Four Milwaukee aldermen are expressing concern about “the lack of adequate guardrails, auditing, supervision, and transparency” surrounding the use of Flock Safety license plate reader cameras. In a three-page letter sent Wednesday to the city’s Fire and Police Commission (FPC), Common Council President José Pérez and Alders Marina Dimitrijevic, Alex Brower and Sharlen Moore said that recent cases like one involving a Milwaukee police officer who used Flock to stalk a romantic partner “are alarming and underscore the systemic oversight gap rather than an isolated failure.” 

The letter is the latest ripple in a wave of community pushback against the use of Flock Safety cameras, which are equipped with license plate reading technology and can be accessed by law enforcement agencies across the country using search terms and filters. Critics also express concern that the cameras can be used for backdoor surveillance by the federal government, particularly as the Trump administration pursues an aggressive immigration crackdown. 

Audit data reviewed by Wisconsin Examiner shows that officers often use vague terms like “investigation,” “suspicious,” “cooch,” or just “.” to search the network. Some Wisconsin communities have canceled their contracts with the multi-billion dollar Flock Safety company due to concerns about its technology.

 

 

Just a day before the Milwaukee council members sent their letter to the FPC, TMJ4 reported that the Milwaukee Police Department cut off access to its license plate reader database. The police department said officers have been blocked from using the system while the department re-evaluates who needs access to the technology. Currently, TMJ4 reported, only officers in “sensitive portions” of MPD’s Criminal Investigations Bureau can access Flock for emergency cases. The department, headed by Chief Jeffrey Norman, has also banned facial recognition technology after months of community pushback.

In their letter, the four Milwaukee alders warned that a system like Flock — capable of “tracking movement patterns, identifying vehicles, and storing sensitive location data” — can be “weaponized against residents, including survivors of domestic violence, journalists, advocates, and everyday community members.” 

The alders were especially alarmed about a recent case involving Josue Ayala, a Milwaukee police officer facing one misdemeanor count of misconduct in public office for allegedly using Flock to track two people, one of whom was Ayala’s a romantic partner, 179 times. When he used Flock, Ayala entered the search term “investigation,” the most common search used by Wisconsin law enforcement agencies during the first half of 2025, according to the Examiner’s analysis of audit data.

In their letter, Milwaukee council members ask the FPC what specific training officers must receive to access Flock; how use is supervised real time, who’s responsible for reviewing searches, how frequently audits are conducted, and what “independent body oversees compliance and investigates misuse?” The alders are demanding that the city support reforms including: 

• Independent auditing of Flock cameras and other license plate reading technology;
• Limiting the purpose for using these technologies to “documented casework,” 
• Establishing a system of real-time flagging and increasing approval to use the system by supervisors,
• What the letter calls “a clear firewall for immigration enforcement,” preventing the police department’s Flock network from being used by federal agencies in ways that go against the department’s own policies restricting cooperation with immigration enforcement, 
• Transparent reporting including query volume trends, high-level categories of uses, who the data is shared with, and discipline/misuse outcomes, 
• Oversight hearings built into normal governance routines, such as the council’s Public Safety and Health Committee, which the letter notes “is a natural forum for recurring surveillance oversight hearings and for receiving transparency reports,” 
• Treating surveillance technology contracts as public interest infrastructure agreements “requiring clarity on retention and disclosure, clear rules on secondary use, and enforceable audit access for the city and designated independent reviewers,”
• And reforms to local legislation such as adopting a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) policy, which local activists and community members have been calling for in recent years. 

Just a day after the alders issued their letter, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin also sent its own communication to the Public Safety and Health Committee regarding Flock and other police surveillance technology. 

“It is critical that our community has a say in if and how invasive surveillance technologies are used, how they are deployed against residents, if and how their data is stored and shared with third parties, and whether spending our limited tax dollars on surveillance technologies is the best way to promote public safety,” the ACLU letter stated.

Abuse of surveillance tech cases across Wisconsin

The ACLU’s letter also noted “a disturbing trend in Wisconsin and across the country regarding law enforcement abuse of Flock [Automatic License Plate Reader] technology to stalk and harass people, in most cases women.” 

If convicted, Ayala could face up to nine months in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. However, a criminal complaint issued for Ayala mentions that negotiations have been underway for a settlement that would include his resignation. 

Departments are also inconsistent in how they respond to the use of vague or overly common search terms. After the Examiner approached the Waukesha Police Department about why hundreds of Flock searches had been labeled with only “.” in the field indicating the reason for the search, a spokesperson said that a single officer was responsible for the searches and had been counseled and retrained. By contrast the West Allis Police Department — the state’s most frequent user of the “.” Flock search term during the first half of 2025 — only asserted that its officers are properly trained, and that it investigates misuse cases “when warranted.” 

In addition to Ayala, another officer accused of misusing surveillance technology is Jay Johnson, the chief of the Greenfield Police Department. Johnson is facing felony misconduct in public office charges for installing a department-owned pole camera on his property during a messy divorce. Johnson is also accused of destroying data by deleting text messages after a meeting where he learned about the accusations and was offered a chance to retire. 

In Menasha, Wisconsin, Cristian Morales is facing felony misconduct in public office charges for allegedly using Flock to track someone while he was off duty. If convicted, the Menasha Police Department officer could be imprisoned for up to three and a half years and be fined up to $10,000. As with Ayala, Morales’ alleged misuse of Flock was discovered only after a complaint was made to another police department, and not through oversight by Menasha, Auto Wire reported. 

A new case of Flock abuse in Kenosha

In Kenosha County, a sheriff’s deputy was reportedly offered a severance package to resign, and has yet to face charges for inappropriate use of surveillance technology. 

Internal investigation documents obtained by the Examiner through an open records request show that, in late September, Frank McGrath, at that time a Kenosha County Sheriff Department deputy, logged into an app on his phone to access his agency’s Flock network. McGrath wanted to search for a specific vehicle, entering “suspicious” as the reason for using the AI-powered cameras. But McGrath was off duty, and his searches — lacking any case numbers — weren’t intended to find a murder suspect, stolen car, or kidnapped child. Instead, McGrath was apparently stalking another Kenosha County deputy whom he was dating. 

McGrath’s 16 Flock searches were first noticed by Kenosha County Sheriff Capt. Erik Klinkhammer, during an audit in October 2025. After checking the license plate which McGrath repeatedly searched in the TIME system — a consolidated information database used by law enforcement — Klinkhammer confirmed that the targeted vehicle belonged to a Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputy, whose name is redacted in the documents obtained by the Examiner through records requests. 

“There was no indication that [REDACTED] or her vehicle were connected to any investigation, and informal internal speculation suggested a possible romantic relationship between McGrath and [REDACTED],” the internal investigation report states. “These factors raised concerns regarding McGrath’s motive for conducting off-duty searches of her vehicle.” 

None of McGrath’s other Flock searches were like those that raised Klinkhammer’s suspicions. McGrath was placed on administrative leave and ordered to report to the sheriff’s office for questioning. The vice president of the Kenosha Sheriff Offices union was also notified of the situation.

McGrath initially denied having misused Flock stating that, “he performed the searches through the FLOCK app on his phone and dismissed the relevance of questions about a relationship with [REDACTED],” the investigation report states. McGrath surrendered his badge and firearm before leaving the room. “Within moments,” the reports continued, McGrath returned with the union vice president saying he didn’t want to leave the situation unresolved, and admitting that he was having romantic relationship problems with the deputy whose license he searched in Flock. Klinkhammer then called the deputy in question, who confirmed that she already knew about McGrath monitoring her vehicle through Flock. “[REDACTED] said she was not afraid of McGrath and is not in fear of her safety,” the investigation report states. 

In a separate interview, the deputy McGrath was monitoring also appeared with a union representative. She said that McGrath had told her about the Flock searches a week or two before Klinkhammer contacted her. “[REDACTED] stated she did believe his actions were in violation of policy and found it ‘weird,’ but she did not report the information to a supervisor,” the investigation report states. She elaborated on a close friendship she had with another male coworker who, after learning about her relationship with McGrath, had been giving her the “cold shoulder.” 

“She was extremely upset by this change, and while speaking with McGrath on the day of the FLOCK searches, she became emotional and cried,” the investigation report states. “She explained that she and this coworker communicated daily, both on and off duty, and the sudden distance was upsetting. She stated that McGrath told her her reaction was not normal and questioned whether she had romantic feelings for the coworker. [REDACTED] told him she did not, explaining she was simply hurt by the loss of the friendship.”

Later, McGrath questioned her about who had access to her vehicle. “Because she lives with her parents, she explained that either her mother or father can take her car at any time,” the investigation report states. “She noted it was unusual that McGrath repeatedly asked this question.” The two eventually had “a significant argument related to her having male friends,” which led to her distancing herself from her male friends, after which things with McGrath improved, according to the report. 

Surveillance motivated by jealousy

“[REDACTED] denied any physical altercations, domestic violence, or concerning behavior of that nature during the relationship,” the investigation report states. “She stated McGrath did not like her having male friends, wanted to go through her phone at times, and had expressed jealousy issues, but she denied any physical incidents. She also denied believing she was being stalked, stating that she and McGrath shared their iPhone locations with each other.”

The two talked about the situation again after McGrath was placed on leave, devolving into another argument. “[REDACTED] stated McGrath never asked her to lie for him and instructed her to tell the truth,” the investigation report states. “She confirmed they are still currently in a relationship, though McGrath has made only limited comments about discussing the situation with his union representative.” The investigation report notes that, “when asked why she did not initially report McGrath’s FLOCK use after he told her, [REDACTED] said she did not know what to do and felt the situation was strange.”

When he spoke with investigators, McGrath said he’d undergone Flock training and understood police databases can only be used for “legitimate investigative purposes,” and agreed that his own use was “unauthorized.” However, McGrath told investigators that his understanding of Flock and license plate reader policies “was vague” and he said that “although he signs off on policy updates, he often does not read them.”

McGrath said that his own insecurity and the way the female deputy reacted to her friend cutting her off contributed to his misuse of Flock. “He explained that he first ran a partial plate using the digits he knew, then used an Antioch, Illinois, camera hit from a prior visit to his residence to identify her full plate number,” the investigation reads. “He then continued searching her movements through the system. His stated goal was to determine whether [REDACTED] was at home or possibly visiting the male coworker he was suspicious of.” 

McGrath said he “knew [he] probably shouldn’t have” used Flock for personal reasons “but believed FLOCK was not as tightly regulated as TIME.” He also said that he didn’t use other police databases such as LEADS or New Work for personal reasons “and could not explain why he treated FLOCK differently.” McGrath also admitted to initially lying to Capt. Klinkhammer “claiming he was embarrassed and ashamed,” the investigation report notes. 

Besides Flock, McGrath also used a squad car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his partner. “He admitted these searches were motivated by jealousy, stating he checked to see where she was, who she might be sitting near, or which deputies she was working alongside,” the report states. “He agreed this behavior was inappropriate and understood how it could be viewed as stalking-type conduct.” McGrath entered the reason for the searches as “suspicious” as “likely an attempt to legitimize the searches, and stated that although he knew in the back of his mind that what he was doing was wrong, he was not in the right frame of mind at the time.”

‘Knowingly and repeatedly’ misusing Flock

The internal investigation found that McGrath “knowingly and repeatedly” misused Flock and Polaris, and was not truthful when confronted by a supervisor about his actions. “His actions constitute an abuse of his authority and a serious breach of trust regarding confidential law enforcement information,” the investigation report states. “His pattern of personal surveillance using restricted law enforcement systems, coupled with his initial dishonesty, represents serious misconduct. The misuse was repeated, knowing, and extended over multiple months. It occurred off duty, and it was directed at a fellow member of this agency in the context of a romantic relationship.” 

Kenosha County Sheriff Lt. Chase Forster concluded in the investigation that “this level of misconduct significantly undermines the integrity and credibility expected of a Kenosha County Sheriff’s Deputy, and formal discipline is warranted.” Yet that discipline never came. 

According to a John Doe petition filed by Kevin Mathewson, a controversial local figure who runs the Kenosha County Eye, McGrath resigned and avoided having his case referred to the district attorney’s office. Mathewson also wrote on Kenosha County Eye that McGrath received a severance agreement when he resigned. Mathewson points out in his John Doe petition that other Wisconsin officers — including in Milwaukee, Menasha and Greenfield — have faced misconduct in public office charges for abusing Flock. By filing a John Doe petition, Mathewson is asking a judge to consider whether probable cause exists to charge McGrath. If a judge decides that probable cause exists, he or she may appoint special prosecutors to explore options to convict.

The Examiner reached out to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office for comment. Acting as a spokesperson, Forster declined to comment, saying that the criminal investigation is being carried out by the neighboring Racine County Sheriff’s Office. While a spokesperson from Racine County confirmed that the department is  “working on it,” referring to the investigation against McGrath, they declined to comment further, stating that Kenosha is in charge of releasing information and statements. The Racine County Sheriff spokesperson assured the Examiner that they weren’t “trying to play ‘hide the ball.’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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