The Milwaukee Police Department intends to renew its contract with Flock Safety, the multi-billion dollar producer of controversial AI-powered license plate reader cameras. In a statement, an MPD spokesperson said that the contract will be renewed “to maintain the investigative and public safety benefits the system provides.”

Flock cameras store images of traveling vehicles and their license plates in a database which can be searched by law enforcement. While police say that the cameras are valuable tools used to investigate serious crimes like gun violence, theft and kidnapping, Flock surveillance has been criticized as an invasion of privacy. Numerous cases of officers misusing the cameras for personal reasons to surveil people have emerged around the country, including in Wisconsin. 

Two of those cases played out in Milwaukee over the last year. Former Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony misconduct in public office and misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device. Chapman is accused of  using Flock to track the movements of two people 20 times for personal reasons, and also of placing a GPS device on one of their vehicles. He’d kept tabs on these individuals even before Milwaukee adopted Flock in 2022. 

As an internal affairs detective, Chapman was involved in the investigation of Josue Ayala, a former Milwaukee officer who used Flock to track an ex-girlfriend and her new partner over 170 times. Ayala was given probation and avoided prison time. 

Both Chapman and Ayala were reported by the people victimized by their use of surveillance technology. Websites like haveibeenflocked.com helped them determine that they had been tracked. Two other cases of officers or sheriff’s deputies being charged for Flock misuse have also appeared in Kenosha County and the city of Menasha. 

As opposition to Flock grew in the community, Milwaukee PD has gone through a couple of phases of tightening and restricting the cameras. The department restricted access to the system to supervisors only, and limited the kinds of crimes that can trigger Flock use. Following a trend among some other agencies, MPD created a transparency portal describing how Flock is used, and restricted its network to use by outside agencies including  other local jurisdictions. One of the main appeals of Flock is the ability to conduct searches across a network composed of thousands of law enforcement agencies. 

MPD has also increased auditing of the system to flag suspicious uses. The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted last week to remove Flock cameras from county property. In arguing to keep the cameras, the sheriff’s office attributed a 43% decline in certain crimes around county parks between 2023 and 2026 to the cameras. 

Their removal from county property follows a cascade of cities and towns across Wisconsin canceling their Flock contracts. Stevens Point, Fond du Lac County, Winnebago County, Sheboygan, Verona, Stoughton, Dane County, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Manitowoc, and  other  local governments have worked to cancel contracts and disable their cameras.

A court battle that began when conservative-led states sued to block protections for transgender people has ended in a rollback of protections for people with disabilities — a result disability advocates have feared for months.

At the end of August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services joined the handful of conservative-led states suing it, and asked a court to strike language from a federal disability-rights regulation that directed states to prioritize serving disabled people in their communities rather than in nursing homes or institutions.

Last week the judge did so, ending the case, Texas v. Kennedy, by removing all mentions of community integration from the regulation that implements a piece of landmark federal disability law known as Section 504.

The Trump administration’s move — along with a June memo from the Justice Department that argued federal law doesn’t require states to provide community-based services for disabled people — marks a sharp about-face for the federal government, which has long been the chief enforcer of such protections.

The change to the Section 504 rule, disability rights advocates fear, will make it harder for disabled people to receive services they need to live in their communities — and to stay out of institutions.

“This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone,” said Charlotte Cravins, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, attorney whose toddler son Landry was born with Down syndrome and has impaired vision.

Landry receives publicly funded therapies that have helped him learn to crawl, pull himself up to stand, and to use American Sign Language, all while being able to live at home with his family.

But Cravins worries the ruling threatens those gains. Her husband, who was Landry’s main caregiver, recently had to return to work, and so Cravins is now caring for their son while also working. They’re hoping to get Landry assessed for nursing services and other aids that can help with daily living.

“But those services are at risk now of being unavailable,” she said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told Stateline in an email that the department “remains firmly committed to protecting the civil rights of individuals with disabilities” and enforcing applicable disability rights law.

“Our commitment to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are treated with dignity, afforded equal opportunity, and are able to meaningfully access community services remains unchanged,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in an email to Stateline, said the court’s order “answered an ordinary-course request” about updated federal guidance and clarified the “proper scope” of Olmstead v. L.C., the landmark 1999 Supreme Court ruling that people with disabilities have a civil right to live and receive services in their communities rather than institutions.

Previous administrations have relied on Olmstead’s precedent to compel states to provide community-based services.

States that were plaintiffs in the lawsuit have told the court they don’t want federal interference: They said that Biden-era updates to Section 504 unfairly restricted how they’re able to spend money, and prevented them from deciding how best to care for their own residents. They said their budgets, strained by rising costs and workforce shortages, can’t always accommodate expensive services required by the law, and that with smaller Medicaid budgets they’re having to make hard choices. Removing the federal “integration mandate” would give them more flexibility.

“Florida joined this lawsuit to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” Jae Williams, press secretary in the office of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, told Stateline in a statement.

“Reclaiming state authority gives Florida the flexibility needed to address critical public safety and homelessness issues while ensuring proper care for individuals.”

The resolution of the case “achieves the right balance,” said Sam Curtis, information officer for the Alaska Department of Law, “by keeping historical Section 504 protections in place and vacating only the unlawful new provisions that threatened Alaska’s Medicaid program, home and community based services, and systems of care for Alaskans with complex needs.”

But the change to how the feds enforce Section 504 means states may no longer have a federal monitor ensuring they provide community services, disability advocates and experts told Stateline.

“It’s part of this bigger effort from the federal government to walk away from their longstanding commitment to the right to community living,” said Alison Barkoff, director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

Disabled people still have a legal right to receive community-based services, she said, “but the right is only as good as the enforcement.”

Gender dysphoria to disability rights

The case began back in 2024, when 17 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration over its inclusion of gender dysphoria as a protected disability under Section 504.

But then the suit morphed into something different.

After Trump was reelected and his administration made clear it would not enforce the Biden rule, several states pulled out of the lawsuit. Their attorneys general scrambled to distance themselves from it, amid a swift backlash from the disability community that warned the suit imperiled federal protections for all people with disabilities.

But in a surprising move, a handful of states chose to stick with the lawsuit. In January, they amended their complaint to ask the court to strike down the Section 504 rule that directs states to provide disabled people services in their communities whenever possible, rather than in institutions such as nursing homes and state hospitals.

By September, more states had dropped out, leaving five — Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas — when the Trump administration joined them in asking the court to strike the integration provisions.

In  an email to Stateline, a spokesperson for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, connected the lawsuit and its resolution to the original complaint about the inclusion of gender dysphoria, saying it defeated a “woke” rule that “would have endangered disability funding for the sake of promoting the radical trans agenda.” He did not address the removal of the integration mandate.

“This resolution ensures that Texans who rely on Section 504 and disability assistance are fully protected,” he said. “It supports family choice, ensures healthcare providers are able to provide the best possible care to Texans, and guarantees that all protections that existed prior to the 2024 Biden rule are upheld and permanently preserved.”

Barkoff emphasized that the ruling doesn’t change disability rights protections that are baked into other federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and precedent-setting cases such as Olmstead.

“These rights still exist, and people need to understand that,” Barkoff said.

M. Geron Gadd, a senior attorney at the National Health Law Program who focuses on disability rights cases, agreed that the ruling doesn’t eliminate states’ legal requirement to provide community-based services to disabled people.

However, she said, “it can make it much harder for people with disabilities and their families, who often are already struggling, to obtain needed services.”

States get a boost

One practical result of the judgment in this case — and the Department of Justice’s June memo that reinterpreted federal disability law and the Olmstead decision — is that disabled people may have to go to greater lengths, including suing states, to get services if they’re denied them.

The department has already retreated from disability rights cases against states including Florida and Texas, which have long pushed back against Olmstead’s scope in the hopes of persuading the feds to narrow their interpretation of disability law.

In 2023, a U.S. district court found that Florida had kept children with complex medical needs unnecessarily institutionalized in nursing facilities, violating federal disability rights law and the Olmstead integration mandate. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit during the Biden administration. The department shifted its stance this year and asked the court to vacate its decision.

The Justice Department also dropped out of a long-running case centered on claims Texas has been illegally placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes for decades.

Disability rights groups and advocates have called for protection of federal integration requirements. Late last month, a bipartisan group of congressional representatives cosponsored a resolution to reaffirm Olmstead and the right of disabled people to receive services in their communities. A group of 100 Democratic members of Congress also signed a letter in July calling on the Justice Department to rescind its memo.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

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 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.”

WASHINGTON — A New Hampshire federal judge seemed skeptical during a Tuesday hearing that a civil rights group could continue with a challenge to block President Donald Trump’s second attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, suggesting that a new lawsuit might be needed.

The American Civil Liberties Union last month asked federal Judge Joseph Normand Laplante to clarify a preliminary injunction he issued  that blocked Trump’s first executive order that tried to deny citizenship to certain babies. The ACLU wanted to know if the preliminary injunction also applied to Trump’s two new executive orders that would redefine birthright citizenship.

“I view the Barbara case as essentially over,” Laplante said, referring to the case initially filed in New Hampshire last year that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

Laplante said because the new executive orders apply to a different class than the original case, it seems like a new lawsuit. 

Trump’s most recent executive orders would deny citizenship to babies born in the United States to parents deemed part of a designated terrorist organization and to parents who purposefully came to the United States to gain citizenship in what critics call “birth tourism.” 

The executive order also aimed to deny citizenship to children born to foreign diplomatic staff and children born in U.S. territories where Congress has not passed a law granting citizenship, which is only American Samoa.

Maryland action

Earlier this month, Maryland federal Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction that barred the executive orders from taking place. Boardman handled the birthright citizenship lawsuit that stemmed from Trump’s 2025 executive order. 

After the August executive orders, immigration advocacy groups asked her for another preliminary injunction through the initial lawsuit from 2025. That case, also on the first executive order, was separate from the New Hampshire case but the Supreme Court decision affected both. 

Arguing Tuesday in New Hampshire on behalf of the ACLU, Cody Wofsy said he understands if the court views it as a separate suit, but that the organization views the two executive orders as somewhat identical to the first executive order that the Supreme Court struck down.

“This is one kit and caboodle, really,” he said. “It’s a continuing effort to strip birthright citizenship.”

Wofsy, who is deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said if Laplante wants a new lawsuit, the ACLU would like to know as soon as possible. 

“Our fundamental interest here is just in getting to the place where we can get some relief for this class, whether that’s before this court, in this district, another, it doesn’t really matter to us,” he said. 

Special Counsel for the Justice Department Brad Rosenberg said the Trump administration’s primary concern is efficiency.

“We don’t want to have to expend resources responding to motions that may very shortly become moot,” he said. 

Perceptions

Laplante, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, also expressed concern about the perception created by the ACLU asking the same judge for another preliminary injunction. 

“I’m concerned about the impression created by the very same judicial officer that handled the Barbara case, now handling new issues involving, not the same issue, but very similar, closely related issues involving birthright citizenship, and that’s of concern to me,” he said.

“If this case were brought, and I think the proper way, it might be that … I receive it again by random assignment,” he continued. “If that’s the case, we’ll be off to the races and we’ll litigate the case in the normal way I would approach preliminary injunctive relief.” 

Cerina Fairfax, a Virginia dentist and mother of two, spent nearly two years living in the same house as her husband while she was trying to divorce him.

Virginia state law required couples with children, like the Fairfaxes, to wait a year before being allowed to file for divorce. Cerina’s husband, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, had also tried different legal tactics to prolong the process.

In March of this year, a judge granted Cerina sole custody of their children and ordered Justin to move out.

A few weeks later, with just days left before his move-out deadline, Justin fatally shot Cerina and then himself, police say, while their two teens were also in the house.

The tragedy focused national attention on state divorce laws, which have remained mostly static since 2010, when New York became the last state to allow no-fault divorce. In the years since, most of the states that have tweaked their divorce laws have made it easier, not harder, to get one. Virginia, for example, relaxed some of its requirements just days before Cerina Fairfax’s death.

Now that could be changing.

In recent years, more conservatives have turned to divorce as a “family values” talking point, with some pushing to make it harder for couples to divorce. By doing so, they’ve relaunched a national conversation that would have been nearly unthinkable just a few years ago.

In 1969, California became the first state to allow no-fault divorce, which allows one member of a couple to file for divorce without proving that the other person engaged in wrongdoing such as adultery, abuse or abandonment. No-fault divorce emerged from the women’s rights movement of that era, promising women greater freedom to escape from unhappy or abusive marriages.

But the loss of that freedom suddenly seems more plausible, particularly for those whose confidence in federal protections for women’s rights was shattered after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. And as state lawmakers ramp up restrictions around birth control, fertility treatments and pregnancy loss, new limits on divorce seem less far-fetched.

“What’s different now is that it’s actually gaining some traction,” said Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law whose work focuses on the legal history of marriage. “Simply the idea that we’re talking about it seriously, that it’s part of some Republican party platforms, that it’s not just laughed out of the room.

“Even if we’re not anywhere near eliminating it, that is the major change.”

Earlier this year, for example, an Iowa Senate subcommittee approved a bill that would allow couples to opt out of no-fault divorce when they’re registering for marriage licenses.

“In the last generation, we have seen the chaos of — the circus of — pure no-fault divorce, (and) the ugliness of divorce and the breakdown of marriage,” Iowa state Sen. Jesse Green, a Republican, told his colleagues during a February hearing on his bill, which later died in committee.

“A lot of people are not getting married anymore because maybe, in some cases, they feel the lack of support and accountability with our law,” he said.

Oklahoma bill would end incompatibility as grounds for divorce

In Texas and Nebraska, the official state GOP platforms call for ending or limiting no-fault divorce. Other state Republican parties, such as in Louisiana, have considered similar party planks.

Republican lawmakers in states including South Carolina and South Dakota have filed bills to limit no-fault divorce or make the process harder.

Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican and pastor, filed a bill in 2024 to abolish no-fault divorce, after saying he wanted to see public shaming for those who cause divorce.

At the same time, some prominent social media influencers have been using their platforms to call for streamlining divorce laws.

Hadley Vlahos, a Mississippi registered nurse with 2.2 million followers on TikTok, used her platform this summer to talk about her three-year-long divorce, which included an 11-day trial and hundreds of court filings. She has called for changes to Mississippi’s divorce law, one of only two in the country that doesn’t allow a no-fault divorce if one spouse objects. Her petition to change state law has more than 30,000 signatures.

Jen Hamilton, a nurse and content creator North Carolina who has 7.2 million followers across TikTok and Instagram as well as a bestselling book, called for changes to the divorce laws in her state after separating from her husband.

She recently appeared at a fundraiser with North Carolina state Sen. Woodson Bradley, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill that would shorten the required separation period before divorce in certain circumstances. That bill remains in committee.

Hamilton’s goal, she told her followers, “is to do everything that I can to get North Carolina law changed to protect women — and some men — from these archaic, paternalistic laws that keep people trapped in marriages that are either unhealthy or dangerous.”

A paradox

Divorce has been declining in the U.S. for more than 40 years.

Four of the five states with the highest divorce rates — Oklahoma, Nevada, Mississippi, Wyoming and Alabama, as of the most recently available data — are Republican led; Nevada has a Republican governor but a Democratic-controlled state legislature.

But state laws aren’t an effective way to raise or lower the number of divorces, said Krista Westrick-Payne, a marriage and divorce researcher and assistant director at the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

“The more significant things that affect whether or not a couple decides to divorce has much more to do with their relationship and their personal situation,” Westrick-Payne said.

Religious areas tend to see higher divorce rates, according to her research. So do areas that are more politically conservative.

“That feels like a paradox,” she said. But those areas generally see more people marrying at younger ages — one of the biggest predictors of divorce.

“So it’s not to say religious people are divorce prone; it’s just they have all these other risk factors, and underlying population dynamics that affect this.

“People like to get on social media and make these overarching statements, flattening a very complex issue,” she said. “And I don’t think that serves anyone very well.”

The most dangerous time

The Iowa proposal to allow couples to opt out of no-fault divorce faced strong opposition from domestic violence advocates, who said such laws especially burden people fleeing domestic violence — who are overwhelmingly women — and can leave them stuck in a dangerous marriage while they try to prove to a court that they’re being abused.

“For someone experiencing domestic violence, leaving is already incredibly complicated, and for a lot of survivors, it is the most dangerous time,” said Lindsay Pingel, director of community engagement at the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which represents 25 victim service provider organizations across the state.

Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, himself divorced, signed the law that made his state the first to allow no-fault divorce. Prior to that, a person trying to divorce had to prove in court that his or her spouse did something wrong. But such things are difficult to prove in court, and subject to a judge’s interpretation.

“We know that domestic violence doesn’t always come with the kind of documentation that someone who’s never experienced an unhealthy relationship might expect,” Pingel said. “There might not be a police report, or medical records, photographs or witnesses.”

Most survivors of domestic violence don’t talk about it with others until they’ve decided to leave, she said. And many don’t feel safe involving authorities in a situation that could make it more dangerous.

“We have to stop asking why survivors continue to stay in unhealthy relationships when we continue to put barriers in place that prohibit them from leaving.”

Cerina and Justin Fairfax tragedy underscores new Va. laws that could help prevent similar violence

Women who talked to Stateline about their divorces described years-long court battles with convoluted rules, fraught custody arrangements and uneven protections in cases of abuse.

Some states require months- or years-long waiting periods where a couple must be separated before they can file for divorce. At least three states — Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana — allow so-called “covenant marriage,” a legally binding agreement that comes with additional requirements and is harder to end through divorce. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is from Louisiana, is in a covenant marriage with wife Kelly.

Recently, some states have made it easier for couples to divorce. Maryland, for example, moved to a purely no-fault divorce process in 2023.

Virginia’s new divorce law includes some narrow changes, including an option for speeding up the divorce process. It also created a legislative work group to study whether the state should eliminate fault-based divorce entirely.

And in Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe in April signed a new law clarifying that pregnancy can’t prevent a divorce from being finalized.

Pingel, of the Iowa domestic violence coalition, said supporting healthy marriages and protecting vulnerable people from dangerous marriages aren’t competing goals.

“Children benefit from safety and stability,” she said. “and keeping someone legally tied to a person who is causing harm doesn’t necessarily create a healthier family.”

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

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.”

Officials in Page, Arizona, a small city near the Glen Canyon Dam, passed a land sale agreement last fall that establishes a framework for future construction of a data center.

The sale of the 500-acre parcel about a mile away from the Colorado River’s Horseshoe Bend — one of the most visited natural landmarks in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area — to Huntley LLC for $7 million specifies that the company intends to build a 1 gigawatt data center.

Residents have been pushing back and launched a petition earlier this year to stop the planned data center from being built. 

About 5 miles south of the city, a group of tribal leaders began to take notice. The proposed data center borders the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation, located in the northwest corner of the Navajo Reservation. 

Like most of Arizona, the community has run into challenges from severe drought conditions this year. After learning how much water it could take to cool the thousands of servers housed in the massive facilities, members of the tribe grew increasingly concerned about the proposed data center.

The LeChee Chapter also passed a resolution opposing Page’s decision to sell the land to the developers. 

“Water is precious to us,” said Irene Whitekiller, president of the LeChee Chapter. “ … Water is used for everything, like with holy water in church and traditional ceremonies. But with a data center coming in, it’s going to take a lot.”

Data center developments are continuing to spread throughout the country as the demand for digital processing power grows — especially as artificial intelligence systems become more prevalent. But in addition to concerned residents, some federal, state and local officials are worried about how data centers could drive up utility bills, strain water resources and hurt the environment.

And now, tribal communities are grappling with the fact that more developers are eyeing their land for future data center projects.

“Because of the history with treaties, removal actions and those sorts of things, tribal lands are probably more pristine and not as developed as other state, federal or local government lands,” said Tana Fitzpatrick, the associate vice president of tribal relations at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the Crow Tribe in Montana and a descendent of the Lakota Sioux, Ponca and Chickasaw nations. 

“That might be one of the reasons why tribes are finding that people are coming and wanting to build data centers on their lands.”

Some tribal leaders are also concerned about President Donald Trump’s ability to alter regulations related to federal lands. While most of Trump’s executive orders don’t apply to federal land belonging to Native nations or reservations, Whitekiller said that could change.

In July, for instance, Trump issued two executive orders to revise the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument so the lands could be “put to a higher-priority use,” such as extracting minerals to invest in national security. The orders faced backlash from environmental advocacy groups and Native nations.

“We’re trying to educate our people to say no to this kind of thing (data centers) because we want the land the way it is. This is a federal land that we live on, but Trump doesn’t respect that,” Whitekiller said.

In March, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma became one of the first Native nations to enact a complete moratorium on data centers. Honor the Earth, a national nonprofit organization advocating for the protection of Indigenous sovereignty and the environment, has helped communities like the Seminole Nation organize against data center development on their land.

Some companies see tribal land as a regulatory dream, said Ashley Leitka, an enrolled member of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the director of the department of sovereignty and self-determination at Honor the Earth. She is also part of the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota nations.

While municipalities are pushing back against data center developers by tightening codes and enforcing stricter regulations, she said some companies are hoping that tribal nations will be more lenient. As sovereign, self-governing nations, tribes are not required to follow all state and local laws.

“These companies are really preying upon the lack of economic diversity in our tribal nations,” Leitka said. “The reality is our tribal leaders are given a mandate to care for their nations, and whenever there’s opportunities, it’s pretty difficult for them to assert why they would not consider it. I just think it’s several things happening at the same time — that makes tribal nations prime targets.”

A handful of other tribes have taken action against data centers. In July, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma’s Business Committee formally declared its opposition to construction and operation of data centers on its lands. 

And in August, following a report detailing the impact of data centers on economy and environment, the Cherokee Nation announced it would be banning hyperscale data center development on tribally owned and trust lands, according to the nation’s official news site.

However, some tribes are considering how data centers could help their people. Colusa Indian Energy, for instance, has become one of the only tribally owned microgrid companies helping lead data center partnerships with Native nations.  

And in the past few years, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs has encouraged tribes to consider data center projects by offering financial and technical resources to assist.

Data centers are a significant way to bring economic opportunities to tribal communities, said Eric Mahroum, the office’s director. Mahroum said data centers also offer a number of jobs to community members.

“I think that’s why a lot of private companies are approaching tribal lands and the tribal governments to partner with them,” he said. “And we’re here to help them with that. I’ll be the first to say that there’s a lot of private companies and a lot of bad players that want to take advantage of the tribes. But then there’s a lot of great players that want to help the tribes.”

As more communities push data center developers out and states consider rescinding tax breaks, some of the country’s top tech developers and data center companies see tribal land as an easier option.

Microsoft, for instance, recently proposed a data center project in Fernley, Nevada, about a 10-minute drive from the boundary of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, according to Honor the Earth’s Data Center Tracker. The company’s community-first AI initiative outlines steps Microsoft will take to be a “good neighbor” in the communities where they build, according to an unsigned written statement from the company.

In the meantime, tribal leaders have expressed the need to continue studying the impacts of data centers through task forces. And now, more Native nations are considering moratoriums to allow time for more discussions, said Fitzpatrick, of the University of Oklahoma.

“In general, every tribe is their own sovereign nation,” Fitzpatrick said. “Regardless of the issue, every tribe is going to have their own ways of governing, choosing their priorities and looking at their citizens’ priorities.”

A number of Wisconsin communities — recently UW-Madison and Stoughton — have cancelled their contracts with Flock in response to community privacy concerns and cases of police misuse.

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