act, after which filing a civil lawsuit would be an option. Thomsen stressed, however, that avenues of recourse against the federal government are limited and that the second Trump administration has shown a willingness to violate or disregard court orders. 

De Torre said the federal government is “deceiving the public about everyday people.”

“They’re disrupting us emotionally, as you can see from Ana and Antonio. … It is disrupting our economy. It is disrupting our ability to attend houses of worship, go to school, and bring home food for our families. And on top of this, they then deny that they are doing this. Telling us that what we see is not real. How we feel and how we’re suffering is an illusion. And I’m sitting here today to say this is not so.”

Asked to describe some of her favorite memories of her father, Ana recalled how he would take her to the park and bike riding, one of his favorite activities. “I remember as a little kid on his days off I would always want corn, I’m obsessed with corn even to this day,” she said. Despite working second shift her father would always make time, she said. 

Antonio described his father as fond of video games. “He definitely made me a gamer,” he said. Occasionally Morales Reyes would let his son play. “I was just so amazed by these games,” he recalled, smiling. “It was really fun.”

Milwaukee is tightening the leash around Flock automatic license plate reader cameras, with elected leaders calling for more oversight and restrictions as investigations into misuse by officers continue. 

Flock cameras utilize AI-powered technology to identify vehicles and license plates that pass within their view on roadways. The data is stored for several weeks or longer, allowing law enforcement officers from anywhere across the country to search for specific vehicles as long as their agency has a contract with Flock. 

An analysis by the Wisconsin Examiner found that at least 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies searched the Flock network during the first half of 2025, and that officers often used vague search terms to query the system. That same year, the multi-billion dollar Flock Safety company spent $102,000 lobbying the state government for grants to allow law enforcement agencies to acquire license plate reader cameras, though the Republican-backed bills were unsuccessful. 

On Tuesday, a directive went out from the office of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley to county departments and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to limit Flock-related operations on county property, and to work towards adopting new transparency and accountability standards. 

“Public safety partners should have the right tools to keep Milwaukee County safe, but unchecked surveillance isn’t the answer,” said Crowley, who is running against Republican Tom Tiffany to become Wisconsin’s next governor, in a statement. “We have seen what can happen when this technology operates without clear rules, transparency and accountability. Protecting our residents’ privacy and maintaining the public’s trust is a responsibility I take seriously. That is why I am directing all County departments to limit the usage of all Flock camera systems and establish safeguards proactively, before a breach of public trust can occur.”

Crowley is calling on the Office of Corporation Counsel and the Information Management Services Division to evaluate current policies governing the use of any surveillance tech and to develop binding standards for its use. The standards will determine how surveillance technology can be used, how long data is kept, who can access that data and why, and limit when data is shared with an emphasis on prohibiting use for federal immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant, a county press release stated. These standards would also establish independent audits and enforceable consequences when surveillance technology is misused. 

Crowley is also calling on other local elected leaders to look closely at their own use of Flock cameras and adopt similar policies. Ultimately, these efforts could result in the adoption of a consistent standard across the county for Flock. 

In April Tiffany said he had never heard of Flock cameras, when he was asked about controversy around their use. “I’m going to sound ignorant on this, what are Flock cameras?” Tiffany said during a virtual question-and-answer session. 

More recently, Tiffany said that “government should not be building an AI surveillance network that tracks law-abiding Wisconsinites everywhere they drive.” Tiffany said that he would pause state funding for Flock and create a task force to establish stronger protections, penalties for misuse, limits on data sharing, and safeguards against foreign adversaries. Tiffany criticized Crowley for “repeatedly” seeking to install “more red-light cameras, speed cameras, and massive funding increases for automated license plate readers.” 

Police departments often acquire Flock cameras through non-competitive sole source contracts which bypass a public bidding process, keeping local councils and residents from even knowing that the technology has been acquired.

The changes in Milwaukee County come after the Milwaukee Police Department announced on Monday that it will be further restricting its Flock network. In a Monday press release the department said that it “supports the use of technology to assist in solving crimes that cause harm to our community,” and that new technology can help solve cases more quickly than traditional methods for investigations. 

“With that, we recognize that the use of such technology, like Flock technology, comes with great responsibility,” the department said in the press release. “These tools must always be used to prevent and reduce harm, not create more.” The department acknowledged the growing discontent and angst over Flock technology in the community, saying that “we do not dismiss these opinions.” The department went on to say that it “acknowledges the harm that former department members have caused that has damaged the trust we work so hard to build” and that it “acknowledges the human error that comes with the use of technology” and that the department is “working tirelessly to reduce error as much as we can.”

The Milwaukee police  announced that access to Flock has been restricted to supervisors only, and that the department will no longer share its Flock data with neighboring jurisdictions. Furthermore, the cameras may only be used for “Part I crimes” such as homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault including non-fatal shootings, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson, human trafficking, as well as for critically missing people and investigating drug trafficking organizations. 

Earlier this year, the department began revamping its auditing procedures and limited the number of officers with access to Flock cameras to an “as needed basis,” risk manager James Lewis told the Examiner in June.

“MPD will continue to robustly audit its Flock systems,” the department’s Monday press release reads. “We are better together!”

The changes were followed on Tuesday by a statement from Mayor Cavalier Johnson that while technology can help law enforcement, “it is essential that we recognize the limitations and dangers associated with these tools.” Johnson added that “I recognize the benefits of the Flock cameras system.” He said that “on multiple occasions this tool has located critical missing persons and helped apprehend violent criminals in Milwaukee. The technology has also been misused in several notable instances, both locally and nationally, compromising the rights of individuals.” 

Several of those cases played out in Milwaukee and elsewhere in Wisconsin. Josue Ayala of Milwaukee, Cristian Morales of Menasha, and Frank McGrath of Kenosha County were all charged with either misdemeanor or felony misconduct in public office after using Flock to surveil their current or former romantic partners. Ayala was given a year of probation and avoided incarceration, whereas Morales was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation while avoiding prison time. McGrath’s case is still ongoing. 

In July, Tehrangi Chapman, a Milwaukee police internal affairs detective who was involved in investigating Ayala’s misuse of Flock, was also charged with using the cameras and car-mounted GPS devices to keep tabs on someone who he’d surveilled since 2019, before Flock even arrived in Milwaukee. Chapman has been charged with felonies, and his case is still ongoing. On Aug. 26, Chapman pled not guilty, and is expected back in court for a scheduling conference on Oct. 7, according to online court records. 

Each of the officers who’ve been found to have abused their access to Flock used terms like “suspicious” or “investigation” to search the Flock network, which were common terms found in the Examiner’s 2025 analysis. Other cases have also emerged, such as that of a man who is now suing the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department after a deputy searched him in Flock following a traffic stop, for which the man sought to file a complaint against the deputy. 

As misconduct cases have emerged, communities across the state have opted to drop their Flock cameras including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Verona, Appleton, Oshkosh, Dane County and Stoughton. 

In Oshkosh, the request to cancel the Flock contract actually came from the police chief, who told local elected officials that representatives of the multi-billion dollar Flock Safety company had misled him on whether the cameras were able to develop heatmaps depicting a vehicle’s movement patterns. 

Elsewhere, community members have packed public meetings to tell local officials that they don’t want to be placed under perpetual surveillance, expressing fears about how the cameras could be misused by both local and federal law enforcement. Police leaders have had mixed responses to the concerns from residents. The police chief in Green Bay has opted to keep the cameras, citing their usefulness in solving violent crime while also acknowledging that steps need to be taken to protect people’s privacy, while a chief in the small city of Chetek threatened to do background checks on residents who spoke against the cameras in a public meeting.

Exactly how to handle the cameras is still a question local and national leaders are trying to answer. In August,  President Donald Trump said that the cameras have “pros and cons” and that “it’s being studied right now, we’ll have an answer soon as to our views on it.” When asked whether he’d consider banning Flock cameras statewide, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said, “I don’t know what the solution is, but I think there’s people all across our country that’s talking about it.” Evers said he recently talked with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about Flock cameras. “Whether that [banning the cameras] is the answer, all’s I know is that we need to have an answer.”

According to Wisconsin Department of Corrections statistics, the state’s prison population hit a new record high last week. As of Aug. 28, there were 23,854 people housed across adult prisons in Wisconsin. The figure surpasses the last record, set  in 2019, and raises questions about whether and how the state will take steps to address its chronically overcrowded prison problem. 

The record high was first reported by Wisconsin Watch, which noted that the prison system was designed to hold nearly 6,000 fewer people than it currently does. In some prisons, such as the three prisons housing women in Wisconsin, gyms and office spaces have been  converted into dorm space. Meanwhile, the DOC struggles with staffing shortages among correctional officers, medical and psych workers. 

Wisconsin is an outlier, with some of the highest rates of imprisonment for Black and brown people in the country. The state has also struggled to finally close the troubled Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, despite bipartisan agreement that it needs to shut down what has been one of the largest facilities of its kind in America.

Shannon Ross, a member of Justice Forward Wisconsin has watched the prison population rising again after dropping after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “It’s been going up steadily every year,” Ross told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And it’s a confluence of the fact that we have too many ways for a person to get sent to prison — we just have a lot of crimes …  we have a lot of high penalties for crimes, and we have a lack of ways for people to come home early.” 

Emily Curtis, a member of the group Ladies of SCI, told the Examiner  Wisconsin “continues to rely heavily on incarceration without putting enough emphasis on what actually reduces incarceration over the long term.” 

While excessive sentences keep people in prison for as long as possible, Curtis added that “there are still not enough meaningful rehabilitation opportunities within the prison system that are accessible to everyone who could benefit from them.” She stressed that “education, job training, treatment, reentry preparation, and other programs need to provide people with real tools and realistic avenues for success when they return to their communities. If we want to reduce recidivism, rehabilitation cannot simply exist on paper. It has to create an actual path toward successful reentry.” 

The DOC says incarcerated people have access to various programs aimed at rehabilitation and education. Earlier this year, for example, the University of Wisconsin college system graduated its first incarcerated bachelors degree students in over 50 years. The students graduated as a result of a partnership program between the DOC and UW. 

The state agency has also pushed back against criticisms of the rising prison population, stating that it has limited authority to grant early release and that it’s up to the state Legislature to craft laws dealing with the pressing challenges faced by many DOC facilities. Although Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has proposed reforms in multiple state budget drafts, including closing aging prisons and establishing greater oversight, these ideas were rejected by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Meanwhile controversy has grown around exceptionally old prisons including in Waupun and Green Bay, where reports of deaths due to negligent medical care, violence, alleged drug smuggling by staff, extensive lockdowns restricting access to programming, and use of solitary confinement (what the DOC calls restrictive housing), and other problems have surfaced. Lawsuits and investigations targeted prison leaders for these problems. The population at Waupun plummeted from over 1,000 people to as low as 694 people in July 2024, which brought the population within the prison’s designed capacity, according to data compiled by Wisconsin Watch. As of Aug. 21, however, the population had risen to nearly 1,000 people. 

Ross, of the advocacy coalition Justice Forward, a formerly incarcerated person himself, said that in Wisconsin “the criminal justice system is used as a political football, and neither side is really moving what they know clearly in front of them should happen, because they don’t want to fully give up on the tough-on-crime claim that they can make.” The politics of crime and punishment, he says, results in elected leaders either not doing enough to institute reforms, or doubling down on a culture of punishment. “That creates this dynamic where everyone is trying to be seen as protecting society, meanwhile no one’s actually protecting society because it doesn’t make us healthier as a society having a large prison system.”

Curtis added that it’s important to “broaden the conversation about what rehabilitation actually means.” 

“Programs are important, but so is the environment a person lives in every single day. The daily interactions incarcerated people have with correctional staff can either reinforce rehabilitation or work directly against it. When the culture focuses primarily on catching mistakes, writing conduct reports, handing out punishment, or viewing positive behavior and accomplishments with suspicion, it becomes extremely difficult to create an environment where genuine change is encouraged.”

What drives the prison population to climb is a complicated formula. Part of it, many advocates say, is the system of revoking parole, probation and other forms of community release and sending people back to prison. Missing an appointment with a probation officer or a baseless accusation without thorough investigation can send someone on release back to prison. 

That’s what happened to Dennis Simmons, who was nearly sent back to prison in 2025 due to false accusations, and a probation agent who tried to revoke Simmons despite having evidence that the accusations against him were false. Simmons was housed in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility while the case played out. He described the facility as overcrowded and short staffed. Simmons eventually beat the accusations, but said that the episode crushed his hopes of change after being in and out of the system most of his life. Simmons was later arrested in a different case, and the DOC recommended he be sent back to prison. Over 8,100 people were sent back to prison in 2025. 

Talking to people who’ve worked on the prosecution-side of the criminal justice system, Ross said he learned of many cases where people were sent  back to prison because prosecutors decided it was  a simpler, quicker, more cost-effective route than filing new charges against the person. Yet, at the root of the overpopulation issue is the lack of ways for people to come home early, Ross said.

Right now, there are people who’ve been incarcerated for decades who are going before the state’s commutations board to ask the governor to shorten their sentence. In April, Gov. Evers signed executive orders to revive the board, changing a pattern lasting decades of Wisconsin governors choosing to not use their power to alter prison sentences. The commutation process has been a target of attack for right-wing pundits, who frame efforts to shorten sentences as being soft on crime and releasing droves of criminals. The attacks are similar to those against probation, parole, and the bail system.

Marianne Oleson, co-executive director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) said in an emailed statement that the revival of the commutations board is “an important and long-overdue step.” Oleson cautioned, however, that “commutations alone cannot resolve a crisis of this magnitude,” adding, “Wisconsin needs broader sentencing and supervision reform, expanded opportunities for earned release and ‘second look’ review, greater use of alternatives to incarceration, and substantial investment in housing, treatment, employment and community-based reentry support.”

“Wisconsin cannot incarcerate its way out of every social problem,” she said.

Ross told the Examiner that he understands why people might be skeptical of incarcerated people’s assurances that they’ve genuinely changed and deserve to be released. 

“I’m sympathetic to that because those things do happen, but they happen in life, period,” said Ross. Still, in his view, prison is one place where it’s hard to disguise bad character traits. “Those of us that have done time, we know that the fish bowl of prison is place that, if you can genuinely be changed and show people you’re changed there, then you very clearly are not who you were at one point.” 

Ross said people who apply for and meet the standards for commutation are demonstrating not only that they’ve done the bare minimum of educating themselves and getting therapy, but that more importantly, they are making connections with other people. “You can see folks that have built up support networks,” said Ross. “You see folks that have reference letters and have people in their corner. You can see folks in the way that they carry themselves, in the way they talk, it’s very humble. It’s very aware and accountable to the things that they’ve done.”

He added that “people show you who they are if you’re paying attention, and if you know how to look.” Ross said that he wants the state to get to a point where people are able to see through sensationalism about the criminal justice system, and understand the nuances of the issue and  people’s individual stories.

Curtis said something similar. “I would like to see state leadership take a comprehensive look at sentencing practices, revocation policies, rehabilitation, institutional culture, and reentry rather than treating the record prison population simply as a capacity problem,” she wrote. “Building or expanding facilities may address where people are housed, but it does not address why the population continues to grow or why people return.”

Flock Safety, the multibillion-dollar producer of Flock automatic license plate reader cameras, spent $102,000 in Wisconsin last year lobbying for state legislation to increase its nationwide surveillance network. That’s according to a report by OpenSecrets, which found that the controversial company dedicated over $2 million on lobbying efforts across the country in 2025.

The findings come as communities continue pushing back against Flock cameras. Some areas have cancelled contracts and removed the cameras altogether, while others have opted to increase oversight and auditing of how the cameras are used by police.

Flock cameras work by photographing every vehicle and license plate that passes by their view. The images and information are stored in a database that can be searched by law enforcement officers who work at agencies with Flock contracts. In many cases, police officers may query tens of thousands of cameras at once to determine whether any have sighted a vehicle sought by law enforcement. Using the captured data, police departments can also use Flock to keep track of a vehicle’s regular movement patterns.

In Wisconsin, Flock spent the $102,000 lobbying for a pair of Republican bills, Assembly Bill 300 and Senate Bill 299, which would have provided grants to allow local law enforcement agencies to obtain and install automatic license plate reader cameras. The legislation failed to pass in 2025.

Police departments have defended Flock cameras as valuable tools to combat crime from homicides to car theft. Critics, however have pointed to cases of officers searching Flock’s network for questionable or illegal reasons. Some departments have used Flock for immigration enforcement as the Trump administration ramped up its plans to carry out mass deportations. One sheriff’s deputy in Texas used Flock to locate a woman who’d recently had an abortion, fueling fears that local law enforcement were working to criminalize reproductive healthcare following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In many other cases, male officers used Flock to monitor or stalk people, particularly current or former romantic partners.

Several of these cases have played out in Wisconsin. Earlier this month, former Menasha officer Cristian Morales was sentenced to six months in jail and three months probation for misusing Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend. Meanwhile, new felony charges have been levied against former Kenosha County sheriff’s deputy Frank McGrath, who was found to have used Flock and a squad car tracking system to monitor his girlfriend, also a Kenosha sheriff deputy. 

Josue Ayala, a former Milwaukee officer, was charged for the same behavior. Ayala avoided jail time and instead received a year of probation after taking a guilty plea. More recently, Milwaukee Detective Tehrangi Chapman was charged with using Flock to monitor someone he has been accused of stalking since 2019, years before Flock came to Milwaukee. Chapman was one of the internal affairs detectives who investigated the allegations of Ayala’s Flock misuse. 

Each of the officers in these cases were charged with felony misconduct in public office, except for Ayala, who was charged with a misdemeanor. 

Questions around how the cameras are used have led to a distrust of the Flock Safety technology itself. Wisconsin communities including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Verona, Appleton, Oshkosh, Dane County and Stoughton have all cancelled their Flock camera contracts. 

Despite having several officers charged with misusing Flock and sustained calls from the public to stop using the technology, Milwaukee has retained its Flock contract. The police department has cited it as an asset in quickly developing leads and solving crimes. On Tuesday, however, 12 of Milwaukee’s 15 common council members signed a letter asking both the Fire and Police Commission and Police Chief Jeffrey Norman to review the department’s use of Flock cameras and to consider additional safeguards before the city begins to shape its 2027 budget — three times the number of alders who signed a similar letter in March. 

The council is asking for more information on how the Flock system is used, including a list of every agency that shares license plate reader data with the Milwaukee Police Department, and every agency with which the department shares its own data. The council is also demanding a complete accounting of searches by outside agencies using Milwaukee’s Flock network, as well as those conducted by the department on behalf of another agency. The letter also is requesting a list of all system users and their searches. 

In June, as controversy over Flock grew, the Milwaukee Police Department took steps to increase auditing procedures to flag suspicious searches, and restrict the number of officers who had access to the Flock system. The department also said that it shares its Flock network with state partners, but not with federal agencies. 

But the common council letter asks for more, including for case numbers and specific justifications for every Flock search, automated misuse detection, independent auditing, prohibitions on using Flock for immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant and regular public reporting to both the Fire and Police Commission and council. 

The letter also urges that, as discussions begin over the 2027 city budget, the city examines how Milwaukee’s Flock camera network has been funded over recent years, including how the contracts were granted multiple waivers as they were renewed. The city’s waivers, along with the use of sole source contracts with Flock, has made it possible for Milwaukee’s camera network to grow without  approval from the council. 

In response to the letter, MPD said in a statement that it will work with the commission and council to respond to concerns, and that it is committed to transparency and dialogue. 

 

A section of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline leaked natural gas liquid on Tuesday morning near the town of Saxon. Both the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Enbridge have confirmed the leak with Wisconsin Examiner, drone video of which is circulating social media showing plumes of smoke or mist-like vapor pouring out and covering an area with parked trucks and construction equipment. 

The leak was caused when a truck — which Enbridge said was unoccupied — rolled over an open excavation site for a Line 5 valve project, over a natural gas transmission line. The leak occurred in rural Iron County. This section of Line 5 was not carrying crude oil. 

Both Enbridge and the DNR said in email statements that no one was injured, though Enbridge stated that nearby rural homes were evacuated as a precaution. The DNR said that the valve project was struck around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, and that Enbridge reported the accident to the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s National Response Center at 11:02 a.m. and the DNR spills hotline at 11:15 a.m.. 

The fire department and Stantec are on site monitoring the air. The line was shut down to prevent further leaks, and the DNR stated work is underway to calculate exactly how much natural gas was released. In a social media post, Iron County Sheriff Paul Samardich said that Sitan Road is closed until further notice, and that a temporary no-fly zone zone has been established in the area. There is also an associated temporary power outage, the sheriff wrote, adding  that local residents should “follow instructions from emergency personnel.”

Enbridge Line 5 has been at the center of controversy for years. Environmental advocates and tribal communities argue that the decades-old Canadian pipeline perpetuates an over-reliance on fossil fuels in a time when communities need to move towards clean and renewable energy sources. A federal judge ruled that Enbridge was trespassing on the sovereign land of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in 2013, prompting a plan to reroute the pipeline around the reservation, which has also been contested. 

The Band and its allies say that the pipeline needs to be shut down as the possibility of oil or gas leaks threaten sensitive ecosystems as well as the Bad River watershed which the tribe and other communities rely on. Supporters of Line 5 and Enbridge say that the company helps maintain American energy supplies and jobs.

Jadine Sonoda, campaign coordinator for Sierra Club of Wisconsin, said that the most recent gas leak is an example of the pipeline’s issues. “This is yet another disaster by Enbridge and their Line 5 pipeline,” Sonoda said Tuesday in an emailed statement. “Just last week, Enbridge argued in court that our concerns about the damage of the construction of the Line 5 reroute, on the wetlands, waters, and nearby communities were unwarranted. They argued that the project is complicated, but they’ve got it under control — yet days later, people are being evacuated from their homes due to poisonous natural gas in the air.” 

Sonoda asked, “How many more disasters will it take for Wisconsin leaders to put a stop to this? How many many people will be harmed before our state regulators finally hold this massive corporate polluter accountable? We want to thank the monitors who alerted people to this right away, and the first responders who are helping people to safety.”

The Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) has joined 19 other states, including the commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia, in a lawsuit pushing back against the Trump administration’s attempts to attach immigration enforcement requirements to federal grants supporting state and local public safety efforts.

“Threatening to cut funding that supports law enforcement if states don’t agree to unlawful conditions is an abuse of the Trump administration’s authority,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “This funding should be distributed to the states, not improperly used as a bargaining chip.”

The lawsuit states that the grant programs, which have been active for decades, “provide more than a billion dollars to States annually to address some of the most serious threats to the safety of their residents: from gang violence to drug trafficking to sexual assault to all kinds of violent crimes.” The funds, which are enacted by Congress, are used “to assist more than 8.5 million crime victims; pay more than 200,000 claims for losses suffered by crime victims; and fund ongoing criminal justice and public safety operations, such as drug task forces, crisis intervention programs, and youth recidivism reduction efforts, in all 50 states and over 1,000 local government units nationwide,” the lawsuit states.

Under President Donald Trump, states which depend on these funds have been advised to either cooperate with Trump’s immigration priorities or face losing access to those funds. Calling this a “brazen attempt to manipulate critical funding for law enforcement and crime victims to strong-arm States into supporting the Administration’s civil immigration policies,” the lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration is running afoul with governing principles of the United States: that a federal agency “has no power to act … unless and until Congress confers power upon it.” Since Congress has the power of the purse, it decides what criteria executive branch agencies — like the Justice Department — must use when awarding grants, the suit argues. 

The lawsuit also accuses the Trump administration of not considering how denying these grants would undermine public safety across the country. “Action by this Court is urgently needed,” the lawsuit states, asserting  that it is illegal for the administration to impose these conditions on the public safety grants. 

In a press release, the Wisconsin DOJ said Monday that last year the Trump administration declared that states wouldn’t be able to access Victims Crime Act funds unless they cooperated with the administration’s hardline deportation agenda, affecting $1.3 billion in grants.. A coalition of states sued and the administration reversed its action and released the money. 

This year, however, the immigration conditions have been applied funding for  juvenile justice and law enforcement, and amount to over $6 million in Wisconsin alone —  a loss of $3.2 million in grant assistance, $2.1 million for  a crisis intervention program, and  $800,000 for  juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, according to DOJ. 

Although 20 sheriff offices across Wisconsin partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the 287(g) program, many communities have mixed relationships with the controversial federal agency. Some police departments may still cooperate with immigration enforcement even without an official 287(g) program. Others have policies prohibiting officers and jails from participating in immigration enforcement. 

Despite public pushback, immigration agents have conducted surges and arrests in neighborhoods, courthouses, and elsewhere since Trump returned to office. In Milwaukee County, where some of these enforcement efforts have played out, local elected officials have enacted  local ordinances and policies to curb the effect ICE operations have on public safety in the city. These, however, have invited further confrontation with the Trump administration. 

On Monday 32-year-old Menasha police officer Cristian Morales was sentenced for misusing Flock license plate reader cameras for unlawful targeted surveillance. Morales pleaded no contest in Outagamie County court and was sentenced to six months in jail, followed by three years of probation.

His sentencing comes as Wisconsin communities push back against Flock cameras and call for more transparency and control over police surveillance technologies. 

Morales was working at the Menasha Police Department when, according to a criminal complaint, he conducted seven off duty searches using between 15,234 and 92,702 individual cameras across Flock’s nationwide network. The AI-powered cameras perpetually photograph vehicles and license plates passing within their view. The images are cataloged in a database that can be searched at will by law enforcement agencies with Flock contracts. Using the intelligence collected by Flock, law enforcement can study patterns of movement for targeted vehicles so they can be intercepted later on, or develop leads for ongoing investigations.

Morales sought a vehicle belonging to his ex-girlfriend, who reached out to the Appleton Police Department about her suspicions that she was being tracked, triggering an investigation. When officers confronted Morales, he said his actions were due to “desperation, and bad judgement, combined with a lack of sleep.” 

On Monday in court, the victim described a “pattern” of controlling and violent behavior by Morales, and said that she continues to suffer from anxiety and an inability to get through day-to-day tasks, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. “I am here because I lived through something that changed my life,” she said in court. Morales told the court that he grew up in Menasha  wanted to serve the community since childhood. “I take responsibility for the decision I made,” Morales said, WBAY 2 reported. “In a moment of desperation, I made a mistake that I deeply regret, and I never would have imagined that my decision would bring me here where I am today, where I’ve affected so many people around me.” 

Judge Mark Schroeder called Morales an “oathbreaker.” Schroeder said Morales abused his authority. “He sought out the privilege of trying to keep his community safe and protecting the public in the communities in which he resided,” said Schroeder. “He sought out the tools that are handed to him as a result of that oath that he took and then broke. Sought out those tools with the purposes that are designed to keep people safe, and they do. And then abused it for his own personal and nefarious purposes.”

Inconsistent accountability

Schroeder’s assertion that Flock cameras keep people safe is something communities across the state and country are now debating. Morales’ situation is also far from unique, in a system where officers face inconsistent penalties for misusing the camera network. 

While Morales was initially charged with stalking, he was ultimately sentenced for felony misconduct in public office. A month after Morales was charged in Menasha, Milwaukee officer Josue Ayala was charged with misdemeanor misconduct in public office for also using Flock while on duty to track two people, including someone he had been in a romantic relationship with. The victim realized that Ayala searched her vehicle after using the haveibeenflocked website, and reported it to police. He used “investigation” as his search term to describe his use of  Flock, the most common search term according to a 2025 analysis of Wisconsin law enforcement’s use of Flock. Ayala took a plea deal last month, pleading guilty to misdemeanor attempted misconduct in public office and receiving 12 months probation while avoiding jail and prison time. 

A case involving Kenosha County Deputy Frank McGrath is still in process. McGrath used Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his girlfriend, who was also a Kenosha County deputy. McGrath entered “suspicious,” another common Flock search term used by officers but, like Morales, was off duty and didn’t tie case numbers to his searches. A Kenosha sheriff’s lieutenant first noticed the unusual searches and confronted McGrath. He initially attempted to mislead the supervisor, but then admitted to doing the searches. The lieutenant also talked to McGrath’s target, who said she was aware of the searches, but didn’t report them despite feeling that the activity violated policy. McGrath had been jealous of her friendship with a male coworker. 

Although McGrath left the sheriff’s office, he was not charged with a crime. A John Doe petition to have a judge review probable cause to charge McGrath has been sealed, and the Kenosha County district attorney has said that he’s waiting for the conclusion of a criminal investigation into McGrath’s conduct. The Racine County Sheriff’s Office said in March that it is conducting the investigation. TMJ4 reported in July that at least five police officers in Racine County have been investigated for Flock misuse, none of whom had been criminally charged. 

In both Morales’ and Ayala’s cases, prior conduct had raised concerns. Morales left the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office in 2024, according to the Badger Project. His supervisors noted that he nearly caused a car accident during a traffic stop, and had other problems. Morales was allowed to resign rather than be terminated, and was hired by the Menasha Police Department eight months later. Ayala had undergone previous internal investigations both in Milwaukee and when he worked at the Glendale Police Department. 

In early July, another Milwaukee officer was charged with misusing Flock. This time it was an internal affairs detective, Tehrangi Chapman, who was charged with felony misconduct in public office and misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device. Chapman had used Flock to monitor someone he’d been watching  since 2019, even before Milwaukee first signed its contract with Flock in 2022. Chapman had been involved in investigating Ayala’s misuse of Flock before his own misuse of the system had been discovered.

Community members fighting back

While the courts work out whether or how to hold officers accountable for abusing Flock, communities are also demanding accountability from local officials. Several areas including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Verona, Appleton, Oshkosh, and Dane County have all canceled their contracts with Flock. 

The reasons vary, from growing concerns that the cameras could be accessed by federal agencies including ICE, to the growing list of officers who have used the cameras for personal vendettas. In Verona, residents and local officials said that while they trust their local police department, they don’t trust Flock Safety — the multi-billion dollar company behind the cameras — or the federal government. Even President Donald Trump recently said that with the cameras “you have pros and cons” and that “it’s being studied right now, we’ll have an answer soon as to our views on it.”

The police chief of Oshkosh pushed to cancel the city’s contract after finding out that a company representative had misled city officials when asked whether Flock could generate heat maps depicting a vehicle’s movement patterns. As it turned out, the cameras are fully capable of doing that. Over 50 agencies statewide have canceled their Flock contracts, according to the grassroots group Deflock.

Not all police departments have chosen to give up Flock. The Milwaukee Police Department has repeatedly said that the cameras have been useful in solving violent crimes and locating missing people. The Green Bay police chief credited Flock with helping his department to become proactive in combatting a rise in violent crime. But he also acknowledged that privacy needs to be respected at all times. Auditing procedures have been stepped up in Milwaukee. Green Bay limited which  agencies can access its Flock network, and conducted its own audit of potential misuse. Meanwhile, Flock Safety has developed new tools to boost auditing and limit the ability for officers to conduct searches using vague terms and without case numbers. 

Meanwhile controversy and cancellations continue. Recently, a woman was pulled over by Brookfield officers at gunpoint because her vehicle had been mistakenly entered into the Flock system as being connected to a homicide investigation. The Milwaukee Police Department blamed personnel for not removing the car from the system rather than Flock itself, and the Brookfield police chief defended the actions of his officers.

In late July, Stoughton’s common council voted to discontinue its Flock contract amid growing concerns from residents. Among the issues citizens raised was that one of the cameras was pointed directly at the Cascade Falls apartment complex, which offers affordable housing in the area. One man told the council members that “I wouldn’t want a camera in my face all the time, so why would I want other people to live like that?” A woman named Carrie called the cameras “ominous and unwelcoming” and said, “being surveilled by your government says a lot about what your government thinks about you.” Another man questioned why a vote was needed to remove the cameras when they were installed without a vote or public input. 

Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, says the lack of public input or even notice of the purchase of surveillance technologies is due to sole source no-bid contracts. These kinds of contracts bypass the public procurement process. 

“There’s no public notice, let alone clear information about if there’s even approval that happened at the common council or common council committee when they’re doing these no-bid contracts,” Merkwae told the Examiner. Companies win sole source, no-bid contracts by arguing either that only they can provide the service the police want, or that their technology is proprietary. 

“You have a police department that is maybe being advertised some product,” Merkwae said. “You have this multibillion-dollar company that’s sole goal is to increase value for their shareholders. They don’t have, like, the police department’s best interest as their driving force. They don’t have the interest of the public as their driving force. They’re trying to make money. And so, they have a huge incentive to use no-bid contracts.”

As Flock comes under more scrutiny, other companies are moving to fill the gap. Axon, which produces body cameras and other technologies for police departments, is pushing license plate readers to cities that are ditching Flock. Merkwae said Axon has other products like Fusus, a real-time crime-center platform used by the Milwaukee Police Department, that integrates private surveillance cameras, license plate readers, body cameras, and other feeds into a single interface. 

“I think that it is ludicrous to just trade one for-profit Big Brother for another for-profit Big Brother that is, like, trying to make money,” said Merkwae. “That’s their goal.” She added that local officials need to ask tough questions of both the police and surveillance companies about how the technologies work, how they can be exploited, and how citizens can be protected. She said that “a bunch of this has flown under the radar with quietly signed no-bid contracts.”

In some parts of the country, local governments have passed ordinances like Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS), which provides a framework so that the public has a say in whether communities adopt surveillance technologies. Under CCOPS, the community is given notice whenever a police department either wants to acquire a new surveillance system or renew a contract for an existing one. It provides local residents the opportunity to ask questions about how the technology works, how much it costs, and other details, while also providing an opportunity to contest its adoption. 

Even these ordinances have their limits. “CCOPS is a helpful baseline but also want to recognize that in the 10 years since CCOPS laws have been on the books, the scope and power of AI-powered warrantless dragnet surveillance tech has just expanded so much,” Merkwae said. “And the way that tech aggregates data and then integrates all these systems together, it’s like a new frontier in terms of how government entities can protect their data and protect their residents. So I think that CCOPS ordinances should be — or models like that — should be the baseline. But at this point in time, when these tools are so profoundly powerful, I think that it should be up to the local residents in a community, like, what is the line? How stringent do you want these requirements on the front end to be before allowing one of these for-profit companies to come into their jurisdiction and surveil people?”