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.” 

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.

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.”

“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. 

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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. 

Biometrica directly addresses concerns about racial disparities on its website.  

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.

People may attend in person or virtually. 

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. 

Milwaukee police push for more facial recognition technology as federal report shows persistent bias is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A Milwaukee man was charged Monday after writing a letter to the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that threatened to assassinate President Donald Trump. Demetric Scott told investigators that he wrote the letter claiming to be 54-year Ramón Morales Reyes, a Mexican-born Milwaukee resident who does not have permanent legal status. Scott was already incarcerated in the Milwaukee County Jail for armed robbery and aggravated battery and allegedly victimized Morales Reyes when he committed that crime. 

WISN 12 reported that Scott told investigators that he wrote the letter framing Morales Reyes because he didn’t want Morales Reyes  to testify against him during his trial in July. Scott reportedly told a person during a recorded jailhouse call that if Morales Reyes “gets picked up by ICE, there won’t be a jury trial so they will probably dismiss it that day. That’s my plan.” 

The letter Scott authored was written in perfect English, with only a few misspellings. “We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans,” it stated, adding, “I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 (sic) to shoot your precious president in the head – I’ll see you at one of his big ralleys (sic).” The letter was likely referring to a .30-06 (pronounced 30 ought six) high caliber rifle round, and appeared to be an assassination threat against the president. 

On Friday, lawyers representing Morales Reyes and local immigration advocates from Voces de la Frontera held a press conference, asserting that Morales Reyes could not have authored the letter. The 54-year-old father, who works as a dishwasher, comes from a rural part of Mexico where he received little formal  education. He does not speak English and cannot read or write proficiently even in Spanish. 

After Morales Reyes was arrested by ICE, his daughter contacted Voces de la Frontera and shared information about his background. Days after the arrest, Department of Homeland (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem issued a press statement, condemning Morales Reyes as having threatened President Trump’s life. Noem said  the letter was part of a  series of  dangerous threats to the president. 

Morales Reyes’ attorneys and Voces de la Frontera called on DHS to retract Noem’s  statement and clear his name. It’s unclear why Noem issued the statement, as CNN reported that MPD was investigating the likelihood that the letter was a fake on the day Morales Reyes was arrested. Scott told investigators that he did not receive any help in writing the letters. 

Democratic U.S. Reps. Gween Moore and Mark Pocan visited the Dodge County jail, Wisconsin’s only ICE detention facility Monday, on a  congressional oversight visit. They were not permitted to talk to anyone incarcerated there and did not receive any response to their questions from ICE.  

“In this facility, ICE is still detaining Ramón Morales Reyes despite being wrongfully accused of a crime,” Moore and Pocan said in a joint statement.  “ICE is also working without transparency to Congress, which was only magnified by today’s visit when we tried to call the local Milwaukee field office number on its website, but the number was disconnected. It is unacceptable for ICE to be inaccessible to Members of Congress. As members of Congress, we will continue using all tools available to conduct oversight.”

This article has been edited to correct the labeling of the .30-06 (pronounced 30 ought six) rifle cartridge.

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It’s the kind of exchange that criminal justice data is meant to clarify: a police official insisting that law enforcement practices are fair and targeted, while a city commissioner questions whether those practices contribute to racial disparities. 

“If I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, it’s the police department position – not that you are policing in a racially motivated way, but just that it’s Black youth that are committing more crimes,” asked Krissie Fung, a commissioner on the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission during a recent meeting. 

“I would not say Black youth are committing more crimes,” responded Heather Hough, chief of staff for the Milwaukee Police Department. “I would say that when we are arresting suspects, we are ensuring reasonable suspicion or probable cause, whether or not the identity of those youth is one race or another.”

This conversation – about the overrepresentation of youths of color in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system – unfolded during the May 1 meeting of the Fire and Police Commission. However, it relied in part on a misunderstanding of the county-run dashboard that tracks youths in the justice system.

Such misinterpretations have been common, said Kelly Pethke, administrator for Milwaukee County Children, Youth and Family Services, which hosts the dashboard. 

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding,” Pethke said. “We are in the process of making some changes.”

The point of the dashboard 

The dashboard was designed to provide real-time transparency about Milwaukee County youths in secure custody.

“We didn’t have a good, single place to go to really look at the scope of the child incarceration problem,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, who helped move the dashboard through the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors when he served as a supervisor.  

But the dashboard doesn’t yet offer a complete picture, including when it comes to race.

Because of this limitation, conversations about racial disparities in Milwaukee’s youth justice system – like those during the Fire and Police Commission meeting – are incomplete. 

What’s missing?

To understand what’s missing from the dashboard, it helps to know that Milwaukee youths in secure custody can fall into three categories. 

Some youths are held at the county-run Vel R. Phillips Youth and Family Justice Center for lesser offenses, remaining fully under Milwaukee County’s responsibility. 

Others, deemed serious juvenile offenders, are in the custody of the state and housed at state-run youth prisons such as Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls. 

A third group consists of youth who are the county’s responsibility but are housed in state-run facilities. The dashboard currently only shows racial data for this third group.

Pethke provided NNS with point-in-time data that helps fill out the racial picture of youths in county custody. As of May 19, there were 113 youths in the county detention center: 92 were Black, 12 were Hispanic, seven were white, and two were Asian. 

Persistent problem

Even with the updated county data, overrepresentation of youths of color – especially Black youth – in the criminal justice system continues, said Monique Liston.

She’s the founder and chief strategist of UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, a Milwaukee-based strategic education organization. 

“The disproportionality is still the same for me. Still the same flag,” she said.

Liston wrote a blog that generated a wide community response and was cited by Fung during her exchange with Hough.  

Liston doesn’t dispute Hough’s claim that Milwaukee police are acting legally and fairly. Still, she argued, the city’s criminal justice system is structured in such a way that disproportionately targets Black youths. 

“Black youth are more surveilled. That means you’re going to end up with more incidents.”

It’s a cycle, Liston said – data collected on these incidents presents an imbalanced picture of who is committing crime. 

That picture reinforces the notion that more money and policing are needed to address crime by Black youths, resulting in continued – or escalated – monitoring, she said. 

Yes, Liston wants to see clearer and more complete data from the dashboard. But she also wants that data to be used for real accountability and change.

“Whatever we measure becomes a priority,” she said. “The cycle is not disrupted if we don’t think about the data.” 

MPD and root causes

Hough does not dispute the county’s data and acknowledges that racial disparities exist in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system. But she told NNS she is confident the city’s police department is not the source of those disparities.

“We get a call for service, and we respond,” she said. 

Hough emphasized that the department holds officers accountable if they fail to meet standards of reasonable suspicion and probable cause. 

She also said that the police department – and Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman – are committed to working with the community to address the root causes of the disparities highlighted by the county’s dashboard. 

Milwaukee County looks to tweak youth incarceration dashboard after community feedback is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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

Across the nation, law enforcement agencies are accessing Flock Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) camera databases, regardless of whether they have their own contract for the AI-powered system. Researchers from 404 Media published a data trove derived from Flock audits earlier this week. Although the audit data came from the Danville Police Department in Illinois, Wisconsin Examiner found that intelligence units within the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) also appear in the database.  

The audit data shows that last year on July 15 and Oct. 21, personnel from the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC) — a homeland security-focused arm of the MPD’s fusion center — conducted a total of three searches within Danville PD’s Flock network. STAC gathers and disseminates intelligence across eight counties in southeastern Wisconsin. 

MPD’s own Fusion Division is co-located with the STAC. Together the units operate a “real time event center,” a vast network of both city-owned and privately owned cameras and operate Milwaukee’s gunshot detection system known as Shotspotter. They also monitor social media and conduct various types of mobile phone-related investigations. STAC has also explored the use of drones, facial recognition technology and predictive intelligence.

MPD’s Flock searches were logged under the user name “D. Whi” from “Milwaukee WI PD – STAC”. In the dataset’s “reason” column, the searches were recorded as “HSI investigation” and “HSI vehicle loader.” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) specialize in matters of immigration, illegal exporting, cyber crime and national security.

By tapping into Danville’s Flock data, according to the audit, STAC was able to access 4,893 Flock networks and an equal number of individual devices, such as cameras, for the July 15 search alone. The other two searches from October reached 5,425 Flock networks and devices and captured data from a one-month period. 

404 Media’s investigation focused on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has accessed Flock databases nationwide, despite not having a contract with the company themselves, and how various agencies appeared to conduct immigration-related searches. Whereas many searches were logged as “immigration violation,” “ICE” or even “ICE ASSIST,” others only noted the involvement of HSI. 

In a statement sent Wednesday morning, an MPD spokesperson denied that STAC’s use of Danville PD’s Flock network was immigration-related. “Information regarding this investigation is classified and not available as it is ongoing,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. “I can confirm it is related to a criminal investigation with HSI and not immigration related.” The spokesperson later added that this was a “HIDTA investigation,” referring to a federal task force linked to the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. 

MPD’s HIDTA units are attached to the department’s Special Investigations Division, a separate branch from the Fusion division and STAC. “The majority of HIDTA and STAC investigations are classified,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement. “Oftentimes, these investigations involved confidential informants and sometimes it could take years to resolve.”

Several police departments in Milwaukee County utilize Flock cameras. MPD entered into its contract in 2022. Over 1,300 registered cameras operate across the city as part of Community Connect, a program supported by the Milwaukee Police Foundation, according to the program’s web page, with nearly 900 “integrated” cameras which grant MPD real-time access. 

Both the use of automatic license plate readers and MPD’s ability to participate in immigration enforcement are governed by specific policies. The department’s immigration policy, SOP-130, cautions that “proactive immigration enforcement by local police can be detrimental to our mission and policing philosophy when doing so deters some individuals from participating in their civic obligation to assist the police.” The policy limits MPD’s ability to assist ICE with detaining or gathering information about a person to “only when a judicial warrant is presented” and when the target is suspected of involvement in terrorism, espionage, a transnational criminal street gang, violent felony, sexual offense against a minor or was a previously deported felon. 

A curiously timed public hearing 

Privacy advocates have raised concerns and filed lawsuits over Flock’s ability to collect and store data without a warrant. The license plate reader policy – SOP 735 – allows personnel to access data stored “for the purposes of conducting crime trend analyses” but only when those activities are approved by a supervisor and are intended to “assist the agency in the performance of its duties.” 

MPD personnel may use Flock to “look for potentially suspicious activity or other anomalies that might be consistent with criminal or terrorist activity” and are not prohibited from “accessing and comparing personal identifying information of one or more individuals who are associated with a scanned vehicle as part of the process of analyzing stored non-alert data.” Automatic license plate reading technology captures information from any passing car. In some cases, investigators may also place specific vehicles on a Be On the Lookout (BOLO) list, also known as a “hot list”, which notifies law enforcement whenever a specific vehicle is seen by a license plate reader-equipped camera. 

A Thursday morning public hearing held by the city’s Finance and Personnel Committee considered whether more Flock cameras should be added to Milwaukee’s already existing network. Ald. Scott Spiker spoke in support of the cameras, and said he worked to install license plate readers in his own district. Spiker described having discussions with local business district leaders and MPD’s fusion center, which resulted in cameras being deployed on 27th Street. “Don’t ask me where, because I won’t tell you,” said Spiker, adding that the cameras “serve a variety of purposes” from combating car theft to aiding Amber and Silver Alerts. 

“There’s going to a broader question, which I imagine will be a subject of the public testimony, however, and I’m fine hearing it, but ultimately there’s going to be a discussion to be had in the city of anything that smacks of surveillance software, and what sort of oversight is provided, and should be provided,” said Spiker. He added that such a discussion “will be had in full in Public Safety” and that although he welcomed public testimony, the committee was there to discuss approving a contract, and not concerns over surveillance. 

“The camera’s already in use by MPD, and in use by our parking checkers,” said Spiker. “When they do night parking enforcement, they use ALPR’s. When they do zoning enforcement during the day, they use ALPR’s. So these are already in use. They have no facial recognition or any of the stuff that’s been in the news. But it is a legitimate question to ask what degree of surveillance of any sort, given the national context, do we want to have oversight over?” 

Spiker said that there’s a “big debate” about surveillance but that “we can’t sort that out today.” 

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, complained that the public had not been alerted ahead of time about the discussion of the Flock contract. “I’ve been checking daily and the documents in this file and the text of the resolution weren’t posted until yesterday [Wednesday] afternoon,” said Merkwae. “So I think for an item that has significant implications for the civil liberties of Milwaukeeans, particularly the most vulnerable resident, that’s concerning.” 

The agenda had been out for over a week, and was amended a couple of days before the hearing, Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic later explained. 

Merkwae said, “We know that ICE has gained access to troves of data from sanctuary cities to aid in its raids and immigration enforcement actions, including data from the vast network of license plate readers across the country.” She cited a 404 Media investigation earlier this month, which found that Flock is building a massive people look-up tool which pulls in different forms of data, including license plate reader data, “in order to track specific individuals without a warrant.” 

Merkwae also referenced 404 Media’s findings this week revealing immigration-related look-ups, as well as the classified investigation that involved MPD’s intelligence units. The advocacy director also questioned what MPD’s policies mean in practice when federal or out-of-state law enforcement want to access its Flock databases. 

“If law enforcement told us that they wanted to put a tracking device on every single car in the country so that we know where every car is every single moment of the day, and we’re going to build a database of all those locations run by an unaccountable private company, and accessible to every law enforcement agency across the country without needing any type of a warrant, I think we would be alarmed and we would have some follow-up questions,” said Merkwae. “So at the end of the day, we think the public deserves to know how it is being surveilled and the common council deserves to know the answers to some pretty basic questions before approving contracts for surveillance technology that’s deployed without a warrant.”

In 2023, Fox 6 published a map of Flock cameras operated by MPD. The map, broken up by aldermadic district, shows a large cluster of cameras located on the North Side around District 7, as well as a cluster on the South Side around District 8. Smaller clusters of cameras were located on the East, far Southwest Side and Northwest Side of the city. 

 

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After Merkwae testified, Spiker raised a question about whether public testimony should continue, given open meetings laws. A lengthy discussion followed about which issues and topics may be discussed in the hearing by committee members, which halted public testimony for over 20 minutes as alders heard from city attorneys and MPD. Ald. Miele Coggs said hearing the public’s concerns before a contract is approved for surveillance technology was important. Ald. Dimitrijevic also stressed that public comment was an important step, saying that the committee would not go into closed session to discuss the Flock contract before the public finished speaking, or otherwise limit public testimony. 

When public testimony continued, Milwaukee residents shared further concerns about the technology. Ron Jansen said that the city has seen a surge of surveillance gear used by MPD. “Between the growth of a fascist regime in Washington …  and our own militarized and violent police force here in Milwaukee, it’s clear that the last thing we need is more ways for police to track us,” Jansen said. He added that Flock networks are capable of tracking and cataloging “people’s every movement throughout a given day” even if they’re not the target of an investigation.

Other residents, including locals from Spiker’s district and representatives from the court diversion non-profit program JusticePoint, also spoke against Flock’s expansion. Tara Cavazos, executive director of the South 27th Street Business District, said Flock cameras had made her area safer. “We are the initiators of these three additions to the Flock network,” said Cavazos. “And we donated the funds for two years of use of these Flock cameras. So they’re not coming from MPD’s budget, it’s coming out of our budgets. These Flocks are not going to be placed in a neighborhood, it’s not specific to any vulnerable communities, they are in business districts on state and county highways.” 

Cavazos said that since Flocks have been deployed, car thefts declined “significantly on the south end of our corridor, where the border between Milwaukee and Greenfield is,” and that “we’ve caught a homicide suspect.” Leif Otteson, an executive director of two business districts, said that he hears from people who want more surveillance. Otteson recalled working to expand the city’s ring camera network, which STAC and other parts of MPD’s fusion center have access to. Otteson has talked with people who want cameras in their community gardens and other areas. “I just want to make that clear, that people like myself are getting those requests,” said Otteson. 

Once public testimony concluded, the committee went into closed session for over an hour. The discussion pertained to an unspecified “non-standard” provision in the Flock contract, which had been raised by the city attorney’s office. When the committee returned to open session, they voted 4-1 to hold the file due to legal concerns with the contract until the next committee meeting on June 18. 

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Milwaukee PD officers monitor the May Day 2025 march with a Critical Response Vehicle, outfitted as a surveillance van. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A group of 19 community organizations have joined forces to push for oversight of police surveillance in Milwaukee. Together the groups signed an open letter addressed to the city’s common council, asking it to adopt a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinance.

The measure would require existing surveillance technologies used by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) to receive a public hearing and be subject to approval by the Milwaukee Common Council.  The ordinance would also require the department to produce an annual report of surveillance gear. 

“The proliferation of surveillance technology by the Milwaukee Police Department has occurred with virtually no transparency, no opportunities for community input and — without a real opportunity to reject surveillance techs or advocate for critical guardrails — presents significant threats to civil rights and civil liberties that hurts us all but disproportionately impact communities of color, queer communities, people seeking reproductive healthcare, immigrant communities, people fleeing violence, and low-income communities,” the coalition states in its letter. 

“While we trust our local elected officials in Milwaukee, in light of the current political climate and the uncertainty surrounding future administrations at both the federal and state levels (both in Wisconsin and in other states), 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 letter adds.

CCOPS ordinances have already passed in 26 cities nationwide, and calls to rein in the flow and development of police surveillance technologies have grown in recent years in Milwaukee. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin began advocating for CCOPS ordinances in the Badger State, prompted by a lack of discussion on the issue and the impending Republican National Convention during the summer of 2024. 

As with the 2020 Democratic National Convention four years earlier, the RNC brought with it an influx of new equipment that allowed MPD to augment its surveillance network. Before the DNC the police department upgraded its mobile phone surveillance gear, expanded a camera network capable of using automatic license plate reader technology, and purchased vans equipped with cameras and drones. The RNC likewise opened the door for a new open source intelligence software, growing MPD’s social media surveillance capabilities. 

 

CCOPS Coalition Letter to Common Council

 

During the summer of 2020, many people who joined protests following the death of George Floyd witnessed these technologies, and reported suspicions that they were being monitored. As time passed, investigations revealed that local police departments monitored social media closely and drew information from confidential databases, with one agency funneling much of what it’d learned into a “target list” of nearly 200 people. The list had been shared with dozens of local, state, and federal agencies from Milwaukee to Kenosha. 

Since then more attention has been focused on intelligence units such as the MPD’s fusion center, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s “MATRIX Group”, and on technologies including drones, wiretap devices, gunshot detection sensors like Shotspotter, and spyware. More recently, Milwaukee residents have begun to express concerns about MPD’s plans to acquire facial recognition technology. 

The accumulation of these issues spurred the group of 19 community organizations to sign the letter calling for CCOPS. The coalition includes Planned Parenthood, Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC), the ACLU of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO), Voces de la Frontera Action, ComForce, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee County League of Women Voters and others.  

The letter states that “policies are increasingly enacted, and local governments and their surveillance mechanisms will likely be used to target individuals seeking or providing these services. This scenario is particularly alarming given that Black, Brown, Muslim, queer, low-income, and immigrant communities are already disproportionately affected by law enforcement practices.” 

The letter suggests the stage is being set to repeat law enforcement spying scandals from the 1960s and ‘70s.

“Without robust oversight, we risk a resurgence of COINTELPRO-like tactics, where surveillance was used to suppress political dissent and target minority groups, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,” the letter states. “At a minimum, people who live, work, visit, or attend school in Milwaukee deserve to know if and how they’re being surveilled and who has access to that surveillance data.”

Reading Time: 5 minutes

When he leaves the office at the end of the week, James Hutchinson, captain of the Milwaukee Police Department’s Homicide Unit, can’t wait for Monday so he can get back to work solving murders.

“I could have retired six months ago,” he said. “But I know that the work we do really makes an impact on people’s lives.”

That work doesn’t always go as planned. Last year Milwaukee homicide detectives cleared 78% of the 132 murder cases they investigated — the highest rate in years. From 2020 to 2023, when murder rates soared during the pandemic, clearance rates fluctuated between 50% and 59%, leaving many families without closure.

For those awaiting justice, Hutchinson said he wants them to know that his team of 33 investigators remains committed to solving their case.

“From the first two weeks to a month, or months or years down the line, we’re equally as committed to solving a murder as we were today.”

That work begins as soon as a homicide is reported, he said.

Homicide investigations in Milwaukee

Typically, said Hutchinson, uniformed officers are the first to arrive on the scene. They work to establish an incident command area, set parameters using police tape, control crowds and prevent any disruption of evidence.

Patrol officers are also the first to seek out witnesses and spot cameras.

Detectives are not far behind. As soon as a homicide is reported, Hutchinson said, a team of detectives and supervisors will immediately head to the scene and start their investigation.

Once they arrive, they assemble the information that’s already been collected, gather more clues, find additional witnesses and hopefully identify suspects. Investigations take place in homes, city streets and hospitals or even at the medical examiner’s office.

Critical, Hutchinson said, is the early stages of that investigation.

“Those first moments, those first hours, those first minutes are very important. Evidence starts to disappear. People go to different places. It could be as simple as video evidence being recorded over. We focus and attack an investigation very fast, very intensively,” he said.

When homicides happen in bunches, as was often the case during the pandemic, resources are pulled from other units to help.

The team approach

Hutchinson said MPD investigates homicides differently from any other large city in America, using a team approach rather than dedicating detectives to specific cases. Homicide investigators working that shift will begin the investigation and then debrief the next shift before handing off the case.

“They brief the incoming shift on what occurred, what was accomplished and what still needs to be done,” Hutchinson said. “That cycle continues until we run out of things we need to do right now.”

Utilizing this method allows for a continuous investigation, but it also creates some problems, acknowledges Hutchinson.

“Because there is this team concept, you have a potential for having not as much accountability per person,” he said. 

He said his division works to alleviate that problem by relying on sergeants and others, including himself, to oversee investigations and follow-ups.

Communication challenges

Another issue with not dedicating specific investigators to specific cases is communication.

“We love to get information, but we are not good at checking back in with the family and letting them know we haven’t forgotten,” he said. “We acknowledge that we have room for improvement.”

Not receiving regular updates from homicide investigators is a common complaint among family members of victims, especially those whose cases remain unsolved.

Brenda Hines, whose son Donovan was murdered in 2017, tracked down officers in person when they wouldn’t respond to her calls. 

“It’s a bad process,” she said. 

She founded the Donovan Hines Foundation in honor of her son and to help other families by providing grief support, mental health and other resources to residents. 

Hines said she believes police can still solve her son’s murder if anything should come up.

“They just don’t have enough evidence yet,” she said.

Janice Gorden, who created Victims of Milwaukee Violence to help families access funeral support and other services, said she believes police are doing what they can to solve homicides and work with families.

But families, she said, will not be satisfied until they have answers. Often it gets to the point where they become focused on investigating the case themselves.

“They have way more information than sometimes the detectives do,” Gorden said. “They drive themselves crazy trying to find answers to who killed their loved one.”

Both Hines and Gorden have worked with mothers to arrange meetings with police and the district attorney’s office to get information about homicide cases.

Hutchinson said two new victim support positions were created recently to help improve communication with families.

Notifying the family

Hutchinson worked his way up the ranks of MPD, first as a patrol officer, then gang squad, detective, robbery and vice squad, and as a homicide detective from 2008 to 2020.

Before becoming captain, he has often taken on the grim task of letting a family member know a loved one was killed.

“Making a death notification is one of the hardest parts of this job. It’s incredibly heartbreaking,” he said. “The range of reactions, you can’t even anticipate. There are completely stoic people that accept what you’re telling them, to some incredibly violent reactions.”

A much better feeling, he said, is when they are able to notify a family that an arrest has been made. But even that’s a struggle.

From investigation to charges

Although police might make an arrest in a homicide case, that doesn’t mean that charges will be filed.

Police, Hutchinson said, only need probable cause to make an arrest. The burden of proof at the district attorney’s office, which files homicide charges, is higher.

“The DA’s office has to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “Many times we will make an arrest for probable cause, but we can’t get to that level.”

What often happens, Hutchinson said, is that officers will bring a case to the DA’s office or discuss what evidence they have and then talk about whether more is needed to file charges.

While that does bring some frustration, admits Hutchinson, it’s better than arresting the wrong person.

“My worst nightmare I would have in the world is to have the wrong person held accountable for a crime,” he said.

Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern acknowledges that the work to hold someone accountable for murder can be burdensome on families seeking justice.

“Obviously, there is a significant gap between the evidence needed to make an arrest versus the evidence needed to successfully prosecute a case,” Lovern said.

The reason for caution and continued dialogue with officers in hopes of building a strong case is because there’s no room for error.

“We really have one opportunity with a particular suspect to bring forward charges and we want to get it right. Not only for the person charged, but the victim’s family and the integrity of the system,” he said.

‘We never forget about the victims’

Depending on the time of year and other circumstances, homicide investigation units can get extremely busy, Hutchinson said. Even when pulling resources from other units, it can still impact the amount of time investigators have for each case.

On the flip side, he said, sometimes they’ve hit the point where they don’t have anything left to do at the moment. But, he said, he wants families to know that victims are more than just a name to them.

“They are someone’s family member or friend, and the day they died is probably the worst day of many people’s lives,” he said.

Whether it’s been days, months or years, he wants family members to know his unit remains committed to solving their murder.

“Everyone can be assured that we never forget about the victims,” he said. “There is no replacement for their loved one, but it feels great to be able to notify the family that we have made an arrest.”

How you can help

Anyone with information on homicides is asked to contact Milwaukee police at 414-935-7360, or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at 414- 224-TIPS.

What happens when someone is murdered in Milwaukee? An inside look at homicide investigations is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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

A $6.96 million settlement — the second largest in Milwaukee’s history — stems from a federal civil lawsuit which accused Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) detectives of fabricating evidence against Danny Wilber, framing him for a 2004 homicide. Wilber spent 18 years in prison for a crime he always asserted he didn’t commit. 

Wilber’s homicide conviction was ultimately overturned after he was found to have had an unfair trial in a federal appeals court. On May 8, the city’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee recommended approving the settlement. Yet before it was approved, elected leaders expressed discontent that taxpayers in Milwaukee would be footing the bill. 

Further approvals will be needed from the Common Council and Mayor Cavalier Johnson. In a statement, Wilber said that the settlement “clearly establishes what I have truthfully maintained at all times — that I was completely innocent and that it was physically impossible that I committed this murder.” 

Ald. Mark Chambers Jr. called the judge in Wilber’s case “incompetent”, while Ald. Robert Bauman said the judge made “some pretty bad decisions,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Council President Jose Perez said the city was “paying the price for some bad judgement and it’s inexcusable.” Yet it was city of Milwaukee police detectives, not a judge, who manipulated evidence in the case, and laid the groundwork for the settlement nearly 20 years after they arrested Wilber. 

In January 2004, Wilber was at an after-hours party when, according to a federal complaint, he got into an argument with another party guest. As more people got involved the argument became a physical altercation which was being watched by another guest, David Diaz. At some point during the fight, someone standing behind Diaz shot him in the back of the head at close range. Diaz died instantly, and everyone who’d been in the kitchen panicked and left. 

The complaint states that physical evidence from the scene showed that Diaz had been shot from behind. One of the named defendants in the civil action, Milwaukee police detective Thomas Casper, collected measurements from the scene and recovered bullet fragments that showed that Diaz had been shot from behind. Diaz’s autopsy corroborated those findings. “It was and is undisputed that, at the time of the shooting, Plaintiff Wilber was inside the kitchen and in front of David Diaz,” the complaint reads. 

Despite the ballistic evidence, MPD detectives honed in on Wilber as the main murder suspect. Detectives didn’t look into multiple other plausible suspects, and went as far as to fabricate witness statements, the complaint states. Two other detectives, Randolph Olson and Louis Johnson, interrogated a witness to the shooting, Richard Torres, who was wanted for probation violations and turned himself in for questioning. Olson and Johnson used “threats and intimidation” to compel Torres to give a false statement by threatening to charge him with murder, and making clear that they were interested in Wilber as the shooter. Around the same time, another detective, Gregory Schuler, interrogated another witness, Jeranek Diaz. The complaint accuses Schuler of fabricating “substantial parts of a statement” from Diaz, including that at the time of the shooting, David Diaz had just turned around and was about to leave the kitchen when he was shot. Jeranek Diaz never said those statements, and was not allowed to review the typewritten version of his statement. Notes that Schuler allegedly took during the interview were never presented either to the prosecution or to Wilber’s attorneys. 

Other detectives interviewed witnesses who had a learning disability and said after the shooting that she saw her brother pat himself down to check if he’d been shot. The detectives, Timothy Duffy and Joseph Erwin, wrote that the witness ducked her head and when she looked back up, everyone was running out the door and she hadn’t seen her brother. Duffy and Erwin did not read the witness’s statement back to her, and she signed the statement without knowing what it said. 

One witness who was detained overnight without food, water or access to showers was told after interviews by detectives that he was “not telling us what we need to hear”, before being returned to a cell. Eventually, the exhausted witnesses agreed to make false statements if he was allowed to go home. Detectives also manipulated scene diagrams, and Wilber was charged with first-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in February 2004. Prosecutors heavily relied on evidence compiled by detectives, as well as false witness statements. 

Wilber spent 18 years in prison, with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office formally dismissing his case in May 2022. In order to carry out what the complaint describes as a “conspiracy,” the detectives would have needed to act alongside other MPD investigative, supervisory and command personnel, as well as “other unknown co-conspirators.” Casper would eventually go on to become one of the first commanders for the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), a network of detectives that focuses on civilian deaths by police, and which has been criticized for conducting problematic death reviews. MAIT selected a different commander in 2020, and Casper died by the time Wilber’s lawsuit reached its conclusion.

“The evidence that came out in this case showed that this was not a series of mistakes by a squad of incompetent detectives,” Wilber said in a statement. “No, it was a conscious plan to construct a false case against me with manufactured witness statements in order to put me behind bars. It was a plan that they have used again and again against Black, Indigenous and other poor people of color. In this case, like in many others, the prosecutors and the Court system were, from beginning to end, vindictively complicit in my wrongful conviction and incarceration. This settlement delivers a measure of justice against the police who framed me, but what about the prosecutor who presented the false evidence at trial? What about the Judge who allowed it and violated my constitutional rights? What about the Assistant Attorney General who fought for years to keep me in a cage after my conviction was overturned and took the case all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States? They’re all complicit and because of the corrupt system, they get to walk away, free to repeat the egregious misconduct under the guise of due processes.”

Attorneys Ben Elson and Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, who represented Wilber, said that the city would be paying him nearly $7 million because its detectives framed an innocent man. The attorneys addressed statements made by local elected officials, who were quick to blame the judge and other non-city government figures in the case. “Instead of passing the blame onto others, the City should publicly acknowledge its role in Danny Wilber’s wrongful conviction and make a sincere apology.”

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