It’s tempting to begin a story about Emily Sterk with an anecdote about her advocacy around mass incarceration.
Or with her reflections on how her privilege plays into that work. Or with an exploration of how her religious faith intertwines with her concern for those caught up in the criminal justice system.
But she also loves musicals – and is a little embarrassed to admit how much she enjoys “Wicked.” She has a beloved tortoiseshell cat named Stevie and is fond of puzzles.
Having said all that, people are starting to notice how good she is at what she does, said Krissie Fung, associate director of Milwaukee Turners, the state’s oldest civic organization, where Sterk is completing a fellowship.
“People have heard her speak in public, and folks are beginning to look to her opinion,” Fung said.
This ability to gain trust within criminal justice reform circles is especially valuable as the organization grows, said Emilio De Torre, executive director of Turners.
“Having someone who can help us build stronger networks, have an informed leader in these different rooms – it expands our ability to educate others who don’t understand this and to empower people who are impacted but unsure of what to do,” De Torre said.
From the academy
During her final year of graduate school at Pennsylvania State University, Sterk – in her spare time – taught in two correctional institutions.
“That was one of the first times I felt like, ‘Oh, well, I should be doing something about this,’” she said.
Sterk arrived in Milwaukee last fall as a Leading Edge Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, a national program that places Ph.D. graduates at justice-focused nonprofits.
At Turners, she conducts research, participates in advocacy and develops policy ideas geared toward confronting mass incarceration.
‘Watching the watchers’
One area Sterk has focused on is civilian oversight of law enforcement.
At an April 15 meeting of the Milwaukee County Board’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services Committee, Sterk testified in support of a civilian board that would oversee the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.
She told committee members that, in order to be effective and independent, such a board must have the authority to hire and fire law enforcement officers – including the sheriff – and have policymaking authority.
Sterk pointed to a 2024 audit of the county jail that, she said, “unearthed deeply troubling policies, practices and procedures that have long since been ingrained in the facility and its staff.”
She highlighted an instance in which an officer accused of misconduct was assigned to respond to the grievance filed against them.
With emotion in her voice, Sterk reminded supervisors that the audit devoted just three sentences to a suicide attempt that auditors personally witnessed during their visit.
Two weeks after this committee meeting, Sterk presented to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission the findings of a six-month monitoring period of the commission’s activity – “watching the watchers,” as Fung put it.
The commission was significantly restructured in July 2023 after Wisconsin Act 12 stripped its ability to shape police policy, shifting that power to police and fire department chiefs.
However, Sterk is not hostile or self-righteous in her criticism. Care and sincerity are at the center of her approach – even for the offices and bodies she’s criticizing.
At the Fire and Police Commission presentation, multiple commissioners thanked the Turners and echoed the call to improve public engagement.
Currently, Sterk is fostering a collaboration on jail-based voting between the Turners and the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County. Here, too, her thoughtfulness has left its mark.
“The first thing she talked to me about was educating people about having respect for people who are incarcerated,” said Gail Sklodowska, the second vice president of advocacy and action for the league. “Like how we refer to them, how we talk about them. And I went, ‘Wow, I never even thought of that as a place we should start.’
“But she’s right.”
This combination of rigor, respect and resolve is rooted in deeper values, said Carlos de la Torre, Sterk’s partner and a rector at a church in Chicago.
“Amidst the work of justice, of restoration, of reconciliation, of liberation,” he said, “Emily knows that there’s a place for beauty in all this.
“The point of all this work is to offer people access to a good life, to the beauty of this world, to be free in creation.”
Sterk’s fellowship ends September 2026, but she is open to staying in Milwaukee after that – and so are others.
“I would love for us – and for Milwaukee – to keep her,” Fung said.
Like the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), the sheriff's office is considering acquiring facial recognition applications from the company Biometrica, but civil liberties advocates are raising concerns about the technology. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin is calling on the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to reconsider plans to adopt the use of facial recognition technology. Like the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), the sheriff’s office is considering acquiring facial recognition technology from the company Biometrica. The company has offered MPD free access in exchange for 2.5 million images, jail records, and other related data of people who have passed through Milwaukee’s criminal justice system, including many who presumably haven’t been convicted of a crime.
“Given all the public opposition we’ve seen to the Milwaukee Police Department’s push to expand their use of facial recognition, the news of the Sheriffs office’s interest in acquiring this technology is deeply concerning,” Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, wrote in a statement for an ACLU press release. “Law enforcement’s use of facial recognition software poses a number of serious threats to civil rights and civil liberties, making it dangerous both when it fails and when it functions.”
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Just days ago, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball revealed that her office was looking into adopting facial recognition software. Ball told county supervisors during a June 17 meeting of the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee Urban Milwaukee reported, that she was assessing a data-sharing agreement for the technology. MCSO did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Like MPD, the sheriff’s office is exploring an agreement with Biometrica, a company which has pushed back against concerns about privacy and the use of its surveillance tools. Biometrica offers a third-party facial recognition algorithm to agencies like the Milwaukee police and the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office states that rather than using the technology for untargeted surveillance, it aims to use facial recognition software to identify people once investigators have an image of a criminal suspect. Ball says that facial recognition would never be the sole basis for an arrest or charges, Urban Milwaukee reported.
On Thursday, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution requiring the creation of a regulatory process for adopting facial recognition technology. Both at the county and city government meetings, however, law enforcement agencies have been met with public skepticism about their exploration of facial recognition technologies.
Tension bubbled up during a hearing before the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission last week. Police department Inspector Paul Lough said that facial recognition could provide important leads for investigations similar to those derived from confidential informants and information databases used to run names. During the hearing, MPD officials presented examples of cases in which facial recognition technology helped solve crimes. “Whether or not they would’ve…may or may not have been solved without the use of facial rec., it’s hard to say,” said Lough. “Some probably would have been, some might still be open. But the important part of it is that all of the ones that we’re going to go over are very predatory in nature where there’s exigent circumstances to solve them quickly.”
MPD Capt. James Hutchinson went over two investigations from March 2024 which utilized facial recognition technology. One involved a drive-by shooting, where a passing car opened fire on a pedestrian, who died on the scene. Hutchinson explained that MPD obtained images from surveillance cameras, which were then sent to partner agencies with the ability to run facial recognition requests. Within 16 hours, the police captain told the commission, a potential suspect had been identified.
“We don’t know who they are when we get those pictures back, but we have ways of vetting that information, confirming the identification provided to us,” said Hutchinson. “And that’s what we did in this case.” Unique tattoos helped narrow the search to a man who was wearing a GPS bracelet. When officers went to conduct an arrest, they found two alleged shooters, their guns and the car they are believed to have used. Hutchinson said that a trial is pending for both suspects arrested in that case.
Facial recognition was also used in a sexual assault case, which occurred two days before the shooting. A victim had been followed home in the rain by a man offering her his umbrella, and asking for money. He mentioned that he’d already tried asking for money at a nearby gas station. As they walked, he held a gun to her head and forced her into a garage where he assaulted her. Officers were able to locate the garage with the victim’s help using Google Maps, and later the gas station the man had mentioned before. Surveillance camera photos potentially capturing the man were sent to other agencies for facial recognition assistance, which came back with images of a man who was on probation for sexual assault. He was identified both by the probation agent and the victim, and was sentenced to 20 years of incarceration.
MPD listed 13 additional cases where it used facial recognition, including a string of taco truck robberies on Milwaukee’s South Side involving a group of masked assailants. Although they appeared careful to cover their faces, one suspect let his mask down briefly, which was seen by a camera, and sent to a partner agency for identification. In that case, three to four potential suspects were identified by the technology, each with a certain percentage of certainty such as 97%, 95% and so on. After further investigation, detectives identified those responsible for the taco truck robberies as people flagged by the facial recognition search with the lowest percentage of certainty.
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. A surveillance van, or “critical response vehicle” is in the background. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
During public testimony, several people expressed concerns about the accuracy of facial recognition technology. Facial recognition software has been shown to have trouble identifying non-white faces, and is prone to errors particularly when identifying people of color. Some feared that defendants might have trouble learning how facial recognition was used in their cases, and felt that police oversight was lacking. Others pointed to the 2.5 million images MPD would give to Biometrica in exchange for the software licenses, and argued that such a move would only further harm community trust in the police. Because the images include mugshots, it’s possible that people whose images were included in that transaction will not be convicted of a crime after being arrested or detained at the jail for a period of time. Other questions included what access federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would have to MPD’s facial recognition system.
“As we recently found, MPD has been using facial recognition technology on the faces of Milwaukeeans for years, without being transparent with the public or the FPC,” Krissie Fung, a member of the Milwaukee Turners and Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission (FPC), said during public testimony. “Because there’s no standard operating procedure to provide guidelines around their process, relying on MPD to follow their own gentlemen’s agreements and internal process is just not how oversight works.”
Fung also said MPD Chief Jeffrey Norman acknowledged when he was reappointed that there is no way to guarantee the safety of the data and faces of Milwaukeeans, and that the data would be going to a third-party company the city does not oversee and which uses algorithms the city will not be able to access. “MPD’s proposal is to trade 2.5 million mugshots in exchange for this license which, by the way, includes my mugshot,” said Fung. “I believe that there are serious legal concerns that have not yet played out in the courts, and that would open us up to significant lawsuits.”
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“I cannot help but wonder if the reason Biometrica is so thirsty to trade 2.5 million ‘jail records or mugshots’ in exchange for free access to this technology, is that they assume that those jail records are Black faces, and they clearly need more Black faces to train their inaccurate algorithm,” Fung added. “But we don’t need to let them get those Black faces from Milwaukee.”
“I don’t know a single person in this city that trusts the police,” said Ron Jansen, who has testified about law enforcement at previous city and county meetings. “So the last thing Milwaukee needs to do is hand this department a tool that creates even greater opportunity to harm the people of this city.”
“This is not free,” Jansen added. “… the cost is 2.5 million mugshots of residents, non-residents, whatever. Anybody who’s been through the system here in Milwaukee…2.5 million human beings…Human beings, maybe half of which or more, were never convicted of a crime. This includes people who were wrongfully arrested, or accused, or just anyone who was ever booked into their custody. And while I was writing this, I thought, ‘that also includes people who’ve already been victimized by this department.’ People who have been beaten by the police. People who have been wrongfully accused by the police. This is your biological data, my biological data, everyone’s biological data, and it is being sold to a private company without your consent, all so that they can expand their surveillance network.”
Jansen asserted that the millions of images could include protesters, teachers, even state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who was wrongfully arrested by MPD during a curfew. “His arrest record is likely in there,” said Jansen. He also raised the 2025 case of officer Juwon Madlock, who used his access to police databases to pass intelligence about confidential informants and the home addresses of targets to gangs searching out rivals. “If this is already happening, imagine what will happen when their abilities get expanded,” said Jansen.
As the Milwaukee Police Department moves to expand its use of facial recognition technology, a June report from the federal government finds this technology continues to disproportionately misidentify people of color.
Elected officials and civil rights groups have been raising this concern as a clear reason why MPD’s plan should be paused or rejected entirely.
MPD says there are ways to address this limitation.
The Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission on Wednesday, June 18, will hold a public meeting to assess potential discrimination-related risks.
The report
In 2019, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology released a major report evaluating how demographics affect outcomes in facial recognition systems.
The report found skin color and ethnicity often had an effect.
With domestic law enforcement images, for example, the system most often led to false positives – when someone is incorrectly identified – for American Indians. Rates were also elevated for African American and Asian populations.
On June 2, the agency issued a report showing that facial recognition systems were more likely to mistake people from predominantly darker-skinned regions for someone else. This included people from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean, compared with people from Europe and Central Asia.
Higher rates of misidentifications for people of color raise concerns that facial recognition could lead to more wrongful stops and arrests by police.
MPD’s plan
MPD Chief of Staff Heather Hough, speaking during an April meeting of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, said the department has used facial recognition technology in the past in coordination with other police departments.
She stressed its crime-fighting benefits.
“Facial recognition technology is a valuable tool in solving crimes and increasing public safety,” Hough said.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson supports the use of this technology for the same reason, Jeff Fleming, spokesperson for the mayor’s office, wrote in an email.
“Identifying, apprehending and bringing to justice criminals in our city does reduce crime,” Fleming wrote.
During the commission meeting, Paul Lau, who oversees MPD’s criminal investigations bureau, said the department is considering an official agreement with a company called Biometrica.
“We anticipate this usually being used by our detective bureau in the investigation of major violent felonies,” Lau said.
Community response
Emilio De Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, cited some of the 2019 federal findings in an op-ed, arguing that “entrusting facial recognition to routine policing is not public safety; it is an avoidable risk that history shows will fall hardest on Black Milwaukeeans.”
Milwaukee Turners is one of 19 organizations that sent a letter to the Milwaukee Common Council expressing concerns about surveillance technology. The letter urges the council to adopt an ordinance ensuring community participation in deciding if and how it is used.
Some members of the Common Council have come out in strong opposition to MPD’s plan as well.
“It’s both embarrassing and dangerous for false positives to occur at such a high rate,” Alderman José G. Pérez, Common Council president, told NNS.
Such flaws would likely lead to due process violations, he said.
Addressing flaws
Hough said MPD knows there are people in the community who are “very leery” of police using this technology, adding that their “concerns about civil liberties are important.”
“I want to make it very clear: Facial recognition on its own is never enough. It requires human analysis and additional investigation.”
MPD is committed to a “thoughtful, intentional and mindful” policy that considers community input, Hough said.
Lau said MPD will look into racial bias training provided by Biometrica, and people using the technology will need to have training on best practices.
The company says errors identified in 2019 stemmed from several flaws that can be countered with, for example, anti-bias training for analysts who review facial recognition alerts.
Who gets to decide?
Since Wisconsin Act 12, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman is free to develop any official policy he chooses. The Common Council has the only formal check that exists.
By a two-thirds vote – or 10 of Milwaukee’s 15 aldermen – the council can block or modify MPD policies. But it must wait for a policy to be officially implemented.
The state Legislature could pass a statewide ban or restrictions, and the Common Council could adopt an ordinance regulating or banning its use.
Alderman Alex Brower told NNS he will be doing everything in his power, as a member of the Common Council, to oppose MPD’s acquisition of facial recognition technology.
What residents can do
People will have an opportunity to share their opinions about MPD’s plan – for and against – at an upcoming meeting of the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission.
Commission members will use testimony about facial recognition to help determine the discrimination-related risks it may pose, said Tony Snell, chair of the commission.
“We want to listen to as many people as possible,” Snell said.
The commission can make recommendations to the Common Council, the mayor, MPD and the Fire and Police Commission.
The commission meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday, June 18, at Milwaukee City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
Those who wish to speak must register by emailing ERC@milwaukee.gov. Each speaker will have up to three minutes. People can also send written testimony to this email address so it can be included in the public record.
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