"It helped us reduce gun violence": Green Bay police chief explains why Flock cameras are staying

Our Take

WLUK-TV FOX 11 gives Green Bay's police chief a friendly platform to defend its Flock Safety network, and the headline claim — that the cameras "helped reduce gun violence" — is exactly the kind of soundbite that keeps these systems spreading without scrutiny. Correlation isn't causation, and a chief's say-so isn't an audit. We've seen this pattern in city after city: a department touts a feel-good statistic, local reporters repeat it, and nobody asks for the raw numbers, the false-positive rate, or who else has access to the data.

What's notable here is the contrast the report itself raises: other communities are reconsidering or dropping Flock contracts while Green Bay doubles down. That split matters. It means this technology isn't settling into some uniform national consensus — it's a live political fight happening city council by city council, and the outcome in each town depends heavily on whether residents show up and ask hard questions before the contract gets renewed.

Credit to WLUK for putting the chief on record, but the real story is what wasn't asked: retention periods, audit logs, out-of-state data sharing, and whether "reduced gun violence" holds up to independent review. If you want to see whether Green Bay or your own city is wired up, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not take a police department's word for it, our take-action guide walks you through how to push for real transparency at the next council meeting.